Sleeping Dogs Be Damned!


This is what happens when you don't stay on top of the responses people have to your blogs.
The below was a "RESPONSE" to a blog I wrote titled "REINVENTING THE WHEEL OF RECOVERY: Knowing When To Leave Well Enough Alone." I wrote it April 22, 2007.

To summarize what I said, I was speaking out against the surge in Christian "12-step" recovery based groups. I was particularly critical of Rick Warren and "Celebrate Recovery's" leader John Baker both of whom have stated their uncomfortability with the supposed "vagueness" of the third step, because it has the audacity to say "... as we understood Him" when describing God.

At no time did I mention coffee pots, except to say that those who worship them "are no measure of the true success of any 12-step program, let alone the grand daddy of them all." I have fought these types of arguments with other well-meaning, sadly misinformed, Christian revisionists who keep making the mistake that just because the nation's founding fathers were Christian that means that the United States is a "Christian" nation.

Yes, Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson were Christian; yes, they were members of the Oxford group, but, as they say in New York, that and a subway token will get you a ride on the 7th Avenue Express. There are thousands of Jews and Muslims in Alcoholics Anonymous. They have a right to get sober without being beaten up by the zealots who are more concerned with their narrow arguments than sobriety. The simple and undeniable truth is that A.A. evolved over the years to allow for peoples of all walks of life to join its ranks. It is just as spiritual now as it was 70 years ago. The Oxford Group? It has gone the way of all dinosaurs: extinction. As for the "Celebrate Recovery" program that the Vineyard and other well-meaning churches hosted; it proved to be a failure. As a fellow addict stated at one of the meetings I attended, recovery is about saving your ass, church is for saving your soul. I couldn't agree more!

As I properly concluded back in April 2007, let's keep it simple!


But I digress. Read the "response" for yourself. Any misspellings have been left in tact as they were originally written. As Joe Biden is fond of saying, "You have a right to your opinion, you don't have a right to the facts."



Anonymous said...
God and Alcoholism: Emerging Awareness of God’s Role in Overcoming AddictionsHow Are the Creator and His Son Faring These Days?Dick B.© 2007 by Anonymous. All rights reservedAre Light Bulbs Really Healing Alcoholics and Addicts Today?Shortly after I got sober 21 years ago, I began hearing in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings the words “higher power.” Hearing them as if the speakers were referring to Almighty God. And, in the Big Book, Fourth Edition, for example, Bill Wilson actually did continue to refer to Almighty God when he twice and only twice used the expression “higher power.” You will see that when you read pages 43, 45, 46, and 100 of Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed. You can also count the number of times Bill specifically referred to Almighty God with a capital “G.” There were over 400 references to “God” including capitalized pronouns and Biblical references like Creater, Maker, Father, Spirit, etc. In Bill’s early writings, the “higher power” words referring to the Creator were undiluted with “choose your own conception” (not in the original manuscripts). Undiluted with “God as we understood Him” (which appears to have come from the many Oxford Group and Anne Smith references to “as much of God as you know” and Shoemaker’s “God as you understand Him”).So I relaxed for a time in the belief that Wilson had somehow inserted the words higher power in the Big Book only to make his “powerless” language square with his thesis about “finding” the “Power”—which, said Wilson, was God. That “Power” reference had sometimes been used in the Oxford Group when referring to God. And I hadn’t yet even read Pass It On which made clear on page 198, that the original Step Two had plainly said “Came to believe that God could restore us to sanity” Pass It On (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980). But very shortly after I entered A.A., I was soon to hear in meeting after meeting, however, that your higher power could be a rock, a tree, a chair, the Big Dipper, “Good Orderly Direction,” “Group Of Drunks,” a “light bulb,” “Ralph,” or your “A.A. group.” Even at that point, I hadn’t yet read Bill Wilson’s turnabout in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1953). There, on page 27, Bill wrote: “You can, if you wish, make A.A. itself your ‘higher power’.” Bill also wrote in that later book, on pages 36 and 39, about turning “my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody.” And it appears that the fans soon were racing to the track and began betting on radiators, trees, chairs, and light bulbs for victory—even on “Gertrude” as one eminent historian called “her” in one of his earliest writings.I was yet to read Clarence Snyder’s great My Higher Power the Light Bulb. For it was then that this pioneer, named Clarence S., had the courage to step forward and show how ridiculous and out of tune with both pioneer A.A. and Twelve Step A.A. such nonsense was. The nonsense bothered me as it apparently had bothered the venerable Clarence. The ridiculous descriptions of some undefined “higher power” certainly were contrary to my religious convictions, to the Bible, and to any sane talk I had ever listened to before I came to A.A. Then, I heard the myth that Jim B. had authored “God as we understood Him” to mollify the early atheists. That was before I found out that Jim B. was neither sober nor present when the phrase was adopted. It was also before I researched our Co-Founder Sam Shoemaker’s writings where he had written as early as 1927 that one could “surrender as much of himself as he understands to as much of God as he understands.” Shoemaker was most assuredly talking about Almighty God. That was before I found out that Bill had used the expression in the Big Book describing his surrender to his Creator “as I then understood Him.” Ebby had suggested that very phraseology to Bill long before Jim B. ever thought of getting sober. Bill so stated in his 1945 lecture to the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies.Now where in the world did all the novel, present-day, A.A. General Services manufactured literary ideas come from? Their stuff began declaring that you can believe in “something,” “somebody,” or “nothing at all?” I couldn’t understand such statements in light of the Big Book’s status as the basic text and its more than 400 specific references to the Creator. It seemed obvious to me that nobody believed “something” could heal, or that “somebody” could heal, or that “nothing at all” could heal – let alone a light bulb or a chair. But that was before our first national archivist Nell Wing (Bill Wilson’s long-time secretary and A.A.’s first archivist at its World Services headquarters) told me on the telephone: “Dick, it is wrong to keep writing only about ‘God.’ and the ‘Bible.’” “I am a Buddhist,” she told me, “and your higher power can be a chair if you want it to be.” Nell Wing helped me immensely in digging out some of our early history resources. But I just couldn’t buy her “chair” absurdity. But that was before I began finding such trivia in all kinds of A.A. literature and in recovery writings. See Dick B., God and Alcoholism (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2002), pp. 77-128. And all this cascading torrent of mud was overwhelming me before I realized accurate facts about some of the key early A.A. history could restore sanity to the wandering masses of higher power seekers. Appropriately, I discovered at one of my Wilson House seminars, from Ozzie Lepper, the Manager, that Bill Wilson had shifted from his statement that the “Lord has cured me” on page 191 of the Big Book to the Peabody idea that “we are not cured of alcoholism” on page 85. At that time, I was studying the Third Edition of the Big Book. But the pagination has not changed. More research disclosed that Dr. Bob and A.A. Number Three had used the same “cure” language in company with references to our “Heavenly Father” and God (Third Edition, pp. 180-181, 191). Then I learned at one of the Clarence Snyder spiritual retreats for AAs and their families that, in the Third Edition, Bill had been addressed by a newcomer in Cleveland, who wrote in his personal story: “I wanted to know what this was that worked so many wonders, and hanging over the mantel was a picture of Gethsemane [showing Jesus standing in the Garden] and Bill pointed to it and said, ‘There it is’ . . . “ (Third Edition, pp. 216-217).Now let’s put this all together.In the early program which began in 1935 in Akron, AAs were required to believe in God. See DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980), p. 144. They were required to come to Him through His son Jesus Christ. See Dick B. A New Way In: Reaching the Heart of a Child of God in Recovery With His Own Powerful Historical Roots (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc, 2006) p. 11. This fact was specifically verified by four A.A. old timers—Ed Andy, J. D. Holmes, Clarence Snyder, and Larry Bauer. And they “surrendered” to Christ for that very purpose. See Three Clarence Snyder Sponsee-Oldtimers and Their Wives. Our A.A. Legacy to the Faith Community: A Twelve-Step Guide for Those Who Want to Believe. Comp. and Edited by Dick B. (Winter Park, FL: Came to Believe Publications, 2005), pp. 27-28. Moreover, it was Nell Wing who wrote me a long letter pointing to the importance of “surrenders.” She listed every one of the pages in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers which used the word or words “surrender” and “surrenders.” Yet, when I sent all the manufactured and contradictory “higher power” descriptions to a distinguished psychology professor in New Mexico who has written extensively on “spirituality,” the eminent scholar said he had never ever heard of any “light bulb” or “something” language in A.A. It was “absurd,” he intimated. It seemed quite clear to me that he was neither familiar with the early surrenders to Jesus Christ nor with how far fellowship members had strayed into the higher power delusions.Now what was A.A. about then—1935 to the Spring of 1939? What is it about now?Was it Christian in the beginning? Yes.Is it Christian now? No. Did early AAs believe their Creator, their “Maker,” “Almighty God,” their “loving God” could and did cure them. Yes. Richard K. has written a voluminous study of the hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles during A.A.’s earliest decade where AAs specifically stated (and that includes Bill W., Dr. Bob, and A.A. Number Three) that they had been cured by the power of God. See Dick B. When Early AAs Were Cured and Why. 3rd ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2006), pp. 111-113.To say this in an A.A. meeting today is often apt to evoke a “fire in the hole” cry where the herald of the good news is actually thrown out of the meeting, or told that he is wrong because A.A. is “not religious, but spiritual,” or intimidated into sulking silence. I just received an email at the time of this writing where a Florida AA railed against the very mention of “G_D,” as he put it in the phraseology of a later Hebrew tradition. Recently, I was invited to present a history talk at the Hawaii A.A. Conference. Later, the person who issued the invitation passed along information from someone in authority who told him that I was “notorious” and would not be allowed to speak.I leave it to the reader to ask if he or she, as an A.A. or a 12 Step Fellowship member: (1) really believes or can ever come to believe that he can’t be healed and can’t be cured; (2) that there is no cure for alcoholism, and (3) that he may simply have his alcoholism “arrested,” as a matter of choice and wily-nily select as his helper some un-named higher power which is “not-god,” but is a light bulb, or just a something or somebody, or his group. Unfortunately, many of our number have figuratively been forced to those conclusions. A.A.’s “conference approved literature,” official letterheads on A.A. stationary from headquarters, and pronouncements by its “trusted servants” abound in these contentions. In a word, A.A. (avowedly claiming that it consists of groups of autonomous fellowships) has been changed. Worse, many members have been held captive to nonsense ideas that bear no resemblance to those of the original program, those of A.A. founders, or even those set forth in their basic text, Alcoholics Anonymous.Have the beliefs of most of our members changed?I don’t know because the “bleeding deacons” (as Bill Wilson called them) are so vociferous in their meeting language and so intimidating, that almost all of the members at our meetings simply never comment and really never protest. Further, I know of no study of what AAs individually or as a group actually believe about God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, or religion. I do know that I receive hundreds of emails from AAs, alcoholics, and addicts every single week. It is very clear that they are believers, that they are distressed about the anti-God trend, and welcome information on the history of the early Christian Fellowship. But the “control” of A.A. has passed from a small group of believing, practicing Christians of the first decade to self-selected, self-revolving souls who seem intent on expanding secularism, universalism, and the literature sales upon which their future and those of their successors are assuredly dependent. Are Christians still members? Yes.Are there still many A.A. Christians in A.A.? Of course—in very large numbers. Can Christians in A.A. freely pursue their beliefs and denominational activities? Yes. Of course they can, and do.Can they expect miraculous cures just as their founders did? Yes. But believing is required.Do “conference approved” pieces of literature, A.A. “Traditions” (that are merely suggestions for unity), or letterheads purporting to bear the A.A. imprimatur supersede freedom of sharing, the facts of history, the truth of the Bible, and the power of God?The answer, of course, is NO.Dr. Bob often referred to Jesus as the “Master.” Presented with some trick and fallacious questions, Jesus (Lord, Master, and Christ) provided an answer to the tricksters who were propounding misleading ideas: “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.” (Matthew 22:29). Informed Christians (within A.A., within Twelve Step Fellowships, and within treatment centers and programs) can believe in God, act in accordance with His will, and expect to receive what God promises. It is true that idolatrous thinking, actions, and witnessing are more and more often superseding faith in our Creator. And perhaps the most persuasive answer to this will be found in the Bible throughout the whole of Psalm 115. Psalm 115 presents some wry comments about gods which have no hands to touch, no mouth to speak, no ears to hear, no eyes to see, no legs to walk etc. Would you, as a reader, want to address a higher power that can’t see, hear, speak, or walk? Rhetorically sound believing and action, or not, certainly many Americans, and perhaps much of the world, are rapidly moving toward secularism, universalism, rejection of the Bible, and criticism of religion. But there are plenty of facts that show there is an equal and opposite direction gaining much momentum.Cheer Up. Help Is on the Way, Albeit SlowlyRather than try to prove how dismal it all is—which it isn’t; rather than try to discard A.A. and other 12 Step Fellowships—which I wouldn’t; rather than flee to scholars, scientist, grant recipients, critics wearing the cloth, or treatment gobble-de-gook (none of which offer any belief system of help), let’s take at what students of statistics are beginning to discover and report. With and without our history, the afflicted are awakening to the statistics and even to what God can do for them. Many begin with 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 (King James Version).Does that remind you of the Big Book expression you hear at almost every A.A. meeting?“That God could and would if He were sought” (Big Book, 4th ed., p. 60).Or the original wording of that phrase, as Bill Wilson earlier had drafted it?“That God can and will [relieve your alcoholism]. If you are not convinced on these vital issues, you ought to re-read the book to this point or else throw it away” (Alcoholics Anonymous [Made from a copy of the Original Manuscript, “Where It All Started 1935, Dr. Bob’s Home, 855 Ardmore Ave. Akron, Ohio, and inscribed to me by Ray G., Archivist at Dr. Bob’s Home] p. 27).What Are Statistical Researchers Reporting, Regardless of How They Characterize It?Religiosity or God? Scholars and scientists may not yet be ready for God. They spend billions of government and grant funds writing about the new pills that will suppress alcoholic urges, about proposed medical solutions for acute and delayed withdrawal, about needle trades, about imprisonment, about drug courts, about behavioral therapy that will change people and their environments, about nutritional imbalance that needs to be rectified, about psychiatric and psychological counseling addressing the illness and many other issues, about vitamin supplements that offer great assistance, and about a wide variety of other methods for dealing with the “at risk” people, D.U.I. offenders, prevention, treatment, and relapse. Then there are First Amendment, ACLU, and separation of church and state activists. Finally, there are the fears of losing customers, losing subsidies, failing to receive grants, losing newcomers, and losing the