Recovering by grace alone.

August 27, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I’ve been spending more and more time thinking about recovery. (I’m not thinking about the stock market, the housing sector, New Orleans two years after hurricane Katrina, or the White House after Rove and Gonzales.)

Thanks to my friends in recovery from substance abuse or other forms of addiction, and the 12-Step programs which populate our church building each week, I have been thinking a lot about personal recovery.

Alcoholics Anonymous has been called the most powerful spiritual movement of the 20^th century. I had never thought of it as being a spiritual movement — probably because I’d never been exposed to its work, its mission, its people. I didn’t have a drinking problem, so it was something I paid little attention to.

Then I learned that A.A. grew out of the Oxford Group, which came from a couple of visionaries including a Lutheran pastor and missionary. I began to see the tap root of recovery programs was planted deeply in spiritual soil.

And I met Luke – who was running a small, introspective A.A. meeting at church. We would talk far into the night after his Tuesday meeting had concluded. I learned to recognize the signs of an addictive personality within myself. I think he used the term “dry drunk” of himself. After he sobered up he still had all the bad traits: non-responsibility for his own life, blaming others, etc.

It is slowly sinking in to this preacher’s mind that all people suffer from similar, related symptoms. Many people refuse to accept responsibility. Many people blame. Many people distance themselves from intimacy, trust, forgiveness. Many of us are “faking it.”

In the words of the apostle Paul, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) But we need to talk about this stuff, even without the trappings of theology—sin, forgiveness, hell and damnation, heaven and salvation. Those words are useful metaphors to some. But millions of people cannot relate to God-talk who can relate to innate human spirituality, and struggle with where it becomes blocked, wounded, starved.

Recovery programs and 12-Step programs are well-organized. Their sites and literature are all over the internet. The first two steps of A.A. is similar, I guess, to the admission of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:17 ). “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father . . .’”

How hard it is for some of us to come to our senses! Is there such a thing as “Step 0″ in the process? That point before we have come to our senses? When we’re not sure there’s a better way to live? Cynically doubting that tomorrow could be any better than yesterday?

In John’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a sick man (paralyzed for 38 years). The most fascinating thing about this miracle story is that Jesus meets this man stuck at Step 0: he was not quite ready to admit that his illness was an addiction.  He blamed others for his pitiful life circumstances of begging, etc.   Jesus asks him (John 5:6) the fundamental spiritual question that he asks of every human being: “Do you want to be well?”

That is not a no-brainer question. It’s very confronting, very threatening.  It would change your life if you can answer it honestly.  For millions of us who are stuck spiritually, we are not yet convinced we should desire to move on. We have made our beds and they’re comfortable (addictions, broken relationships, cynicism, poverty or even homelessness, dead-end jobs, self-pity). We get by, without ever expecting that life could be much more rewarding, or that today could be infinitely better than yesterday.

But how do we get from Point A to Point B, or from Step 0 to Step 1? Scripture tells us that we are all saved by grace. Think about that one. We are all saved from ourselves, our ruts, our failures, our addictions, our pettiness, our cynicism by grace alone. The more we think about recovering from these things, the more we would name it grace and salvation.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Faith, Recovery | Print | No Comments »