Members of AA: "Fearful Looking"

"26For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 27But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries." (Hebrews 10: 26-27)

From a fairly young age, I walked around with a sense of fear, or a sense of wrongdoing within me.

For a number of years, I never quite understood why I always felt so bad. I was afraid about the future, and I was overcome by my past.

Then I read Hebrews 10:

"1For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. 2For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins." (Hebrews 10: 1-2)

Men and women are seeking perfection in some way, and yet obeying the law cannot bring that sense of perfect, for "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)

The search for peace and fulfillment will always turn up empty if we find this life in this world. We find life in the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus Christ (John 14: 6)

When He died on the Cross, he paid for all our sins, and He fulfilled the law for us fully and completely, so that Satan can no longer tempt us or shame us with condemnation (Colossians 2: 13-15)

To this day, Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, and He justifies us before the Father forever more (Romans 8:31-33).

Instead of a sense of judgment, Jesus has granted us His Spirit, who convicts us of righteousness (John 16: 8-11)

On the other hand, in AA men and women come and go every day with a deficit weighing over them. First they have to take their exhaustive inventory, the Fourth Step, and confess all their sins and failings and perversions to someone else. Then they are called to do a "spot check" inventory every day, usually at the end of the day.

The record-keeping that members of AA are expected to maintain should be enough to dissuade anyone from joining, or from staying along for any length of time. Most importantly, all of the negative confessions, "I'm an alcoholic", creates the very sin conscience which Jesus came to remove from us once and for all.

From a young age, I was taught to run all of my problems through the Twelve Steps. If I got angry, I had to take my inventory. If someone was making me mad, I had to see what "my part" was in the mess. Often, people were wrong who had hurt me, but the sin conscience created by AA causes people to look at themselves entirely. AA also teaches people that other people have control over our thoughts and feelings, when in truth our feelings merely respond to what we are thinking. We can choose not to be sad,  or offended, or filled with resentment if we choose to believe that in Christ all our sins are forgiven, that we identify with His life in us, and thus we can reckon ourselves dead in the flesh.

Furthermore, because there is no final sacrifice, whether with Jesus Christ or with the shedding of animals' blood, the sense of "retribution" within men never goes away. People who have wronged us never seem to pay for what they did, they seem to be getting away with it, they have made us angry, and now we have to "take our own inventory" to do something about what someone else had done to us? This program is an evil cult which teaches people to be docile and dependent in the face of abuse and hurt, which feeds empty lies to people as truth, only to keep them locked in bondage,

Worst of all, people who "work" this program find a "fearful looking" in their lives, often wondering if they may take another drink, or do something else wrong, They doubt if God is really on their side or not, especially when bad things happen in the world, and they have no stable criteria to know who God really is (and He is much more than anything that we can conceive).

I lived a depressed life for so long, and also a very anxious life, often wondering what would happen to me, often fearing what could take place. No wonder so many AA old-timers stay in the clubs and never venture out anywhere. The "fearful looking" of a sin conscience never leaves them, and they have nothing to remove it.