scientific method. Put these together, and God is seldom if ever even mentioned. If He is, the afflicted are nonetheless urged to pray to or ask help from someone or something they don’t even know. In fact, who knows what’s in a chair, a tree, or a light bulb that can offer help to a down and out alcoholic or addict. Better a Vitamin B shot, than some chair.Is there any good news? Let me refer you to a journal on Social Problems published by the University of California as the Official Journal of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, to which I belong. Here are some snippets that are informative and seem to indicate that, while writers don’t seem to want to refer to “God,” and prefer to speak of “religiosity,” they nonetheless report success in the latter case but show just how far it is from their language to Biblical language involving the Creator. The vice of such a warped approach can be found over and over in the pages of a volume by academics, edited by Barbara S. McCrady and William R. Miller. Research on Alcoholics Anonymous: Opportunities and Alternatives (New Brunswick, NJ: Publications Division, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1993). Not only is the volume surfeited with weird references to higher powers and spirituality, its crowning gem of absurdity is the following statement by Richard L. Gorusch:Hence, psychologically as well as theologically the “Christianity” of alcoholics is not the Christianity of most other American Christians. Alcoholics have a non-Christian view of God. Alcoholics have a non-Christian view of God (pp. 310-311).If this view by Gorusch is embraced by his colleagues and editors, it’s a sad day for the AAs who are so labeled. It’s not only said. It’s monstrous, erroneous, stupid, and steeped in ignorance and undocumented generalizations.Let’s have a go at some seemingly better news from the Society for the Study of Social Problems:“In sum, although the findings presented here certainly have not resolved the debate as to whether religiosity “deters” delinquency, we have rigorously investigated a number of hypotheses raised by previous research and demonstrated empirically that religiosity negatively correlates with one important form of delinquency—substance abuse—at the individual level, and in some instances at the individual and contextual levels concurrently. Overall, the results of our study suggest that religiosity is an important, albeit often ignored, deterrent or protective factor against substance abuse.” John M. Wallace, Jr., Ryoko Yamaguchi, Jerald G. Bachman, Patrick M. O’Malley, John E. Schulenberg, Lloyd D. Johnston, 2007. “Religiosity and Adolescent Substance Use: The Role of Individual and Contextual Influences.” Social Problems, Vol. 54, Issue 2, pp. 308-327.Can we yet conclude from this “religiosity” stuff that: “The Creator Rules?” Probably not if we are talking about academic scientists (and historians and professional recovery workers and uninformed clergy). Here may be why:“Since academic scientists appear to be much less religious than the American population as a whole, there are two possibilities for increasing discussion about religion and science between scientists and the American public with the goal of advancing science. . . . While the general American public may indeed have a less than desirable understanding of science, our findings reveal that academic scientists may have much less experience with religion than many outside the academy.” Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher P. Scheitle. “Religion among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, Demographics.” Social Problems, Vol 54, Issue 2, pp. 289-307. Can we someday or soon find “science” and “academia” asking what God can do for us that neither they, nor any human power, nor we ourselves can do? Can we ever expect to hear them talking about Yahweh and the Bible rather than some concocted “religiosity?”What is “religiosity” to you, to me, to the drunk in the streets? I’m not even looking at the dictionary for an answer, but maybe it means something to the scientists. However, if they finally begin measuring the recovery and cure successes of those who believe in God, we’ll have something. Meanwhile, we might be making progress.But take a look at the following remarks by Harvard Psychiatry Professor George E. Vaillant, who was also elevated to Chair of the A.A. Trustees. The following comments are those of George E. Vaillant. “Alcoholics Anonymous: cult or cure?” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2005; 39:431-436:“If I am to suggest that a program based upon dependence on a “Higher Power” is more like penicillin than it is like the Moonies’ Unification Church, I must respect the rules of experimental medicine; I must first elucidate the mechanism of action of A.A.; I must next offer empirical evidence that AA works better than a placebo; and finally, I must seriously discuss the side-effects of A.A. (p. 431).“The fourth common feature in recovery from addiction, the discovery or rediscovery of spirituality, is the most controversial. Inspirational, altruistic group membership and belief in a power greater than ‘me’ seems important to recovery from addiction. . . . there is a critical difference between a healing connection in spiritual communities and with a hierarchical religious leader or psychotherapist. In medicine and authoritarian religion, the wise powerful doctor or priest asks the sick, sinful or unenlightened patients to wallow in dependency and relive their past angers and losses. . . . spirituality affects our behavior not through sweet reason but by its appeal to emotion . . . . spirituality, like human attachment—both mediated by limbic circuitry and the temporal lobe—may be a worthy substitute for drugs. In other words, spirituality and religion provide an alternative to the high produced by drugs. Religion, Marx’s ‘opiate of the people’ and Jung’s spiritus, may be an indirect way that we have of stimulating our limbic brain and its endorphins (pp. 432-433).With science and psychiatry treating us to this jabber about a “Higher Power,” “altruism,” “limbic circuitry and the temporal lobe,” “spiritus,” and “endorphins,” you might legitimately ask what the suffering drunk would say to all this indoctrination, and how Yahweh our Creator might regard it in light of His declaration: “I am Yahweh that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:17). Is science focusing on some vague, undefined, and unmeasured Religiosity, or on the power of Yahweh, our Creator who heals all our diseases (Psalm 103)?Religiomania or God? William James has often been quoted for his statement that: “the only cure for ‘dipsomania’ is ‘religiomania.’” See Bill Pittman. AA The Way It Began. (Seattle: Glen Abbey Books, 1988), p. 72. Interestingly, the few who have really dived into William James’ ponderous books looking for “cure” have discovered that James gathered together an immense amount of evidence that drunkenness has been cured by conversion, particularly as conversion was seen in the rescue missions. And there followed Bill Wilson’s own conversion and subsequent cure resulting from his decision for Christ at Calvary Rescue Mission and his call to the Great Physician for help at Towns Hospital a few days later. Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2007).What is “religiomania” to you? Perhaps it’s another God-dodge. But at least the “Father of American Psychology” chose to give credence to the power of prayer when he studied conversions. His conclusions were, unfortunately, marred by his frequent mention of weird “higher powers.”In discussing his Harvard predecessor William James, as well as the famous Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, Dr. George Vaillant might deserve some credit for attempting accuracy as to divine healing. For in so doing, he may unknowingly have let the healing capability of the Creator out of the bag, Dr. Vaillant wrote:In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James first articulated the close relationship between religious conversion and recovery from intractable alcoholism. As Carl Jung directed the cofounder of AA, Bill Wilson: “Spiritus contra spiritu.” (Vaillant, pp. 432—433).Not surprisingly, Vaillant made a spelling error in the Latin phrase Dr. Carl Jung used in his letter of explanation to Bill Wilson. To set the Vaillant statements in proper context, let’s look at what William James and Carl Jung actually stated and contended.James was hardly a defender of the efficacy of conversion to Christ as a cure for alcoholism although he cites many reports where such conversion experiences occurred and where there was triumph over alcoholism. But James chose to select his own definition of conversion and put it in psychological language which was swallowed and quoted by Rev. Sam Shoemaker [S. M. Shoemaker, Jr. Realizing Religion (NY: Association Press, 