Higher Power
Listen: “Higher Power” by Cold Play
Over the last three years, I have been exposed to the “Higher Power” approach to spirituality through my involvement with the twelve step recovery world. I have also been in dialogue with hundreds of people who have gone through doubts, questions, and deconstructions of their faith. I grew up in a Baptist Church, felt called to be a pastor at the age of sixteen, and ended up starting a non-denominational church in Kansas City in 1990 that grew to several thousand people. I have been a Jesus/Bible guy my whole life.
In September of 2019, after my forty-year pastoral career had crashed and burned, I started connecting with the recovery community in Kansas City. I was feeling miserable and needed some loving, supportive community. I started attending several different therapy groups and twelve step groups, and after a few months, I met the CEO of the Welcome House, Jamie Boyle. Welcome House is a nine month residential treatment center located in the heart of Kansas City for men struggling with substance use disorders. Jamie asked me if I would teach a class called “Spirituality and Recovery.” I didn’t feel qualified. First of all, I had only been in the recovery community for a few short months. Secondly, I felt like my own faith had been shattered—I was full of doubts and questions about my own faith journey.
Jamie was quite certain that I was qualified and would do a good job. He wanted me to create a curriculum for the class, but he said I couldn’t use Jesus or the Bible as the basis for my class curriculum. I was like: “That’s my gig. That’s what I’ve done for forty years.” As we discussed this, I learned that Jamie was not anti-Jesus or anti-Bible. He was following the twelve step tradition of encouraging people to explore their own spiritual path or a God of their own understanding—A Higher Power.
Many people have misunderstood the reasoning behind this concept in the twelve step world which began with a few people in 1935. There are currently 123,00 Alcoholics Anonymous groups in 175 different countries, which does not include all the twelve step groups like Narcotics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous. According to the Big Book of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), about fifty percent of the people who come to AA are atheist or agnostic. Many of them have had extremely hurtful and even traumatic experiences with the church (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) or religion. If belief in Jesus, the Bible, or some set of religious dogma was required for admission, many alcoholics and addicts would reject the program and die from their substance use disorder.
The challenge for AA was: “How do we get a bunch of anti-authority, substance abusers to buy into a spiritual program?” I can imagine someone saying: “Let’s let them make up their own Higher Power, maybe that will work.” Make no mistake, the twelve step program is a spiritual program. All twelve steps are infused with spirituality, a Higher Power, and biblical wisdom.
So how do you help agnostics and atheists and people of every faith tradition (like Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) find a spiritual path to sobriety without the rules and dogma of organized religions? One of the founders of AA, Bill Wilson, tells about his journey in his own words. Bill writes:
… The word “God” still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn’t like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way
My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?
That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point. (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 12, “Bill’s Story.”)
Some of you might panic at this point. You might think: “How can somebody make up their own Higher Power? That’s not how it works!” Calm down. Take a deep breath. Drop your certainty, dogma, and judgment for a moment.
As a pastor for forty years (and still counting), I realized that people developed their belief systems (religious or otherwise) at a very young age in the homes in which they grew up. If the home life was strict, dysfunctional, or abusive, or if the home life was compassionate, loving, and permissive, either way, most people developed some belief systems about themselves, others, and God that were unhealthy. Almost everyone I have ever met has developed some dysfunctional belief systems along the way, myself included. And let’s be honest about it, religious systems have not always been helpful. Sometimes religious systems are dysfunctional and destructive. As a follower of Jesus, I have seen people do and say destructive things to other people in the name of Jesus, that are the opposite of Jesus. Religious systems suffer from the broken humanity of the people who built them. In rejecting religion, people are usually rejecting abuses they have experienced.
So what really happens when you give people permission to develop their own concept of God? I have heard the stories of hundreds of people going through this process, whether in the substance abuse community or the deconstruction community. They usually discard concepts of a mean, critical, punishing God—a God who behaves like an unpredictable, drunken, abusive father. It usually gives them permission to begin to relate to “something greater than themselves that is loving and caring.” It gives people the freedom to reimagine the Sacred Mystery of the Universe as something beautiful, creative, loving, forgiving, and caring. I haven’t come across someone yet who has reimagined a crueler, more pathological version of God.
Here’s a simple exercise. Sit down with a journal and write out your thoughts on the following questions. Don’t overthink it by being critical or judgmental of your own thoughts.
What distorted/dysfunctional concepts of God did you grow up with? List ten.
If there is a God or Universal Spirit, what would you want he/she/it to be like? List ten characteristics.
What’s hindering you from discarding dysfunctional concepts of God?
How would your spiritual life change if you embraced a new concept of God?
Many times, this simple approach to discarding unhealthy concepts of God, and reimagining a loving, caring God, helps people begin a new pathway to spirituality. In fact, as I think about it, there was a creative Rabbi in 1st Century Palestine who had a biting critique of the religious systems of his day and reimagined a radically grace-based concept of God. Maybe that’s why I still try to walk close enough to be covered in the dust of my Rabbi.
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2022
