Two Worlds

Chapter One

Two Worlds:  Chapter One     Into

What Are these two worlds?

Faith is a world built on belief of a certain order.  Faith world has the unnegotiable tenants, and the malleable ones.  Faith world has its tribal rules which vary from location.  Faith world has it’s traditions which vary from location to location.  Faith world is tribal.  Things change depending on the nature of local assembly.  So, if you are a recovery troop and you are talking to a Faith person you need to feel out where they are coming from.  It can be a bit like a foreign country.  You just landed from another planet.  You need an interpreter to guide you thru the customs and the traps.  A much-known example.  If you as a Recovery troop are asked about God.  You foolishly might say ‘You mean my higher power god?’  Will maybe?  God?  Yes, you say!  As in Group of Drunks!  You get this look.  This is unacceptable!  I do not compute!  Then you try and explain.  You are eager to shed light on the heathen.  Yes, you know God as I understand Him?  This is not going well!   The look is dawning mix of pity and disgust!  And then an evangelist to the heathen look.  What a boon thinks the Christian I am a missionary to the unwashed heathens.  Of course, the Recovery troop reads this a mile away.  In his active years he has conned these guys out of everything.  Charity is foolishness to the semi active addict.

Thus, you can see how far apart the worlds can be.  Yet each group has so much to learn from the other.

My job in this book is to try and give each group a peak into the other group.

To the recovery group many of the customs of Faith people will be familiar, but with different names.  Let us look at the Big Book movement.  Big Book people think you need to work the program exactly like it is written in the big Book Chapter 5. To faith people this is very familiar.  To them it is fundamentalist versus maybe emergent or liberal or many different names.  Remember both crews are people doing society work.  Recovery people are serving the still suffering addict and alcoholics.  Faith people are serving Jesus hopefully and saving the lost.  What could go wrong here?  How could these two groups have issues? 

There are so many similarities, but the differences are crucial.

What does morality look like to recovery folk?  It depends on who you talk to.  To most secular recovery people recovery is getting back to decent.  They want to be away from the scumbag way they lived and become a decent member of society.  You don’t steal, you don’t lie, you become a stand-up guy.  Biblical morality is not an absolute.  Physical relationships are mostly governed by the one-year rule or something similar.  Honesty is encouraged as a measure of recovery.  Theft and assault are considered not part of recovery.  Sexual morality is generally gauged by the measure of the endangering of relapse.  Most things are judged by the relapse test, the morality is sober and clean is good.  Anything else is judged by if it will leads to a drink.  Generally predatory behavior toward vulnerable newly sober people is considered not good.  Adultery is considered not good.  More a breach of good behavior.  But biblical morality is dismissed.  In general, if a poll were taken most people would be ok with liberal and emergent churches.  Conservative churches would get negative ratings.  For the conservative Christians in recovery fellowships the attitude prevails to be seasoning, but don’t confront the resistant part of the fellowship.

With this description you can imagine where faith troops come down.  For liberal churches they still welcome the secular recovery groups.  There really is not much difference.  When you get to evangelical and more holiness churches, and conservative denominations there is resistance.  For these churches they often import ministries like Celebrate Recovery, a Saddleback creation by Rick Warren.  These ministries are often staffed by lay people who started up in secular programs.  These folks migrated over because they felt ostracized by negative reactions to any Jesus talk.

I loved AA, but I had to leave.  I needed to talk about Jesus.  And the reaction was quick and negative if you even tried to talk about Jesus.  This is a foolish move by secular recovery programs.  It is no surprise when CR defends it’s right to be in your face about Jesus.  And it is no surprise they are conservative about morality.  CR is for church folks by church folks, and you follow church rules.

So, faith folks make their own flavor of recovery.  What could go wrong?  What could go right?

End Chapter One