Apologetics

AA Versus Life Recovery

by Jeff Drinnan
03/30/20
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In a recent article on FaithWriters, I extolled the value of the Life Recovery Bible and its integration with the Twelve Steps and compaired it to the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. In "An Early History of Life Recovery" in the Recovery Bible, I saw in sharper focus the problem with the AA Twelve Steps.

Early on, when Dr. Bob, Bill W., and Dr. Samuel Shoemaker laid the foundations for the Steps, which started with six precepts, they made sure the Steps matched up with God's Word.  And 93 percent of those surveyed in a group never relapsed. I was a miracle! Word got out in our broken world. John D. Rockefeller Jr sent his son to try this faith-based program, and after finding hope in the program, he told his dad that those in the program who conquered their addiction had experienced a conversion experience with God.

During this era, a big businessman whose life was nearly destroyed by alcohol abuse went to the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung for treatment. The guy got straight but relapsed after a year. When he went back to the shrink, Dr. Jung told him he was a nearly hopeless case and that the only possible way he may stay straight is by connecting with a religious group and experience a spiritual awaking. He followed the Doctor's prescription and got straight for good!

Later on AA did not use explicitly Christian language in their literature because they did not want to alienate unbelievers. Consequently, by doing this people lost the connection between Christian values and recovery programs and the message that God gives us the power to overcome sin, which we cannot do on our own. Instead, recovery became secularized and the connection was with medicine and modern psychology.

As the Biblical Counseling Movement founder Dr. Jay Adams wrote, you can't effectively change people using Christian principles without God.

The Life Recovery Bible and its groups is part of a movement that integrates the Bible with the Twelve Steps and restores the program to its original philosophy.

A brother on FaithWriters commented that there should be more faith-based groups like "No Stones In Our Hands", the program I wrote about that holds meetings in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, PA, an epicenter of the drug abuse epidemic.  In my neck of the woods, Bucks County, PA, where many customers shop for dope in Kensington, faith-based programs are growing. In the greater Philadelphia area, there are faith-based programs every night of the week!  And of course, you need to shop around for programs that have the greatest fidelity to God, the same way you would find a church.

The true power greater than ourselves is the God of the Bible. Without God, recovery programs are a house built on sand! “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand."    
-Matthew 7:24:27