1929), p. 22] and even by Dr. Bob’s wife, Anne Ripley Smith [Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal, 1933-1939, 3rd ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1998), p. 103]. Professor William James wrote:To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy, becomes unified, and consciously right, superior, and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities. This is at least what conversion signifies in general terms, whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to bring such a moral change about. William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience (NY: Vintage Books/The Library of America, 1990), p, 177. Professor James cited many cases where there was a cure, particularly of alcoholism, by conversion [Varieties, pp. 187-190, 199-200, 204-207, 218-226, 229-238, 247-248, 348, 428-437; Mel B. New Wine: The Spiritual Roots of the Twelve Step Miracle (Hazelden, 1991), pp. 52-56]. But in his zeal to look at all varieties, Professor James’ own Varieties suggests that the good professor tried, on the one hand, to cram deliverance from evil into some ill-defined, ubiquitous, quasi-religious “god-box” while, at the same time, trying to explain away most reported religious, Christian conversion experiences by reference to saintliness, a divided self, mysticism, higher powers, surrender, healthy-mindedness, and a host of strange, and pseudo deities found in non-Christian, non-conversion belief systems. As far as A.A.’s own historical roots are concerned, William James probably did spawn the idea that conversion and cure are related; but he linked the conversion to psychological changes, rather transformations by the grace of God. He also linked rebirth through the spirit of God (John 3:1-8), to a host of psychological mental changes that involved and required no Divine Aid or “Divine Intervention” or power at all. Now for Dr. Carl Jung.Jung drew on the William James findings that alcoholism could be cured by conversion. Also upon Jung’s own research on such healings through the ages. Compare Dick B. When Early AAs Were Cured and Why, pp. 1-8, 143-159. A few researchers have recently tried to claim that Carl Jung never met with his patient Rowland Hazard nor told Rowland that cure for his “mind of a chronic alcoholic” was possible by conversion. They’ve purported to prove that the whole Jung story about A.A.’s beginnings is bogus. But, to believe that, one would have to prove that Carl Jung, Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thacher (Wilson’s friend), Bill Wilson, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, and an endless chain of accounts of the details are themselves bogus. Fortunately, this unlikely prospect was not required. For more recent careful research has brought the whole Jung/Hazard story into its apparent light and actuality. The Jung/Hazard affair in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s should be studied in light of a letter Jung sent to Bill Wilson and dated January 30, 1961. Responding to Wilson’s earlier letter about Jung and Rowland Hazard, Dr. Jung wrote:[Rowland’s] craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God. . . . I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted by real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society, cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil. . . . You see alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum (New Wine, pp. 11-13).I don’t know how well Jung knew his Latin, but it seems a safe bet that he knew it better than Vaillant. For Vaillant improperly quoted Jung’s word as “spiritu” instead of “spiritum.”Moreover, I don’t know for sure the point Jung was trying to make with his Latin phrase. Many have guessed, and I will not. Spiritus in Latin is a fourth declension noun in the nominative case masculine. Jung specifically says it refers to alcohol (spirit); and so it may. Jung hints that alcohol can be a most depraving poison and be employed as an instrument under the power of the Devil. Contra in Latin means “against” or “in opposition to” Spiritum in Latin is a fourth declension noun in the accusative case masculine. This word has another meaning, says Jung. He claims it means “the highest religious experience” which can protect an ordinary man “by an action from above.” This spiritum also may be translated in English as “spirit” (perhaps in this context referring to the power of God as protective “action from above”).The actual phrase, according to Jung’s order of usage, seems to say spirit (alcohol) against spirit (which may refer to God as “spirit.” See John 4:8NJB: “God is spirit”). Further speculation is not profitable. But there is a somewhat parallel phraseology which can be found in a Roman Catholic Bible that provides both the English and its Latin source as the translators saw the Latin. The verse is Romans 5:17: “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. For these are contrary one to another: so that you do not the things that you would”: (Caro enim concupiset adversus spiritum spiritus autem adversus carnem haec enim invicem adversantur ut non quaecumque fultis il faciatis). And now you know why lawyers and even the Church finally gave up on the Latin I studied for three years in high school in preparation for law school. The lawyers and clergy finally opted for speaking and writing in English even the other lawyers, clergymen, and parishioners could understand.What did Jung mean? As I said, I do not know. But it seems fair to infer that drunkenness spawned temptation and temptation by the power of the Devil is against the healing power of God, and that the ordinary man cannot resist the Devil’s power except by protective action from above (power from on high, the power of God—as Jung understood Him!)For Jung had said the ordinary man “not protected by an action from above” cannot resist the power of the Devil. The favorite A.A. Book of James might be useful in sorting out the power battle outcome: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). It’s the Devil and his poisonous alcohol excesses against God and God’s power to overcome. {“Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world”) Perhaps “Contra” can be likened to the “versus” in contests: Gore versus Bush. Joe Louis versus Max Baer. It’s not “may the best man win.” It’s with God on your side, who can be against you. Just put on the whole armor of God. Stand. Resist. And the Devil will lose. The Devil will flee from you. Look at some early A.A. Bible favorites: Temptation does not come from God, but when man is drawn away of his own lust and enticed, lust, when conceived, brings sin, and sin, when it is finished, death (James 1:13-15); If any of you lack wisdom, ask of God (James 1:5); Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7); “if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought. But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God (Acts; 5:38-39); put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (Ephesians 6:12).Sam Shoemaker referred to this battle in his title By the Power of God.Now were either William James or Carl Jung or George Vaillant that much involved in discussing the real spiritual battle? I have my doubts, but they proposed the “spiritual” and “religious” ideas. I didn’t. And I can’t say what, as scientists, they might have been thinking. For sure, there is little to show that they were Bible students. But you might note Bill Wilson’s Big Book statement that his readers are dealing with alcohol--“cunning, baffling, powerful.” “Without help it is too much for us.” Wilson added emphatically: Then Wilson stated: “But there is One with all power. That One is God! May you find Him now!” (Third ed., pp. 58-59). Does the Devil win or lose in Wilson’s metaphorical battle against the “cunning, baffling, powerful” alcohol?Well, implied Wilson, if you take certain Steps you reach these conclusions: The ordinary man (the alcoholic) cannot manage his own life, nor can any human power relieve him of his alcoholism. But God can and will if diligently sought. And the winner is?God.William James, Carl Jung, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, and Bill Wilson (at the beginning) were talking about conversion—however they viewed and understood it. And they all denominated it a “religious” experience. And they could hardly escape the Biblical elements involved in the conversions they described—a confession and belief that would beget a new birth and make you a son of God, with Christ in you. (John 3:1-8, 16, Romans 10:9, John 3: 1-8, 1 John 3:2; Colossians 1:27). And it is regrettable that, in expressing their ideas in Latin, the scholars didn’t specify the actual spiritual battle and the victory through God that Bill Wilson seemed at first to plead for. Remember Wilson’s declaration that if there was a devil who was boss universal, he certain had me (Bill) Was all this about