I was sitting in home group tonight in a literature discussion meeting and I heard two things that I needed to hear from one of our members, she said, “Experience requires action. And it’s more than just information acquisition.”  We were having this conversation in regards to the spiritual awakening.

I don’t think most alcoholics wake up one morning, sit straight up in bed, and suddenly announce, “Well, that settles it. I believe in God now.”

For many of us, belief comes much more slowly. Sometimes reluctantly. We hear other people talk about God. We read about a Higher Power in the Big Book. We listen to people describe prayer, meditation, surrender, and spiritual awakening. We may even become intellectually interested in the whole thing.

But information about God and an experience of God are two very different things.

And every once in a while, something happens. A prayer gets answered in a way that seems a little too specific to dismiss. We make a decision differently than we normally would and discover an unexpected peace. We become willing to make an amends we absolutely did not want to make, and something changes afterward. We ask for help in the morning and somehow make it through a day we were convinced we couldn’t handle.

Then comes the moment, “Wait a minute…. something is happening here.”

That’s the lightbulb moment.

We May Experience God Before We Understand God

One of the things I love about Alcoholics Anonymous is that the program doesn’t require me to completely understand God before I begin seeking God. That would have been a pretty high bar. Instead, the Big Book gives us something wonderfully practical: “Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you.” That’s from “We Agnostics.”

Notice the invitation. We aren’t being asked to sign a theological statement. We aren’t being told exactly what we must believe. We’re being asked to become willing to investigate.

And investigation requires more than thinking. It requires experimentation.

Sometimes We Have to Unlearn God to Relearn God

There’s another problem many of us bring through the doors of AA. God baggage. Lots of it. Some of us arrive with an enormous amount of God baggage accumulated over a lifetime.

Maybe God was introduced to us as angry, judgmental, punitive, or perpetually disappointed. Maybe religion was used to frighten us, control us, shame us, or tell us who we were supposed to be. Some of us prayed desperately during our drinking and concluded God wasn’t listening. Others looked at suffering in our own lives or in the world and decided that if there was a God, we wanted nothing to do with Him.

And some of us simply inherited somebody else’s God.

• Our parents’ God.
• Our church’s God.
• Our childhood God.
• The God of the preacher who scared the hell out of us.
• The God of somebody who told us exactly whom God loved, whom God didn’t, and somehow seemed remarkably confident that God agreed with them about everything.

So when we arrive in AA and hear the word God, we’re not necessarily hearing three innocent letters. We’re hearing history. That distinction matters.

Sometimes when an alcoholic says, “I don’t believe in God,” the more useful question may be: Which God don’t you believe in? Because I might not believe in that God either.

For some of us, one of the unexpected gifts of AA was that we had to come here to unlearn God so we could relearn God. The Big Book makes room for exactly that process. In “We Agnostics,” we’re told:

“Much to our relief, we discovered we did not need to consider another’s conception of God.”

What a liberating sentence. Maybe the problem wasn’t God. Maybe the problem was my conception of God. And conceptions can change.

AA doesn’t demand that I recover somebody else’s understanding of God. It invites me into a relationship with a Power greater than myself and gives me remarkable freedom to discover what that means through experience. That’s why the phrase “God as we understood Him” matters so much.

Not God as somebody else told me I had to understand Him.
Not God as I misunderstood Him when I was twelve.
Not God filtered through every religious wound, resentment, disappointment, or prejudice I’ve accumulated.

God as I am coming to understand God now. And perhaps even more importantly, God as I am coming to experience God. That changes the entire conversation.

Information Acquisition Isn’t Experience

So here’s another way to explain this. I can read every book ever written about swimming. I can study buoyancy. Watch instructional videos. Learn the mechanics of the breaststroke. Memorize the dimensions of an Olympic pool. I could probably become irritatingly knowledgeable about swimming. But eventually somebody’s going to say to me: Get in the water.

Until then, I only know about swimming. I haven’t experienced swimming.

I think spirituality can work the same way.

There is a difference between knowing about prayer and praying.

… between understanding surrender and surrendering.

… between studying forgiveness and forgiving somebody.

… between discussing amends and making one.

… between believing service is important and actually showing up to help somebody.

… between having an intellectual concept of God and living as though God might actually be present.

Experience requires action. That may be one of the most important things AA teaches us about spirituality.

