Page 66 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

WE AGNOSTICS 45
would have recovered long ago. But we found that
such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter
how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we
could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact,
we could will these things with all our might, but the
needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as
marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed
utterly.
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. Obviously. But where
and how were we to find this Power?
Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its
main object is to enable you to find a Power greater
than yourself which will solve your problem. That
means we have written a book which we believe to
be spiritual as well as moral. And it means, of course,
that 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 as we discuss his alcoho-
lic problems and explain our fellowship. But his face
falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially
when we mention God, for we have re-opened a sub-
ject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or
entirely ignored.
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. Perhaps we re-
jected this particular conception because it seemed
inadequate. With that rejection we imagined we had
abandoned the God idea entirely. We were bothered