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Speaking from personal experience, I know that the concept of “Let go and let God” can be difficult at first.  For some of us, however, it eventually becomes a comfort and way of life.  Some of us even become convinced that a belief in God (with a capital “G”) is essential to sobriety, and so we decide to let everyone know about it.  

This can be off-putting, to say the least, for other folks who have either different spiritual beliefs, or perhaps no belief at all.  We tell these folks that all we need is to admit that we can’t do it alone, that our god can be a tree, or the group.  Nonetheless, most of our literature (in particular, Ch. 4 of the AA Big Book) gives the impression that we think of non believers as poor deluded folks who will eventually come around to our version of the truth.

The Big Book(s) aren’t wrong, but they aren’t everything we need to know and understand. Continue reading →