Religiomania or about God?A.A.’s basic text says repeatedly that AAs were bent on “establishing a relationship with God” (Third ed., p. 29) Why? Rev. Shoemaker answered that question in. The first chapters of his first significant book, Realizing Religion (NY: Association Press, 1923). First he spoke of man’s spiritual misery. Then he said very plainly. And specifically that man needed to find God; he needed a vital religious experience; he needed Jesus Christ. And Shoemaker’s next chapter was about conversion. Was this all about Religiomania or about God? Citing in a footnote a verse from one of the Psalms, Jung seemed to be pointing at the real spiritual battle. The Devil seeks to destroy (John 10:10). He is the Adversary. Man strives for union with God and the protection of God. One against the other. And the potential for victory is available if God is sought. The seeking and victory were available through conversion. In his short Latin phrase, Jung seemed to be explaining simply: “Alcohol against or in opposition to God”—the battle the Tempter could no longer win by temptation or otherwise through “spirits” (liquor, alcohol) if the alcoholic experienced conversion and received the power of God as his protection.In his monumental work, Psychology, Religion, and Healing (NY: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), Dr. Leslie D. Weatherhead examines Jung’s ideas in substantial detail. Jung’s idea of “conversion” is “individuation,” Weatherhead writes. “Individuation in Jung’s sense, is the wise setting of the house of one’s personality in order, but it is a task at which one is wise to work for the rest of one’s life” (p. 287). Weatherhead states later: “But one wonders where Jung got the idea that the heart of Christianity was ‘imitating Christ’ . . . To advise people to ‘imitate Christ’ is no gospel at all. It puts all the strain on the Christian’s will-power. The Christian Way becomes something the Christian must achieve. But the heart of the Gospel is something God does in Christ through the Holy Spirit; something He has done and is doing and will do for anyone who trusts Him. The power in Christianity is not in man’s effort to imitate Christ, but in Christ’s love for man, forgiveness of man and power to change man. . . . St. Paul would not recognize Jung’s brand of Christianity at all” (pp. 392-393). Spirituality or God? Certainly one of those who has contributed to the replacement in A.A. of “finding God” and “establishing a relationship God” (both of which expressions are still foundational and prominent pillars in the A.A. basic text) is the author of Not-God. It was he who made the following preposterous assertion: “Yet A.A.’s total omission of ‘Jesus,’ its toning down of ‘God’ to ‘a Higher Power’ which could be the group itself, and its changing of the verbal first message into hopeless helplessness rather than salvation: these ideas and practices, adopted to avoid any ‘religious’ association, were profound changes.” See Dick B. Turning Point: A History of Early A.A.’s Spiritual Roots and Successes (San Rafael, CA: Paradise Research Publications, 1997), pp. 8-9. To which the appropriate response is “Sez who?” “Show me!” “News, not views,” to use the early A.A. expression from the Oxford Group. Dr. Bob never countenanced such omission, such ‘toning down,’ and such abandonment of salvation. Further, a safe guess would be that there are more of Christian persuasion in A.A. than there are of other beliefs or no belief—many more! Perhaps the root of the confusion comes from not knowing who is really toning things down.For example, Bill Wilson defined “spirituality” as dependence upon our Creator (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 2001, p. 68). On the same page, Bill wrote: “For we are now on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. . . . All men of faith have courage. They trust their God. We never apologize for God.” Does any of that sound like religiosity, religiomania, or the spirituality that omitted Jesus and toned down God to a higher power that could be your A.A. group? Does it sound like “not-god-ness?” Does it sound like the “spirituality of imperfection?” I think not. In fact, definitely not!The bottom line is that “spirituality” is a word invented to distinguish A.A. from “religion”—the much maligned word in recent A.A. pronouncements and talk. Father John C. Ford, S.J. suggested as much in an article for the National Clergy Conference. The concept seemed to gain favor as he and Father Ed Dowling, S.J., were editing Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions for Bill Wilson in the mid-1950’s when Bill was still in the throes of his severe depression period. The concept is at total variance with the original A.A. practice and requirement of acceptance of Jesus Christ in a born again ceremony at early A.A. meetings in Akron. It is well-known that Roman Catholic clergy were opposed to attendance by parishioners at the “religious” meetings conducted by the Christian Fellowship in Akron with their King James Versions in hand.When AAs speak of “spiritual, but not religious,” or “spirituality,” we can learn much from the venerable A.A. writer and historian Mel B. who has pointed out that the typical present-day statement in A.A. is, “Our program is spiritual, not religious.” But he then opines: “If pressed for what the program’s actual definition of spiritual is, it’s doubtful that many AA members could explain” (Mel B., New Wine, pp. 4-5).Is it “spirituality” with all the trappings of higher powers, mysticism, New Age, New Thought, cosmic ideas, and a new higher-powered idolatry? Or is it God?How Are the Creator and His Son Faring These Days?God created the heavens and the earth. He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t change. He is love and light. And He asks only that we realize that the love of God means obedience to His commandments. One eminent A.A. historian said to an audience, of which I was a part some years ago, that God has changed. God, he said, could never have allowed the bombing of Hiroshima or the killing of six million Jews. The speaker’s human reasoning utterly failed him, but his tongue kept wagging. There is a different God, he opined. A God that just can’t be good if He allows these things to happen. And I imagine that he could now add 9/11 and the Hurricane Katrina to his unbelieving list.But once you have cut through the maze of words and expressions that have no meaning among the drunks they are applied to, you are beginning to see some impressive statistics about how well Almighty God is working for drunks and addicts outside of A.A., how well He worked for early AAs, and how His absence from contemporary secularized recovery literature and expressions has left a host of present-day AAs with just a “something” or a “somebody” or a “nothing at all.” Nothing but their Steps, their meetings, and resisting the temptation to drink. They sometimes say that they go to church for their religion and A.A. for their alcoholism. They often say theirs is a “selfish” program, but that is not what their Big Book says. They often say that the only fear they never want to lose or have removed is the fear of the first drink. But the Good Book and the Big Book point to the poison in fear itself and the need to turn to God for help in eliminating it. Sounds good, but alcoholism without a cure truly does leave just the “daily reprieve” that Bill added to the program when he took out divine help and the cure of the Lord that he spoke of on page 191 of the Big Book. And the results are dismal. Every statistical survey of integrity, including the triennial surveys of A.A. itself, has shown a success rate of one to seven percent today as compared to the documented early A.A. success rate of 75% in Akron and the 93% in Cleveland that quickly followed.Based on present-day success rates (1 to 7%), present static growth, and an enormous unwillingness to talk about “cure” by the power of God, it seems appropriate to suggest that the Creator and His son are faring quite well these days, but not in Twelve Step Fellowships that look to a “higher power” for help. And just look at the insidious parenthetical comment some writer interjected out of context in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers at the bottom of page 136:“(It might also be noted that many terms now considered by A.A.’s to be misleading were then [in the Akron Fellowship period] used, not only by non-A.A.’s discussing the movement, but sometimes by members themselves: ‘cure,’ ‘ex-alcoholic,’ ‘reformed alcoholic.’)”This was a direct slap in the face of William Griffith Wilson (“the Lord has cured me”), Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith (“I’ve found a cure for alcoholism”), A.A. Number Three Bill Dotson (This phrase “the Lord has cured me” became the golden text of A.A. for me), and the hundreds of AAs who published statements for over a