I was in a Big Book study tonight when someone asked a question I had never thought to ask. We were reading “The Family Afterward,” and we came to this sentence:

“Those of us who have spent much time in the world of spiritual make-believe have eventually seen the childishness of it.”

One of the members stopped and asked, “What exactly is spiritual make-believe?” That question opened up a beautiful conversation. People began sharing their experience, and a familiar passage suddenly had something new to say. I have been sober for over three decades. I have read those words before. But I had never stopped to ask what they meant.

Tonight, I was grateful someone did.

When Familiar Words Wake Up

There is something humbling about discovering a question inside a sentence you thought you understood. After enough years in recovery, the language becomes familiar. We recognize the passages. We know what comes next. Sometimes we can finish the sentence before the reader does. But familiarity is not the same as understanding. And understanding is not the same as living it. Someone asks a simple question, and suddenly we have to slow down. We have to look beneath the words and ask where they touch our own lives.

That is what happened for me tonight.

I do not think “spiritual make-believe” needs one airtight definition. I do believe though that the phrase invites an honest look at the distance between the spiritual life we imagine ourselves living and the life other people actually experience with us. In other words, the life was actually live.

That distance can be uncomfortable to examine. It can also be where growth begins.

Believing My Own Spiritual Publicity

One way I understand spiritual make-believe is confusing spiritual language with spiritual practice. I can talk about surrender while trying to control the outcome of every situation. I can speak beautifully about acceptance while insisting that someone else needs to change before I can have peace. I can explain humility in a way that leaves very little room for anyone else to speak. I can speak about “emotionalism” in other spiritual environments where I “surrender” time and time again with little to no changed behavior to support it.

None of that necessarily means my spiritual life is fraudulent. It means I am human, and I can mistake knowing the words for doing the work.

The make-believe begins when I stop noticing the difference or stop being willing to notice it. There is a difference between saying, “Patience matters to me, and I am struggling to practice it,” and deciding I am a patient person because I regularly talk about patience. The first leaves room for honesty, help, and growth. The second gives me an image to protect. 

Recovery asks me to become willing to see myself more clearly. That includes the parts of me that have learned how to sound spiritually healthy.

Why This Passage Belongs in “The Family Afterward”

The chapter’s setting makes this question especially meaningful. Our families live with more than our intentions, spiritual or otherwise. They live with our behavior.

They may appreciate our enthusiasm for recovery, but they also need to know whether we will show up. Whether our words can be trusted. Whether there is room in our new life for their feelings, including feelings that do not fit our preferred story about how well everything is going.

A powerful spiritual experience can change our direction. A powerful spiritual awakening can change our lives. The people closest to us still need time and repeated experience to discover what that change in our lives means for them.

I can imagine wanting credit for the person I am becoming while someone else is still hurting from the person I have been. That is a place to practice humility.

Spiritual growth gives me work to do in that relationship. It does not give me authority over the other person’s timetable.

Usefulness Without a Spotlight

The passage ends with “a life of sane and happy usefulness.” I love how grounded that sounds. There is room for profound spiritual experience, and there is work waiting among our fellow travelers. The two belong together.

Usefulness may mean sitting with someone who is having a hard day without trying to turn their pain into a lesson. It may mean doing something helpful that nobody notices. It may mean making room for another person’s question instead of rushing to demonstrate what we know.

It also does not require being endlessly available or getting everything right. A sane life has limits. Sometimes honesty about those limits is the most useful and spiritually grounded thing we can offer.

The question I want to carry away is simple: How is what I believe becoming visible in how I live?

Still Learning

Tonight reminded me that time in sobriety does not exhaust what there is to discover. I can still encounter a familiar sentence as if I am reading it for the first time. I can still learn from someone willing to ask what a phrase actually means. Perhaps one safeguard against spiritual make-believe is staying teachable. Being willing to say, “I have read that for years, but I have never really considered it.” Being willing to let a question become personal. Being willing to acknowledge that spiritual make-believe can become the real thing if I am willing to allow God to create the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism in me.

I left tonight grateful for the conversation and for the reminder that there is still work for my feet to do.

In love & service,