Then We Start Seeing Evidence

This is where it gets interesting. Maybe I start praying even though I’m not entirely convinced anyone is listening. Maybe I ask each morning, “God, show me what You’d have me do today.”

Nothing dramatic happens. No thunder. No burning bush. No booming voice from the ceiling. But after a while, I notice something. I’m reacting differently.

The person who used to make me furious doesn’t have quite the same power over me. Something I had been desperately trying to control begins to loosen its grip. I find myself thinking about what I can contribute instead of what I can get. I become willing to apologize without explaining why I was actually mostly right.

That’s a miracle right there.

Then somebody calls at exactly the moment I needed them. Or perhaps I call somebody at exactly the moment they needed me. Coincidence? Maybe. AA doesn’t require me to turn every coincidence into divine intervention. In fact, I think we should be careful about that. If every convenient parking space becomes proof that God is managing my personal transportation needs, spirituality can quickly turn into superstition. But neither do I have to dismiss everything. I can simply pay attention. And over time, individual moments can begin forming a pattern.

Believe It to See It? Maybe. But Sometimes We See It Because We Tried It.

We often hear, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” AA proposes something slightly different. Maybe I don’t have to believe everything before I begin. Maybe I only need enough willingness to act. I pray before I’m certain prayer works. I turn over my will before I fully understand surrender. I make the amends before knowing what will happen. I help another alcoholic before feeling qualified. I practice Step Ten before my instincts agree with it. I seek conscious contact before I’m entirely sure what I’m contacting.

Then experience starts supplying evidence that information alone never could. That’s why the Big Book’s promise in “We Agnostics” is so interesting: “When we drew near to Him He disclosed Himself to us!” When we drew near. Movement precedes discovery.

But We Need to Be Careful About What We Call Evidence

There is another side to this. If I’m going to say I see evidence of God working in my life, I need to be careful not to define “God working” as simply getting what I wanted. That can become spiritualized self-will remarkably quickly. Maybe the better evidence isn’t that circumstances suddenly cooperate with me. Maybe the evidence is that I change regardless of the circumstances.

• I don’t necessarily get the relationship – I get acceptance.
• The problem doesn’t necessarily disappear – I get courage.
• The person doesn’t necessarily apologize – I become willing to forgive.
• The uncertainty isn’t necessarily removed – I discover that I can walk through uncertainty without trying to control everybody around me.

That seems much closer to the spiritual awakening described in our program. The miracle isn’t always that God changes my world. Sometimes the miracle is that God changes me in the middle of it.

Suddenly the Steps Become Evidence

This is why I believe the spiritual awakening promised in Step Twelve is difficult to separate from the Steps themselves. We don’t merely learn about honesty. We practice honesty. We don’t merely study surrender. We surrender. We don’t merely admire humility. We ask for our shortcomings to be removed. We don’t merely believe relationships should be repaired. We make amends. We don’t merely talk about conscious contact with God. We seek it. We don’t merely appreciate service. We carry the message.

Action creates experience.

Experience produces evidence.

Evidence strengthens faith.

And strengthened faith makes us willing to take the next action. There’s a beautiful circularity to it. Willingness → Action → Experience → Awareness → Faith → More Action.

Maybe that’s how God becomes real for many of us. Not because somebody finally constructed an argument clever enough to convince us. Because we tried something. And something happened.

The Light Comes On

I sometimes think we make spiritual awakening harder than it needs to be. We’re waiting for God to prove God’s existence while God may be saying:

• Take the next Step.
• Make the call.
• Say the prayer.
• Tell the truth.
• Make the amends.
• Help the alcoholic.
• Release the resentment.
• Stop managing the outcome.
• Ask what God’s will is instead of demanding that ours be blessed.
• Then watch.
• Pay attention.

Not with gullibility. Not by turning every fortunate event into divine intervention. But with enough openness to notice whether something is happening inside us that wasn’t happening before. Because eventually we may discover something extraordinary. We’re different. Not perfect. Still a bit messy. Not finished. Not permanently serene. Different.

And perhaps that’s the strongest evidence we will ever receive. I may have entered AA wanting someone to explain God to me. Instead, the Steps invited me to experience God for myself. Maybe I even had to unlearn the God I thought I knew before I could discover the God I was actually beginning to experience.

• Information gave me something to think about.
• Action gave me something to experience.
• Experience gave me something to believe.

And somewhere along the way, without even realizing exactly when it happened… the lightbulb came on.

In love & service,