A 4th Option for the God Question...

Typically, members of AA (and others) characterize themselves as being atheist (they believe no God exists), theist (believe God exists) or agnostic (not sure if God exists). I've been all three over the last six years of recovery, oftentimes on the same day, and as a result, this vacillating spirit most often leads me to identify myself in meetings as an agnostic, one who just doesn't know if God exists. I realized this last week that this Agnostic ID has never really felt comfortable to me and I've come up with a 4th philosophical position on the question of God's existence.

Before I go on to describe a 4th alternative to the God question, I do want to mention that these three belief characterizations of myself or others really don't mean much at all to me. What I mean by that might best be explained by example: one of my sponsors characterizes himself as an atheist, but when I ask him to describe in more detail the "God" he doesn't believe in, I find that he and I agree on "that" God's non-existence --- and he's still an atheist and I might very well on that day still be a theist.

How can that be? I think it's because the word "God" means something different to each of us. It's possible for you and me both to say "I believe in God." AND both be in utter and absolute disagreement about who God is. And it's possible for one person to say he doesn't believe in God and me to say that I do believe in God and the two of us can very well be believers of the same thing.

All that said, I decided this last week that I'm no longer going to characterize myself, at least in recovery settings, as atheist, agnostic or theist. They don't work for me anymore. I have decided that I'm an "apatheist". Not sure if that was a word before just right now. If I'm defining this word though (guess I can do that on my own blog!) it means "one who simply doesn't care if God exists or not."

And, in the context of my recovery, I really don't care if God exists.

I'm an Apatheist because I did not find or keep a freedom from the obsession to drink by way of a belief in any sort of God or Deity. My higher power in recovery, oftentimes in life, isn't God. It's Truth.

What freed me from this horrible obsession was when I woke up the morning of October 20, 2001 and realized that my inability to stop drinking was a result of the simple fact that I was an alcoholic. That alcoholism was a disease and I had it. That Truth, which I then shared with others, set me free.

There was no God part to it. You may see God in there, but I didn't.

Whether God was or wasn't part of that spiritual awakening, doesn't seem relevant to me at all. I really don't care one way or another. I found freedom from an obsession which had long been increasing it's death grip on me and which had led me the stage of this progressive disease where I could no longer stop by an exertion of will power.

As a confirmed Apatheist, I feel compelled to point out that I joyfully and repeatedly steal prayers and other spiritual practices used by others and use them to better understand myself and the world I live in. Many of these prayers I modify to suit my needs or beliefs. As you know, I don't pray in the context of AA meetings, but I do pray in my private life on a daily basis, sometimes as theist, sometimes as agnostic. It helps me with living.

As a friend of mine says, the name of her higher power is Whatever! That seems acceptable to me as apatheist.

Mike L.