It’s Easter week, so I’d like to throw a log on this fire.

The 12 steps were originally based in Christian belief, so I want to speak to the original interpretation of God as it was intended by the founders of AA and your interpretation here.

I like how you have stepped the 3rd step down to a level where it can be easily understood. I think the problem with any statement such as

“we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood god.”

is that it is so loaded with meaning and implication that it just scares people to death. In this article I think that you have done a great job of bringing the dreaded 3rd step down to earth.

I do have a bit of a different perspective on the definition of God however. In the original Christian context, “God” represents the “unknown and unknowable,” or “the Almighty.” In other words, God is beyond human understanding or knowledge.

This is not an easy concept for even a Christian to accept or understand. How can we relate to something that we don’t even comprehend?

However, Christians have an “out.” They have an intermediary in the form of Jesus. The same applies to Jews and Muslims, who reach God through Moses and the Prophet.

I have always wondered how people who are not of the Abrahamic faiths interpret the 3rd step. As a Christian, Jew or Muslim, I would interpret the third step to encompass the act of a leap of faith. I am placing my fate and my life in the hands of God. This is an act of profound spiritual significance, and AA members who have completed the 3rd step demonstrate incredibly strong faith.

When I read your interpretation of God, I don’t sense the same spiritual strength. This is not a stab at you, because I know that you are a very spiritual person. However, “a power greater than myself” just doesn’t resonate with me the same way that “The unknowable” does.

I worry that by creating their own god, people will fall short of achieving the same spiritual fulfilment as they would if they were Christian, Jewish or Muslim. How could a single person create and conceive of anything greater than themselves, especially when they are in the despairing depths of alcoholism? Won’t any standard of goodness that they create be tainted by their own failing self-esteem or broken self-image?

I have been sitting here wondering if a Buddhist or Native American interpretation would be more appropriate, but I think the same problem will still emerge. In Buddhism you’ll come right up against the “unknowable” when you start thinking of dharma, and in Native spirituality, the same thing will happen when you come to Nature or the Great Spirit.

I am really wondering if it is it even possible to take a humanist interpretation of the 3rd step.

Thoughts?