| Narcotics Anonymous mentions
God in five out of twelve of its steps, four times by using the word “God”
and once as “Him.” Some also believe that the “Power greater than
ourselves” mentioned in the Second Step is the same as the “God as we understood
Him” in Steps Three and Eleven.
You wouldn’t necessarily
assume, therefore, that the word “God” occupies a somewhat controversial
place in Narcotics Anonymous. But that’s been exactly the case ever
since NA started to grow and attract different kinds of people as members.
NA’s tradition of having
no opinion on outside issues doesn’t mean that outside forces don’t affect
NA or that its members aren’t shaped by cultural factors. Just the
opposite!
When NA as we know it today
first started in 1953 in Southern California, it adopted a slightly modified
version of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Perhaps without
intending to, NA also adopted quite a bit of AA’s conventional wisdom of
the time. Some insight into AA’s philosophy regarding “God” can perhaps
be gained by reading the following excerpt from the Big Book of Alcoholics
Anonymous, written by Bill W, the program’s founder:
“Lack of power, that was
our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it
had to be a Power greater than ourselves.… We are going to talk about God.
Here difficulty arises with agnostics. Many times we talk to a new
man and watch his hope rise . . . but his face falls when we speak of spiritual
matters, especially when we mention God.
“We know how he feels.
We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been
violently anti-religious. To others, the word ‘God’ brought up a
particular idea of Him with which someone had tried to impress them during
childhood.
“Much to our relief, we discovered
we did not need to consider another’s conception of God. Our own
conception, however inadequate, was sufficient.”
Drawing from this, it appears
that AA’s original idea of a Higher Power, as put forth by Bill W., was
not a radical departure from the Judeo-Christian beliefs of the majority
culture at the time—that is, America in the 1930s.
Things hadn’t changed much
by the time NA began forming in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It
is interesting to note that a version of “the steps,” which was developed
in New York about 1950, did not mention the word “God” at all in the first
twelve steps, but the thirteenth step read simply “God help me” (quite
a difference from what is sneeringly called “the thirteenth step” today).
Though it’s impossible to
know what the original members of Narcotics Anonymous shared about in recovery
meetings and how they talked about a Higher Power, the earliest NA literature
uses the word “God” only in its adaptation of AA’s Twelve Steps and in
the Serenity Prayer. There is no mention of “God,” a “Power greater
than ourselves,” or a “Higher Power” in the other parts of the original
brownish-beige pamphlet written in 1954. A few sentences from “What
Is the NA Program?” appear in that pamphlet almost exactly as they do in
the White Booklet today, with a couple of notable exceptions. The
assurance that “anyone may join” does not have the final phrase “lack of
religion.” This was added to the first White Booklet published in
the early 1960s. The statement that today reads “Many of us . . .
sought help through medicine, religion, and psychiatry. None of these
methods was sufficient for us” originally read “Medicine and psychiatry
had no answers for us.” Religion wasn’t mentioned.
From this we can conclude
that these ideas were added to NA literature because a majority of the
members believed that the “spiritual, not religious” nature of the NA program
needed additional emphasis.
Although there were probably
dramatic changes taking place in NA’s membership throughout the 1970s and
early 1980s, especially as NA developed outside the United States in places
where the predominant culture was not Judeo-Christian, there weren’t any
significant changes to NA’s written ideas about a Higher Power during that
time. When the Basic Text was published in 1983, it was really the
first time a wide variety of the fellowship’s views about spirituality,
God, a Higher Power, etc., were compiled and presented as the collective
wisdom and experience of NA as a whole.
The sum and substance of
NA’s thinking about a Higher Power appears in the following quoted material,
which has remained unchanged (except for a minor grammatical correction)
through six different editions of the Basic Text:
“At some point, we realized
that we needed the help of some Power greater than our addiction.
Our understanding of a Higher Power is up to us. No one is going
to decide for us. We can call it the group, the program, or we can
call it God. The only suggested guidelines are that this Power be
loving, caring, and greater than ourselves. We don’t have to be religious
to accept this idea.”
