Harold Hill and AA

I loved Harold Hill, the author of "How to Live Like a King's Kid."

So did my mother, who found and read through his book.

Part of what got her interested -- he dedicated his book to Alcoholics Anonymous, which helped him get sober, apparently.

I was impressed with the book, as well. I loved reading about a man who lived a life of victory in Christ.


Two things were missing from this book, which I have since learned:

We must be freed from the Old Covenant, and we must be established in righteousness, fully vested in the knowledge and the belief that God looks at us, and He sees His Son:

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17)

Indeed, we are "King's Kids", but we have to be established in righteousness:

"He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: but with kings are they on the throne; yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are exalted." (Job 36: 7)

Only Kings can be established on a throne, and to be kings, we must be made the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5: 21)

Like Harold Hill and many other members of the Body of Christ, we are not getting skillful in righteousness (Hebrews 5: 12-13)

And of course, AA does not talk about righteousness at all, so that men and women never feel secure in their standing before God.

I noticed that the more that I read his account of spiritual life in Christ, receiving and releasing the gifts of the Spirit, Harold Hill talked less and less about AA.

He did not talk about taking his inventory every day. He did mention at length that the sense of sin, of guilt, of condemnation, was taken away once and for in his life.

I also loved his vision, in which he was sinking in the muddy mire in the outskirts of Maryland, and as every religious figure and spokesman walked by, none of them offered him any help out of the mud. Then Jesus came by, and rather than telling him what to do or what he should have done, he reached down and pulled him out of the pit.

This is the God that Christians believe on and serve, greater than any "Higher Power" that we attempt to understand through our limited intellect.

We must accept that in order to overcome, we need more than a set of rules, a program of action, or even a fellowship where we hear the same rules and regulations and steps landing on us, a series of demands which gives us nothing but a set of distractions away from Life and that more abundantly.

In Christ, believers, we are more than conquerors (Romans 8: 37), this is the victory that men and women are seeking, which they will not find in AA meetings or in the Big Book, which turns out to be a Big Ripoff.