decade that told of their “cures.” Even one draft cover of their first Big Book specifically claimed “cure.” And the best that can be said for the writer’s opinion is that it was published after both Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson were dead and were not present to denounce the gentleman and his arrogant assumption.The Faltering Examinations of Divine HelpBefore A.A. became a gleam in Bill Wilson’s eye, people were being healed of alcoholism by God. I have written extensively on this and will soon have a book detailing the points over the last couple of centuries. But the record is clear that the revivalists healed drunks. The evangelists healed drunks. The Salvation Army brought healing to drunks. The rescue missions were healing drunks for many years before A.A. began. People are being healed by Christian healers today. Many scientists just can’t abide this. They’ll argue that the statements can’t be proven. They’ll argue that they are just based on “stories” rather than scientific experiment. But the missing link today is the absence of proper surveys of how well divine help is working today for born again believers who give their recovery by prayer and healing the same fervor and diligence that unbelieving 12 Step members devote to their meetings. Bit by bit, this or that statistical survey haltingly looks at small groups of Christian ex-drunks, inadequately measures what it means really to seek healing at the hands of the Creator, and winds up talking about organizations like Teen Challenge and other Christian groups without shooting for the real target audience—Christians in A.A.My plea has been and is for someone who is NOT a scientist, who IS a student of the Bible, who has been REBORN of the Spirit of God, and who seeks the Creator’s GUIDANCE in the measuring process, will take a look at what God is doing for and among those of us who have believed and received and established beyond doubt that God can and does perform what He promises, provided we obey Him, and glorify Him in our thinking, speaking, actions, and believing.Typical of the lack of understanding of divine healing when it comes to alcoholism and God are the innumerable articles with fallacious commentaries on the subject of “spirituality and addiction.” One of the best known writers on the subject is William R. Miller, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico. Here are some examples of his comments coupled with those of a medical doctor who was co-author:“Furthermore, spirituality has long been regarded as having central importance in the treatment of and recovery from addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and related worldwide mutual-help programs conceptualize recovery through the 12 Steps that are unambiguously spiritual in focus, emphasizing reliance on a Higher Power and the practice of prayer and mediation as means for promoting spiritual awakening and conscious contact with God.“In recent decades, the terms spirituality and religion have been increasingly differentiated. It is common, for example, for Americans to describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. Psychologists studying this distinction have characterized spirituality as characteristic of individuals, a multidimensional latent construct like personality or health. Religion, on the other hand, has been conceptualized as a social phenomenon, defined by particular boundaries such as belief, practice, and membership. Religiousness, the extent of involvement in institutional religion, is one aspect of an individual’s spirituality. This distinction has been particularly emphasized within AA, which is self-described as a program that is spiritual but not religious.“One particularly robust research finding is the inverse relationship of personal religiousness to alcohol/drug use and associated problems. Adults and adolescents who are more religious are less likely to be using or dependent on alcohol or other drugs of abuse, both at the present time and in the future. This is one of the most consistently documented risk/protective factors in the literature, similar in magnitude to family history of substance abuse. The reasons for this modest but consistent relationship are unclear. Levels of risk for substance abuse disorder also vary across religious denominations, with lowest levels typically found in those whose religion clearly prohibits use, suggesting that religious norms about substance use play a role.“Less is known about the effects of specific spiritual practices on substance abuse. [And to good professor should have quit right there!]“How does religiousness protect against substance use problems. There is robust evidence that religiousness is associated with lower rates of substance use, and that spirituality and religiousness is lower in those with substance use disorders.“Approaches linked to particular religions raise concerns of generalizability and political issues if funded publicly” William R. Miller, Ph.D. and Michael P. Bogenschultz, M.D. “Spirituality and Addiction.” Southern Medical Journal, April 2007, 100:4, pp. 1-2.There is little profit in quoting more or refuting the fallacies from this article. I can produce a dozen with the same kind of talk. But note what is missing from this learned “scientific” paper: (1) Early A.A. History. (2) Documentation for the supposition that A.A. is “spiritual, but not religious.” (3) the Creator. (4) Jesus Christ. (5) The Bible. (6) Holy Spirit. (7) Divine healing. (8) Faith/cure healings. (9) the new birth. (10) salvation. (11) conversion. And (12) historical influences like the United Christian Endeavor Society, the Salvation Army, the Gospel Rescue Missions, and the views of clergy directly involved with early A.A.—Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Roman Catholic clergymen like Father Ed Dowling, S.J., Dr. Frank N.D. Buchman, and many others. And to me this lacuna demonstrates that articles on “spirituality and addiction” are next to useless when the promulgators won’t admit ignorance of, don’t research, or don’t know their A.A., A.A. history, the history of healings, the Bible, and the factors really involved in salvation as spelled out by the writers I have mentioned.Even worse are the authors’ inexcusable blindness as to the very First Amendment issue they cite. More than four courts have ruled that A.A. is religious. They carefully bypassed the spurious “spiritual” argument after reviewing all the evidence before them. The cases can easily be found by internet search or by reading the materials of Stanton Peele, J.D., Ph.D., who, as both a trained student of the law and of psychology, makes the supposed distinction a nonsensical one. A.A. is a religion, and the most cursory examination of the more than 400 references to God in its Big Book make that point demonstrably clear. Higher powers may or may not be “spiritual,” but the God mentioned in the Book of James, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 falls well within the definition of religious subject matter.It’s fair to say, I think, that the Psalms contain a number of verses to the effect that the poor man cried; the LORD heard him; and delivered him from all his troubles. And fears! For with God nothing is impossible; and He is the God that heals those who believe and obey. Almighty God, our Creator, isn’t lost, hasn’t changed, and doesn’t lie. He loves and deals justly with the people on our planet. Even cures alcoholics!Contemporary Healing Accounts That Offer Fruitful Areas for ExaminationDr. Robert H. Smith (A.A.’s Dr. Bob)I’ll start with a classic story about Dr. Bob’s faith. A little boy was asking him how he healed fractures. Dr. Bob replied that all he did was to set the bone. God did the healing, he said. Bob was also noted for the remarks he made about his surgical practice. He would pray before he began, and he said that when he did that, things always went well. Bill Wilson told of the number of people in early A.A. who asked Dr. Bob to pray for them.James Moore Hickson. Heal the Sick (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1924)I found a great many books on prayer and healing in Dr. Bob’s library. But one of the best known books was by James Moore Hickson. For here was a man who devoted his life to Christian Healing, as he called it. From his youth, Hickson began to hear his mother read to him about the Lord’s work and ministry, and they often prayed together, as a family, for those who were sick. Early on, while he was asking the Lord to help a sick cousin, the thought came to his mind, “Lay your hands on her face;” and he immediately did so, and the girl’s pain vanished. A few days later, he said he was similarly impressed to lay hands on the face of her sick sister, and the cure was immediate. There followed twenty-four years’ pioneer work in Christian Healing. This culminated in a five years’ world-wide Healing Mission, which gave rise