Create Your Own Concept of God

I was at a noon meeting today and the topic was "Love." A guy who just picked up his 6 month chip shared that he was working on his 3rd step and was feeling some love from and for his Higher Power, but that he was struggling with some "hate" that he still had toward his higher power. Hate was what he felt when he thought about the "fact" that his God had created him to be an alcoholic and that ended up resulting in much pain and suffering, not only for this guy but also for many other victims strewn along the path of his life.

I talked to him after the meeting and shared with him that in my view, one of the great things about AA is the fact that if there's something you hate about your Higher Power, you can change it! You can come up with a new understanding of your higher power. That's one of the main things that distinguishes AA from religions or cults: In a religion, if your concept of "their" God gets too far out of whack, they excommunicate you. In a cult, if your concept of "their" God gets too far out of whack, they kill you. In AA, they listen to you and most often nod their head in understanding and laugh (or cry) along with you.

I then shared with him my own personal God Myth: In the beginning, there was God and nothing else. God was lacking Love, because Love requires an "other" to love. And since there wasn't anything but God, God was very very lonely. So, out of Love, God created. God created all things. And in each "thing" God tried to place a spark of Love in such a way that God could escape the terrible loneliness that God experienced since the beginning of time. There were sparks of Love placed in all forms of existence, dirt, stones, water, light, planets, stars and animals and human beings. Lots of experimentation in this process.

It wasn't until God discovered that Love requires that the "other" have the freedom to choose between right and wrong, good and evil...that the "other" attains the ability or capacity to return Love to the creator. Without free will, there can be no Love.

And once there was free will, then there began the whole waterfall of consequences to each act of free will: both good and bad, both hate and love, both harm and healing. One right after the other.

In my myth, this is about the time when God stopped "doing" things. Once things got started with people making free choices, there was nothing left to do but watch and wait. For God to intervene after the gift of free will, God would return to the lonely existence he'd found escape from by creating others with the freedom to choose from a wide array of choices and to suffer/benefit from such choices and to inflict blessings/harms to all those around and after them.

So my God's one who just sits and watches. Hurting with the hurt and the hurters. Laughing. Crying. Laughing. Waiting for the Beloved to be what they were created to be: Beloved.

In my myth of God, I have no hatred or anger toward God. Certainly no anger over the fact that I became an alcoholic! I have nothing but gratitude for my becoming an alcoholic for were it not for that blessing, I wouldn't be where I am today, right now, right here. No. I'd be back in the lonely and isolated existence that I'd come to know at the very end of my drinking career. Interesting isn't it? The ending of my drinking placed me in the same lonely existence that my God experienced before coming upon the idea of creating another with a spark of Love and freedom to choose....

Take care!

Mike L.