From Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions:
“Did anyone ever hear of a nation, a church, a political party, even a benevolent association that had no membership rules? Did anyone ever hear of a society which couldn’t somehow discipline its members and enforce obedience to necessary rules and regulations? …Power to direct or govern is the essence of organization everywhere.
“Yet AA is an exception. It does not conform to this pattern. Neither its General Service Conference, its Foundation Board, nor the humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an AA member and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment. We’ve tried it lots of times, but utter failure is always the result.
“At this juncture, we can hear a churchman exclaim, ‘they are making disobedience a virtue!’ He is joined by the psychiatrist who says, ‘Defiant brats! They won’t grow up and conform to social usage!’ The man in the street says, ‘I don’t understand it. They must be nuts!’ But all these observers have overlooked something unique in AA. Unless each AA member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles.
“…So we of AA do obey spiritual principles, first because we must, and ultimately because we love the kind of life such obedience brings. Great suffering and great love are AA’s disciplinarian; we need no others.”
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COMMENTS
5 responses to “Drunk Ecclesiology: The 9th Tradition Of Alcoholics Anonymous”
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This is truly divine. But before we start feeling that good about our love of freedom from "rules" as a means of "control", how many of us would buy a nice house in a neighborhood with NO enforceable restrictive covenants? Hey, I grew up in one of those in the rural South. It ain't pretty, but a life that is open to the possibility of real love without control is never that pretty.
"It ain't pretty, but a life that is open to the possibility of real love without control is never that pretty."
Michael, what an insightful comment. I immediately thought of God creating the world, then creating mankind and placing us in a "neighborhood with no enforceable restrictive covenants"… all for love's sake… all for the possibility of real love. And it ain't pretty, but it IS beautiful.
Margaret E– Amen. Beautiful as an old rugged cross.
I have been in the proximity of AA for quite some time now. I believe AA represents all that is truly beautiful about true earthly God-pleasing righteousness. just as this implies, true righteousness is discipline + love.
and we don´t get to discipline others for them. it never works. The religious usually confuse disciplining others as a form of righteousness. they are so very wrong.