Choose Your Own Deception of God

We cannot conceive of God. Who He is, all that He has, and all that He has done and is committed to do for us: the greatness of God cannot be conceived.

David in the Psalms could not express it any better, in that he admits that he can barely express it:

"

1{To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.} O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.

2Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

3Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

4For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

5Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." (Psalms 139: 1-6)

 

This is our God, people! Far greater than any "higher power" which a man or woman can dream up in an AA meeting!

 

Still, members in AA are instructed to choose their own "conception of God" (AA. pg. 12), as if any idea of a "Higher Power" will solve all the problems, granting men and women a power that will enable them to overcome their addiction to alcohol (or any other perverse behavior).

However, to the degree that we rely on our own conception of things, to the extent that we work any "man-made" program, to that extent we inevitably draw on our own experience, to that extent we end up worshipping ourselves, falling in line with a conception of God which reflects our prior experiences and understandings of authority and truth.

There is one truth which sets free, and that Truth is Jesus Christ:

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14: 6)

This Truth, the Spirit of the Lord, brings us true liberty:

"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (2 Corinthians 3: 17)

Man does not need a "conception of God", but rather he needs life.

Man lost this life in God when Adam disobeyed:

"17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2: 17)

and then

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 7And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." (Genesis 3: 6-7)

The moment that man stopped looking at God as his life and truth and way, he starts to look at himself and make himself better.

In the same way, when a man choose his own conception of God, he will inevitably be deceived into looking at himself, and try to fix himself.

And that is precisely what AA does, just like any other religious system in the world. Satan's great deception, that man can be god, or that he can choose his god, turns him into a self-obsessed slave, a broken, dead man trying to make himself perfect, when God had already made us perfect, in His image.

There is only one God, and if we do not glorify Him as God, we will inevitably degenerate into perverse idolatry:

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." (Romans 1: 21-23)

AA teaches people to choose their own deception, and whatever "God" of their choosing still must submit to the man made Twelve Steps, which actually diminish whatever "Higher Power" that we have conceived of.