Bill W's True Mission -- Making AA the Higher Power

I found some revealing passages from a website called "StepStudy.org", a website which is sympathetic with Twelve Steps, Bill W., and similar programs of recovery. The clash of visions, and the transition of the program from the foundation principles in the "Big Book" to the "Twelve and Twelve" are quite revealing.

[Writing about the Twelve and Twelve] In order to address the needs of this population, Bill “widens the hoop” that members have to jump through in order to feel that they are actively working the AA program. He accomplishes this primarily by introducing the “method of substitution” in his Third Step instructions, and making major changes to the inventory process.

"Widening the hoop" is just another way of saying that Bill W. lowered the standards. If the program requires "rigorous honesty", then why reduce the expectations required of members in order to get involved and profit from the program in the first place?

Bill W. wanted to get as many people into his program as possible. More likely, it was almost impossible for "bottom hitting" drunks to stay in the program, since they were so lost in their drunkenness, that the Twelve Steps simply did not take.

Of course, this blog has expounded a number of times that AA does not work at all as a program of recovery. Not one bit.

In speaking of the trouble that many AA’s have with turning their will and life over to the care of God, Bill says this:

[Many people] begin to solve the problem by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make A.A. itself your “higher power”…many members…have crossed the threshold just this way…most of them began to talk of God. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Bill clearly expects that alcoholics who use AA as their higher power will eventually adopt a more spiritual outlook. However, Bill’s method of substitution also makes it possible for AA members to feel that they are honestly working the Steps without ever turning their lives over to the care of God.

Making people feel that they are working the Twelve Steps. What a bunch of folly. I thought that "alcohol was a subtle foe".

Could it be any clearer than this?

Bill W. was never interested in bringing people into a closer concious contact with God. If men and women get caught up in celebrating "the group" and abide by "the group conscience", then why should anyone go any further than that?

Bill was exclusively interested in getting people to identify with the new cult that he had established.

How anyone can look at a group of people who identify with each other because of a human failing is beyond ludicrous. If people are looking for a "Higher Power", why would they identify and answer to a bunch of people who are just like them, who have the same faults and failings as everyone else?
Let's refer once again to the New Covenant:

"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:" (Hebrews 8:10)

God places His laws in our hearts and minds, and through His Spirit living within us, He directs us in the way that He wants us to live. We do not need to run our lives by other people, not do we need toseek the advice, consent, or even validation of other people.

"And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. " (Hebrews 8: 11)

There are no steps, no groups, no extras required to know the Lord, and this knowledge is the most passionate, the most intimate that one can hope to receive.

Bill’s new instructions for the Fourth Step are another significant development. The Big Book outlines an inventory process that sees selfishness as the root of the alcoholic’s problems. In Bill’s new version, however, the root of the alcoholic’s problems is not selfishness, but rather instincts that are out of balance. (StepStudy.org)

More likely, Bill W. changed the format because no one wants to admit that he or she is selfish, but more than that, the "selfishness" which plagues people is based on condemnation, a knowledge of right and wrong which more often than not convicts them of being wrong. "Balancing" instincts takes the responsibility all the more away from the member, and puts it on "something else".

From the outset, it becomes clearer and clearer that Bill W. was never interested in people stepping out into a new life, but remaining tied down and identifying with AA as their new life, their new purpose, and just about everything else.

By the way, for anyone to identify with a "group conscience" just escapes any sense of reality or hope. Would members have to go out of their way calling different members just to get some wisdom about what they need to do in their lives?