This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. (AA, pg 84)
While AA teaches us to "watch out for" defects of character, as if we are supposed to identify with them.
The Bible teaches quite differently:
"1If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3: 1-4)
Our feelings, our thoughts, should not be guided by what we feel or see or experience on earth, but rather what we are in heaven. We are in Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father, in eternal glory and honor with Christ.
Then Paul writes about exchanging one identity for another:
"5Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:7In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them." (Colossians 3: 5-6)
This passage is telling and wonderful all at once. In our lives, we will feel upset, anger, frustration, lack, and illicit desire within us. Whereas AA and pop psychology would suggest that we need to try harder to remove these "defects", the Bible informs us that those manifested feelings and thoughts are not us at all, but part and parcel of our "old man" in our body and soul, even though we have been born again through the Spirit. Verse seven clearly underlines that we who are in the Body of Christ no longer belong to that former life:
"8But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. 9Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; 10And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: 11Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." (Colossians 3: 8-11)
"Put off" implies "do not identify with", for we are called instead to set our eyes on Jesus Christ our life, who lives in us (Galatians 2: 20-21) by His grace (1 Corinthians 15: 10).
Our new man is Christ, and the "renewal" takes place as we renew our minds to the Truth of who we are in Christ (Romans 12: 2). As we behold Christ, He who has been from the Beginning (1 John 2: 12-14), we are transformed from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3: 18)
When "these things crop up", we do not ask God to remove them from us, since they are not "us" anymore. Instead, we are called to keep believing on Him whom He hath sent (John 6:29), Jesus Christ, who is our Way, our Truth, and our Life (John 14: 6)
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