Where I Find Myself

People in AA really do say all the cliché things I thought they said. I regularly hear ‘Hi, I am so and so and I’m an alcoholic.’ Awesome. And kind of funny. I had to kind of stifle a laugh when I first heard it and I regularly laugh in meetings, but then again I really, really LOVE to laugh about things that are at their core, quite serious. It is not that I don’t care, or am never serious myself…but I do find comfort in knowing there is nothing so ultimately serious that God hasn’t got it filed inside of His MyDocuments folder (btw I am convinced God uses a Mac but runs Windows on it like I do…kind of like he is neither a liberal or a conservative but something other entirely). That just made me think of an idea for a different post.


But anyway, there is something really fun, enjoyable and empowering about finding ‘yourself’ at the bottom of the proverbial barrel. At a crossroads, hitting the wall, rock bottom, up against it…all those kinds of things. Well, maybe fun and enjoyable aren’t the words to use in the middle of the experience, but there is something wonderful and freeing about it. And it is really cool to find that the barrel is full of (not monkeys) but lots of people…in fact I would describe it as where humanity resides.

And that is the greatest thing that I keep getting hit over the head with in AA…the human condition. And in AA there is a familiar formula for dealing with the problems of the human condition. Admit you are powerless and that you need God to save you. It sounded vaguely familiar to me when I heard it. It is something I keep coming back to, over and over again as I contemplate the things concerning AA and also as I contemplate the things concerning my faith…my beliefs about humanity…my beliefs about Jesus. I do a lot of things, I have read a lot of books, I have in some ways seemingly made a lot of progress…but if I want to know myself, if I want to be free, if I want to see things the way they really are, if I want Jesus…I have to be in the bottom of the barrel where God meets the people who need him.

An excerpt from Failure – The Back Door to Success by Erwin W. LutzerAn excerpt from Failure