“Our concept of God comes
not from dogma, but from what we believe and what works for us. Many
of us understand God to be simply whatever force keeps us clean.
The right to a God of your understanding is total and without any catches.”
Looking back at NA’s growth
over the decades since this was written, only now can we truly appreciate
the breadth and depth of spiritual bedrock laid by these statements.
It is almost as if the writers of the Basic Text could see into the future
and knew that NA’s presentation of spirituality would have to be inclusive
enough to accommodate members from all over the world with all of their
accompanying languages and cultures.
Still, there have been efforts
to build even more inclusiveness into NA’s program. One of the most
significant was embodied in the decision of the World Service Conference
Literature Committee to make sure that all new literature created for the
fellowship would refer to God in gender-neutral terms and try as often
as possible to include the qualifier “of our understanding” along with
uses of the word “God.”
A few times, this resulted
in some amusing comments during the development of It Works: How and Why.
During committee meetings, committee members reviewed draft material and
pointed out places where the text read simply “God” instead of “a God of
our understanding.” The phrase “naked God” was coined to describe
these places. We can only imagine the reaction if someone had walked
into a WSCLC meeting without knowing the background and heard a committee
member say, “There’s a naked God on line four in the third paragraph.
Can we do something about that, please?”
Amusement aside, the decision
stood. With few exceptions, “God” is usually “of our understanding”
in It Works: How and Why. The committee also tried to use the phrases
“Higher Power” and “a Power greater than ourselves” instead of “God” as
often as possible.
Some input received from
a member of the fellowship during the development process pointed out that
the committee’s efforts were still falling short in one area. There
was no material that addressed belief in a higher power that wasn’t a supernatural
deity, and using various terms—God of our understanding, Higher Power,
Power greater than ourselves—to describe the same concept did not promote
inclusiveness. In response, the committee included more discussion
about non-supernatural higher powers such as the spiritual principles of
the program, the NA group, etc.
In 1993, the same year It
Works was approved by the fellowship, a motion was brought to the World
Service Conference to change wording in the steps and traditions that referred
to God as “He” or “Him” to language that was completely gender-neutral.
Conference participants believed that the issues surrounding the motion
went far deeper than the language of the motion and decided to send the
motion and some accompanying explanation out to the fellowship for further
discussion.
The NA Way Magazine (it was
a monthly publication at the time) joined in the effort to promote discussion
of “Motion 39”—the number the motion was assigned in conference proceedings
and by which the motion became widely known. The magazine provided
a special forum consisting of three or four pages in each issue for members
to express their viewpoints about the language used to describe God in
NA.
The discussions and sharing
ranged far from the original motion to change the gender reference; many
expressed the opinion that it was time to eliminate the word “God” from
NA’s vocabulary altogether. Their opinions were answered in strongly
worded editorials by those who believed just the opposite.
While it was true that much
antagonism and disrespect accompanied the discussions, the positive effect
of the discussions can’t be discounted. Many members got the opportunity
to hear about understandings of God that they may never have heard otherwise.
English-speaking members had the opportunity to learn that in other languages,
not only did the word “God” have a gender, so did regular old nouns and
verbs. The designation of a word as “masculine” or “feminine” had
nothing to do with sexism; it was just a point of grammar. Everybody
had the opportunity to become more open-minded and more sensitive to other
people’s viewpoints.
When the issue of changing
the steps and traditions returned to the WSC in 1996 for a final decision,
it was defeated, but the open-mindedness and sensitivity remained.
New literature, including the Step Working Guides approved at WSC’98, steadfastly
maintained WSCLC’s commitment to using inclusive language and even elaborated
on the concept of inclusiveness itself.
Throughout all the changes
and discussions, at least one thing hasn’t changed a bit: the desire of
NA members to carry the message of recovery to as many addicts as possible.
As it says in the introduction to the Basic Text, “Everything that occurs
in the course of NA service must be motivated by the desire to more successfully
carry the message of recovery to the addict who still suffers.” Who
could argue with that?!
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