to his book, and took from March, 1919, to April, 1924. Hickson provided innumerable free Christian Healings in the United States, Canada, Egypt, India, China, Japan, the Philippine Islands, Palestine, France, Italy, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa, Rhodesia, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Healings were widespread and documented in the accounts of clergy in hundreds and hundreds of churches in these countries.F. F. Bosworth. Christ the Healer (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1973) Writing of his forty-four years that followed the first edition of his book in 1924, Bosworth said: “In this book we have tried to use the vocabulary common people understand, and a continual stream of testimonies comes to us from those soundly converted and miraculously healed through their own faith which came to them while reading and meditating on the truths of the Bible which we have tried to make plain.” The Bible is the focus of the book. And it is a guide telling Christians what to study and believe to heal. For example, he states: “. . . throughout our Christian life, God wants us to believe with our heart and say with our lips all He says we are in Christ. We are not to ignore or neglect our legal standing in Christ, for it is the basis for the acts of faith which puts God to work fulfilling His Word to us. We are to confess or whisper in our own heart, ’In Him I am complete.’ When we know that God in His Word says, ‘I am the LORD that healeth thee.’ we are to believe it and confess it with our lips and Christ will act as our High Priest and make it good.” At the close of the book are specific testimonies, giving the names and addresses of the witnesses. There are reports of the cure of cancers, infantile paralysis, deafness, dumbness, cracked knees, and other physical problems.Morton T. Kelsey. Psychology, Medicine & Christian Healing. Rev. Exp. Ed. (NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1988)Kelsey’s book is neither a handbook for healing nor a compilation of testimonials. But it is written by someone who has devoted a great deal of time to assembling the healing records in the Bible, medical and theological aspects and views of healing, healings in the early church, Pentecostal healings, the arguments against Christian healings, and the techniques for training people for healing ministry today. Kelsey also touches on the views of Martin Luther, the Roman Catholic Church, Carl Jung, Mary Baker Eddy, Glenn Clark, Oral Roberts, Starr Daily, and others. It is a book that shows that the “age of miracles” never left us, that it is alive and well today, and that there is plenty of room for people who are eager to validate the healing power of the “Great Physician.” (just as Dr. William D. Silkworth recommended to his patients, including Bill Wilson, and just as Bill did in response).Joe McIntyre. E. W. Kenyon and His Message of Faith: The True Story (Orlando, FL: Creation House, 1997)The author concludes his detailed review of the life of E.W. Kenyon with these remarks:E. W. Kenyon was a man who loved God and passionately desired to see the lost come to know Jesus. . . . The Bible was for Kenyon the living voice of God, and he vigorously defended its inspiration. A pioneer in divine healing, he proclaimed the right to healing for the believer because of Christ’s sufferings. . . . His teachings, though in many ways unique, fit easily into the late nineteenth-century evangelical movement. His many documentable mentors show this quite clearly. Kenyon is one of the remarkable links between the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century Pentecostal movement (p. 293).As to Kenyon on healing, the author states:Yielding to the Lordship of Christ would become a major theme in Kenyon’s preaching. “You see,” Kenyon explained, “the dominion of Christ is the dominion of love. The dominion of love is the divine dominion of self, and when self yields to love’s dominion, the ‘peace that passeth all understanding’ fills the heart and life, and healing comes to the body” (p. 57).Kenyon, said the author, was much influenced by Dwight L. Moody and George Muller. And, as a pastor, he received this plaudit: “Many, many lives were transformed. People were set free from sin, sickness, and depression. Broken homes, families, and hearts all found healing and encouragement. The victory of the resurrection was translated into the circumstances of life for those who sat under E.W. Kenyon’s inspiring ministry. . . . Kenyon and many of those he trained frequently went into the homes of sick people who contacted the ministry and prayed for them. Many came to the church as a result of being healed” (p. 111).Michael L. Brown. Israel’s Divine Healer (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995) Michael Brown, Ph.D., is a Messianic Jew, a scholar’s scholar, and an Adjunct Professor of Old Testament and Jewish Studies at Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia Beach, Virginia. A large part of this book is devoted to examining, from the Torah to the Gospels, how Yahweh progressively revealed himself as the Divine Healer to Israel and ultimately, through Jesus, to the whole of humanity. Brown has a track record to back up his convictions. He states:Raised in a Conservative Jewish home on Long Island, New York, I can only explain my teenage foray into the world of drugs and hard rock music as symptomatic of the times—those turbulent years of the late 60’s and early 70s, the years of Woodstock idealism, the so-called Age of Aquarius. For me, a pleasure-seeking youth of just fifteen or sixteen, the rock/drug world was full of allure and temptation, and I plunged into that world with reckless abandon. Little did I know that by the end of 1971, while still sixteen, I would experience a radical conversion in a small Italian Pentecostal church in Queens, New York. Drawn there with the sole purpose of pulling my two best friends (and fellow band members) out of the church and back to “reality,” I was confronted instead with the love of God emanating from a sincere people who simply believed. Their testimony of God’s life-changing power, their acceptance of this young, proud, stubborn rebel, and their eyewitness stories of miracles, healings, and deliverances seemed totally genuine. Soon enough, my resistance melted, faith came alive, and I surrendered. In a moment of time, I was free (p. 9)As a pastor of FIRE Church in Concord, North Carolina, Brown joins those urging a mandate for revival where the ministry who were also devoted to intercessors told them prophetically that “God would not allow anything you do to succeed if it is not birthed and bathed in prayer.” He said: “we have no choice but to ‘devote ourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving’” (Col 4:2).Brown’s concluding paragraph is heartwarming. He said:Let us look to him who promised that all who believe in him would do the works that he did, sending his Spirit to empower his people after his ascension and resulting in a glorious pattern of healings and miracles throughout the early centuries of the church. And then let us remember the words the Master spoke to the “leprous: man seeking healing from his hand: “I am willing,” the Lord said, and with that the man was cured. That is the essence of divine healing in the Bible, in history, and in the world today. It translates theology into action. It brings the divine Healer into intimate contact with suffering humanity. It produces radical change. ”But,” someone might ask, “can we really expect such divine acts in our day?” As long as God is God and there is sickness and disease on the earth, the answer is certainly yes. