Most of us are familiar with the idea of the Twelve Steps, a group and peer-based support process that provides a backbone for change in the lives of many who struggle with addictions. On the outside of West Hill’s basement door, we have a list of a variety of Twelve Step programs for individuals dealing with alcohol, drugs, eating, gambling and other addictions. For many years, a Narcotics Anonymous group has used our facilities and, on occasion, we’ve been privileged to honour a milestone in someone’s life when the applause in their downstairs meeting has been heard in our upstairs event and we have offered a celebratory foot-stamping ovation in response. Many of us are intimately familiar with Twelve Step programs either because we have relied upon them for our own health or because we love someone who does. When lives become poisoned by the disease of addiction, the Twelve Step program is often the first people turn to for help. For many, the program is life-changing, its steps offering a profound challenge to reflect deeply on, not only the addiction, but the whole of one’s life. We are all addicts. The only difference in our addictions is that some are socially and culturally unacceptable and others socially and culturally mandated. Addiction to consumption, to perfection, to social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), to electricity, to approval, to exercise, to winning the perfect lawn award, to doing good. The list could go on and on. Wherever the impact on our lives of a particular behavior damages ourselves or the relationships we have with others, we can appropriately start sifting through the nature of that behavior using the word “addict”. Over the past several years, West Hill has been on a journey of discovery and much of it has been related to our recognition that we have been addicted to the idea of a supernatural safety net in the religious beliefs that promised us, no matter what happened, we’d be carefully brought through the experience of illness, job-loss, divorce, social stigmatism, death ñ by the strength if not the actual presence of God. In many ways, we have been working our way through the Twelve Step program and relating it to our religious traditions. That program might look something like this: In this twelve step program, we:
1. Admitted we were addicted to the supernatural safety net offered by our religious beliefs and that our fears were unmanageable without it.
2. Came to believe that coming to understand the laws of life could restore us to our sanity.
3. Made a decision to learn those laws of life, as we are increasingly able to understand them.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our tradition.
5. Admitted to ourselves and to others, both with and beyond our tradition, the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to work on all these defects of character until they were repaired, mitigated, healed.
7. Humbly became fully engaged in the process of reparation, mitigation, and healing.
8. Made a list of all persons, groups, and living beings we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people, groups, and living beings wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take inventory of our personal and communally held beliefs and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through a variety of means to improve our conscious embrace and living out of a set of values that contribute to the wellbeing of all ñ ourselves, others, and the planet.
12. Having had an awakening as the result of these steps, we witness to t his life of integrity and courage outside the bounds of doctrinal religious belief by living compassionate lives. * Karen Armstrong, Twelves Steps to a Compassionate Life, (New York, Knopf, 2011) 23.
Gretta Vosper is a minister and atheist. She is a Best-Selling author of two books and founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity.