The Freedom from Directives That All AAs Enjoy

Dick B.

© 2010 Anonymous. All rights reserved

What Bill Wilson Told Those Who Followed

The following very relevant and important information is found in the A.A. General Service Conference-approved book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age:

It [Alcoholics Anonymous] does not at any point conform to the pattern of a government. Neither its General Service Conference, its General Service Board, nor the humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let alone hand out any punishment. . . . Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished have come back to sit in the meeting place, saying, 'This is life for us; you can't keep us out.' . . . An A.A. may take advice or suggestions from more experienced members, but he surely will not take orders. . . . One would think that A.A.'s  Headquarters and General Service Conference would be exceptions. Surely the people there would have to have some authority. But long ago Trustees and staff members alike found they could do no more than make suggestions, and very mild ones at that.

[Source: Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of A.A. (New York, N.Y.: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1957), 118-19.]

The Woods Are Full of Those Who Try to Direct or “Govern”

Almost all of the criticisms of Alcoholics Anonymous that abound today are based on one or more erroneous assumptions, such as: (1) That AAs are all of one mind. (2) That AAs are all of one type. Thus one of the recent critics asserts that A.A. is not “Bible pure.” Of course it isn’t! Most of the incoming crowd have strayed so far from Bible purity that they wonder how they could have become so crazy and could have been such trouble makers. And don’t think that they all are changed into angels just because they go to meetings or read the Big Book or “take” the Twelve Steps. Same thing for those Christians in A.A. (3) That all AAs are hell-bound and will taint and tarnish and condemn anyone—anyone one at all—who fellowships with these “evil” souls. (4) That the prophecy of Isaiah 53:5-6 is untrue. In the King James Version, these verses say of the one who was to come:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

And that’s the Savior so many early AAs and AAs today needed and accepted. (5) That the A.A. hierarchy (of which there is none) somehow says, “Jump;” and the docile sheep ask, “How high?” But 1 Peter 2:24-25 declared of Jesus’ accomplishments, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep gone astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” That’s the word for those who become children of the living and true God.

Some may just want to go to meetings. Some may want to believe in nothing at all. And some may even hold with those who think we have a mandatory program which, in the words of two critics, constitute “12 Steps to Destruction.” But if you receive a directive or an order from A.A. World Headquarters or some staff member, or from some local Central Office, or even from a “delegate,” or DCM, or GSR, or speaker, or sponsor, you are free to ignore the directive, pursue your Christian walk, improve that walk, tell others exactly how and why you are doing it. And tell anyone what God has done for you. For A.A. is about as unorganized and ungoverned and undirected as it is possible to be—whatever you may see or hear today. Nobody, just nobody, can direct you as to anything you should or must or are not free to do.

DickB@DickB.com; www.DickB.com

Gloria Deo