Eyre Lines

What I am writing here is, in bits, my witness, my apologia, my main share.

Dealing with the last things first (the first shall be last in the Kingdom of Heaven) I am a member of a Twelve Step programme and have been for something like 10 years, I suppose, though I only started to take the programme seriously in late 2006. What I write here is not, however, primarily about any particular twelve step programme or even about twelve step programmes generally.

A bit about Twelve step programmes

I am not writing for twelve step members, so if you are a twelve stepper you can probably skip this bit. However, I am a member of a twelve step programme and probably qualify for at least three others (I’ve only been to actual meetings of one of those), and it has been important in forming the way I think about some things, so you need to know where I am coming from.

In Twelve Step programmes, there is a practice called a “main share”. This involves a member giving a short  account of their life with reference to the programme, and frequently takes the form of sharing their “Experience, strength and hope”.  Another way of putting it is “What I was like, what happened, and what I am like now”. Often this takes place at the beginning of a meeting in which other members will in turn share more briefly aspects of their own experience strength and hope which have been brought to their attention by something they heard in the main share.

Members are expected to listen politely and attentively to each others and not to interrupt, nor in general to argue with other members, though they can (and often do) pick up a difference and share that for them, it was like this.

They are encouraged to listen attentively and to listen especially for similarities, not differences, and in that way they may be helped to understand their own situation or to remember something in their own past which has brought them to where they are.

Twelve step states that it is not a religious programme, it is a spiritual programme, but in it are a number of references to “God”. Some of them add the words “as you understand him”, and step 2 reads “Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity”. Twelve step programmes are all based on overcoming some problem of addiction or compulsion (there are quite a few variants), and this addiction or compulsion is thought to involve a form of insanity which needs to be removed.

People will share that a variety of things have been sufficient as a “higher power”, including in some cases the AA group itself, in other cases the concept of “Good”, or “Good orderly direction” (G.O.D.) You are entirely free to choose whatever concept works for you, as long as it does work – and you can change your mind about what concept you use, as many members do.

In fact, the first twelve step programme (Alcoholic Anonymous, on which all the others are more or less closely based) made use of the programme developed by the Oxford Group, which was at least initially an evangelical Christian movement. However, AA saw that a specific religious affiliation was unhelpful to it’s one and only purpose, which was to help alcoholics to recover, and adjusted its thinking and wording accordingly, and there are now AA members of very many religions and of no religion, including atheists.

I think it possible that St. Paul’s “thorn in the side” was an addiction or compulsion. Certainly the way he writes about it fits well with it being something like that. I certainly view myself as having a number of thorns in my own side. If you read all of what I write, you’ll probably work out what at least one of them is, maybe more. But I am not writing about my recovery either, except insofar as that is part of my experience and has given me part of my strength and part of my hope.

A bit about witness

What I write is also my witness, my statement of my faith in something I call ”God”, and in Jesus Christ (as I understand him to have talked and acted and been), and in the transformative power of that faith. I use the word “faith” to indicate more “love and trust” than belief in its normally understood form. In the faith tradition I work within, it is encouraged to witness to others, and that I try to do wherever it is reasonable. As such it is technically “evangelical”, but again not in the way that word is commonly understood these days. I do not approve of “in your face” evangelism in any form; if you have a faith, I agree with the Dalai Lama, who said to someone who had talked with him and been inspired by his words, and asked if he should therefore consider becoming a Buddhist “No, go and become a better Christian”.

Apologia

An apologia is a rational justification of someone’s beliefs. Mostly, it is rationalisation after the fact. In other words, I didn’t get the faith I have by justifying it rationally, but it helps me to maintain that faith if I can defend the beliefs I have against anyone saying that what I believe is wrong, it gives me a basis on which I can ground an attempt to construct a better reason if someone does manage to demonstrate that something I believe is wrong, and it helps to convince my rational mind that what my emotional mind is saying to me in this particular instance is acceptable.

I’m actually a bit sceptical that anyone else gets to faith (as opposed to belief) by a process of rational argument either. The discipline of “Apologetics” often seems to me to be designed to convince other people by rational argument, but actually I think it doesn’t do that very well, or possibly even at all. My own experience and that of other people I’ve talked with seems to indicate that this is right, but I’m always open to hearing new evidence.

However, I’ve been helped a lot in the past by reading people explaining how they rationalised their own beliefs. This teaches me about them, it teaches me about the processes of rationalisation and it helps me do my own rationalisation. I’ll admit that it more often does the latter by making me think about why I don’t believe the same things they do, but occasionally it makes me adjust my beliefs.

I don’t hold any beliefs which I am so attached to that they can’t be changed in the light of new evidence or some challenge to my rationalisation, I do have a faith (love and trust) which I don’t think can be changed.

Tailpiece

I hope that when reading what I write here you can take it in the sense of a twelve step main share. I am always glad to have people share back to me their own stories, and if your reasoning disagrees with some of my own reasoning, I’m open to discussion. But it isn’t going to be productive if you say “This is not what I (my church, whatever other form of authority you use) says is the case, so you’re wrong”. That is their witness, their main share. It isn’t mine.