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes” in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is sounded by us all to the glory of God” (2 Co 1:20). Israel’s divine Healer is still at work—for his glory and for our good’ (pp. 246-247).Neil T. Anderson, Winning Spiritual Warfare: Steps to Freedom in Christ (OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990)I mention this title not because it is a great compilation of modern healing or healings. I mention it because it is somewhat typical of the approach to healing of alcoholism today that is taken by several Christian writers. Anderson is an associate Professor of the Practical Theology Department of Talbot School of Theology of Biola University. He deals heavily with seven specific steps to process in order to experience freedom from your past. He says you will address the areas where Satan most commonly takes advantage of us and where “strongholds” have been built. He says, “Christ purchased your victory when He shed His blood for you on the cross. Realizing your freedom will be the result of what you choose to believe, confess, forgive, renounce and forsake” (pp. 18-19). He devotes a good deal of time to “cults” and to “spiritual warfare.” But he offers specific prayers to God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for overcoming life-controlling problems with eating habits, addictions, and prescription medications. James Rutz. Mega Shift: Igniting Spiritual Power (Colorado Springs, CO: Empowerment Press, 2005)You may not agree with this author’s claim that the world is changing hands—for the last time. There is, he thinks, not a mere shift in power, but a total transformation in how things happen. “Time is up, and God is taking over—with a little help from His friends. The new world force is an alliance between the Holy Spirit and our own human spirits. The main facets of this force are love, truth, wisdom, and a miracle-working spiritual power. . . Until our generation, this force was held back or shot down by friendly fire—the traditional church.” And that’s enough about the shift picture he paints.What matters is the evidence he presents as to what is going on in the miracle realm in the world today and where the miracles are and are not to be found. He cites fifty-two countries where there were hundreds of resurrections from the dead of people who were stone cold dead for up to three days (p. 30). He lists forty-nine specific illnesses that were totally cured. They range from AIDS to polio to blindness to shortened limbs to Down syndrome to glaucoma to cancer to arthritis to kidney disease to stroke (p. 29). Documenting his assertions with specific references, Rutz offers an entire chapter on the occurrence of enormous numbers of these miracles of Christian healing in all parts of the world (pp. 1-54).In segment called “Why the World Will Soon Be Christian,” Rutz charts the annual growth rates of what he calls “core apostolics” as contrasted with Muslims, Protestants, all non-Christians, Hindus, nominal Christians, Catholics, Buddhists, new religionists, and atheists. He states: “Not only are core apostolics growing faster than Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and new agers, but in fair and even encounters, spiritual power prevails and Jesus wins perhaps 99% of the time. The main defenses of other religionists are not theological arguments, but violence, persecution, legal barriers, and propagandistic falsehoods. Core apostolics are the new saints who are at the heart of the mushrooming kingdom of God. The term and the category are both mine, but they’re not all subjective. They stand for a very real and countable movement of more than 707 million switched-on disciples. As you can see, the growth rate of Protestants (and Christians in general) are so terribly low that they had clouded the picture, hiding the white-hot growth of the core apostolics” (p. 14). “Up until 1960, Western Evangelicals outnumbered non-Western Evangelicals—mostly Latinos, blacks, and Asians—by two to one. As of 2000, non-Westerners had shot ahead by four to one. By 2010, it will be seven to one!” (p. 15).Rutz lists many reasons and situations involved in the major shift and empowerment, but the important thing here is that those who have received the gift of the Holy Spirit are doing the things that Jesus Christ did, and more. They are doing them in vast and miraculous numbers. And they are growing at a speed never anticipated. The accounts of the Manmin Joong-Ang Church in South Korea, as well as those about the World Christian Doctors Network and the 2nd International Christian Medical Conference that was held in May, 2005 in Chennai, India, provide just a few examples of the skyrocketing growth in faith and numbers of those who believe in divine healing. I personally have been told of a large number of similar Christian healing successes that are being achieved in India today.A Few Words about Pentecostal and Charismatic GroupsPentecostalism has become the largest and fastest growing segment of Christianity in the world. Due to the indistinct nature of many Pentecostal groups and the vast number of names and organizations, it is difficult to recognize all Pentecostals (Eliade, 1987). However, according to The World Christian Encyclopedia, edited by David B. Barret (New York, 1982), the world-wide total of Pentecostals is estimated at claiming close to one hundred million adherents.Experience, rather than doctrine has often been noted as the principal determinant of Pentecostalism. There is no absolute consensus among all Pentecostals on doctrine or any other matter except for Spirit baptism and the practice of charismata (gifts of the Holy Spirit). However, among most American Pentecostal denominations, it is believed that the "initial evidence" of Spirit baptism is the manifestation of glossolalia or what is commonly referred to as speaking in tongues but there are also those that believe that any number of charismata may evidence the baptism. It is almost universally agreed upon by Pentecostals that "speaking in tongues" is a miraculous act in which a believer, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, speaks in a language without having knowledge of it.Since its conception in the early 1900s, Pentecostalism has advanced tremendously and seen rapid growth throughout this century, but up until the 1950s it had largely been associated with the margins of American culture. It was not until mid-way through the century that Pentecostal ideas and style began to surface in mainline Protestant churches and would thus, spark a movement in the 50s and 60s that would be known by such names as the New Penetration, Neo-Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Renewal (Revival). Beginning officially in 1960, Dennis Bennett, priest over an Episcopalian congregation in Van Nuys, California announced that he had spoken in tongues. This movement soon spread into a network of independent charismatic churches and organizations which included Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists and Catholics, which all came to enjoy this outburst of speaking in tongues. The Charismatic Renewal was similar to classical Pentecostalism in its emphasis on the exercise of certain gifts (particularly tongues and prophecy) but the other important qualities of this movement made it distinctly different. It differed from Pentecostalism in that it was trans-denominational in nature, it had no set theology of two-stage blessing, it incorporated a diversity of theological opinion and it also provided a wealth of contemporary worship songs expressing personal and corporate devotion.Even more recent than the Charismatic Renewal of the 1960s, America witnessed the emergence of another phenomenon with Pentecostal/Charismatic qualities in the 1990s with what was known as the Toronto Blessing[The foregoing materials were taken from the University of Virginia Religious Movements website. To these comments should be added the observations of Morton T. Kelsey about healing and Pentacostals. He states: “Then there are the Pentecostal churches, still one of the fastest-growing segments of Christendom. . . . As a result, healing practices became a large part of the Pentecostal way of life. This life-changing kind of Christianity has converted a large percentage of the people of South Korea to Christianity” (Psychology, Medicine & Christian Healing, pp.2, 20, 187, 192-194). James Rutz weighed in with these statistics: (1) 707 million born-again Christians who are “core apostolics;” (2) growing far faster than Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and new agers; and (3) increasing by 8% a year—a mix of Charismatics, Pentecostals, and Evangelicals (Megashift, pp. 8, 14-15, 44, 63)].The Emerging “Awareness” of God’s Role and PowerWhat shall we say, then, in response to the initial question? I believe you might well be willing to support the following important suggestions to recovering people:1. God has a role in healing.2. God has the power to heal; and, with Him, nothing is impossible.3. The largest healing enthusiasm and the greatest growth in healing movements today is among Christians—everywhere but the United States.4. There is ample evidence that the “God is dead” movement is dead, while the power of God in Christ is alive to heal those who want it.5. God can and will heal, no matter how many academics and scientists detour the process with talk of religiosity, religiomania, and spirituality.6. There is every reason today for people in recovery to have the same “spiritual awakening” that early A.A. founders had when Bill Wilson announced that the Lord had cured him of his terrible disease and he just wanted to keep telling people about it.7. Those who believe and have seen that God rewards those who diligently seek and obey him should be the first to step up to bat. They most assuredly can help the afflicted to a cure no matter what group those beleaguered souls have chosen to enter and follow. ENDGloria DeoDick B., PO Box 837, Kihei, HI 96753-0837; 808 874 4876; dickb@dickb.com; http://www.dickb.com/index.shtml; http://www.dickb-blog.com
1:22 AM