Brought Up in AA -- Brought Out By Christ

The more that I look back on the whole debacle, the more I realize how brainwashed I had become because of the whole AA program.

From a little kid on, I was taught the Twelve Steps, I was taught to take my inventory, I was told that if I got angry or upset, it was my fault, that it was a resentment that I had to work out in  my life.

I lived a good part of my life rehearsing these steps, only to find that time and again I was still angry, hurt, selfish, and frightened. Those steps did not work!

Indeed, human beings have "living problems" as one guy in a meeting would harp over and over again. These living problems, however, do not go to the root of the problem, which is that without God living in us, we are forever dead in our trespasses. Adam and Eve walked in perfect fellowship with God, filled with His Spirit. When they sinned, eating form the Forbidden Tree, they forfeited their fellowship with God, and instead the god of this world, Satan who had fallen like lightning from heaven (Luke 10: 18).

The same temptation that brought down man and creation -- the Law -- is the same perversion which keeps believers in bondage in the Body of Christ, who have not yet known or believed that through Jesus' death on the Cross, the Old Covenant of Law and Sacrifice has grown old and vanished away in the New Covenant of God's grace through His Son (Hebrews 8: 13)

AA points the "prospect" back into self-introspection. There is no glory or transformation in looking at oneself. By beholding the Lord Jesus Christ in His Word, we are transformed from glory to glory by His Spirit (2 Corinthians 3: 18).

I can still remember how my mother would have my sister and me sit down as she would read from the "Big Book" justifying everything that she was doing in our lives, including taking us away from our father and putting us up in an apartment on the other side of town. Granted, things were not going well in the household at the time, and my mom was often talking about how angry she was, that she just wanted to punch somebody.

She was a walking, squawking advertisement for why not to take AA. The program, for all of its promises, comes up short time and again. How many meetings have I witnessed where frustrated and hurting men and women go to a meeting, just to find more frustration and hurt? I cannot tell you how much clawing and scratching I had to deal with when I sat in on those meetings.

And why did I keep going to those meetings? It was the only pattern, the only tradition that I had known in my formative years, beyond the church-going, where the full payment of all that Christ had done on the Cross for me had not yet been revealed.

What a shame! The Gospel is so simple -- that Jesus Christ has paid it all. Our revelation of this truth depends more on our letting go of the "old ideas", including empty, faulty AA and the Twelve Step program. In a sense, there are no steps as their is a grand reception, in which God seats us in heavenly places with His Son.

The more steps that people make to get to God, the more steps that one actually takes away from Him, for He is nearer to us than our next breath. Like Adam and Eve, we get in the habit of getting away from Him by simply not taking him at His Word.

I was brought up, or rather brought down, in AA. The program takes life rather than giving members a new shot at life. The program tells people to take these steps, and your life will get better, yet at the same time the program is based on coming to the meetings as much as possible.

The Twelve and Twelve talks about people who never quite get back on their feet once they work the program. Maybe they no longer drink, but they have little else to help them out.

I was inundated with AA. The people in the program even created a calendar with little child-like drawings illustrating the Twelve Steps. My mom had nothing else to work with, besides the steps, and the steps take one nowhere but into oneself.

I was brought up in AA -- Christ brought  me out and into His life!