A.A.’s Experiment of Faith and Cofounder
Sam Shoemaker
Dick B.
© 2010 Anonymous. All rights reserved
The Quandary of Faith
I’m not one who talks much about “faith” because the word
comes from a Greek root that can be defined either as “faith” or “belief.” And
I prefer the position that A.A.’s Dr. Bob took and required of all the early
AAs he helped. It really came from Hebrews 11:6
But without faith, it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God must
believe that he is and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
As was his manner, Dr. Bob made it real simple. It was a “Do
you or don’t you” approach. And it is spelled out in the account on page 144 of
DR. Bob and the Good Oldtimers (NY:
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980). Dr. Bob visited Clarence
Snyder on the last day of Clarence’s hospitalization. Dr. Bob asked Clarence
flat out: “Do you believe in God, young fella? Not a god, God?” Clarence
waffled and said he “guessed so.” But Dr. Bob would have none of that. He said:
“Either you do or you don’t.” And when Clarence said, “I do;” Bob said “Now we
are getting some place.” And they prayed together. Clarence was healed!
Bill Wilson and Sam Shoemaker preferred the open door
approach. Both of them wrote that “God either is, or He isn’t.” And they
suggested there was a choice. But the choice was a dire one. Believe and be
victorious. Or don’t believe and die! And Shoemaker, as was his manner,
suggested an experiment of faith. In effect, Shoemaker said that if you obeyed
God’s will, you’d realize from the results that it was the genuine thing.
Shoemaker fudged a bit in his reliance on John 7:17. Here is what that verse said:
If any man will do his will, he
shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I [Jesus} speak of myself.
Oxford Group author A. J. Russell
said that John 7:17 was Sam’s favorite verse. And Sam certainly quoted it
innumerable times. But the verse, even as Shoemaker had learned it and used it,
came from Shoemaker’s thought: “Do and know.” This idea became Shoemaker’s
experiment of faith—a subject about which Shoemaker wrote a book. Shoemaker
thought that if you did God’s will, the willed result would occur, and you
would know. The concept gave rise to Shoemaker’s talk of “willingness” and to
the incorporation of that idea in A.A.’s Steps 2, 6, and 8: Be willing to
act—to believe, to ask, and to make amends—and, when you do, you’ll realize its
effectiveness. Presumably because you were acting in accord with God’s will.
The problem is that Jesus wasn’t
talking about taking 12 Steps. There weren’t any. He was rejecting the claims
of others that Jesus wasn’t speaking of his own ideas. Jesus said, in John
7:16: “My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me.” Centuries later,
religious writers began to speak of “obedience as the organ of spiritual
knowledge.”
If you take all that complicated
reasoning, you may conclude, as did Bill Wilson, that it applies to taking
A.A.’s steps and then finding out they work. And Bill was building on Shoemaker’s
other idea that if you “surrender as much of yourself as you understand to as
much of God as you understand,” you’ll come to know God. “Act as if” said
Shoemaker, and then you’ll find and know.
The Choice is Ours
We can go along with Dr. Bob. We can say, “Yes,” I do
believe in God. Then come to Him by accepting Jesus as Lord, obeying His will,
and growing in understanding. Or we can go along with Shoemaker and his pupil
Bill Wilson and go the “come to believe” route which is embodied in the Twelve
Steps and begins with Step Two—as it was originally worded—“Came to believe
that God could restore us to sanity.”
I didn’t “come to believe.” I believed. I didn’t know what
sanity meant. But I did know what 2 Timothy 1: 7 said:
For God hath not given us the spirit
of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind.
As directed in Romans 12:2, I renewed my mind with that
verse. I kept saying it and believing it.
I didn’t blame God for my fears
or my excessive drinking and disasters. I just believed in God. I just believed
that God was not the author of those troubles. I believed that God was a God of
power and of love. And I believed that whatever crazy thinking and behavior had
led me to hopeless alcoholism, God could take care of that too. Call it restoring
me to a sound mind. Even Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that God has
restored us to sanity. And He did! There was no quandary of faith. There
was proof that believing God produces
results.
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