In my last post I referred to #4 of 12 Step Recovery that says, “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Then I used Paul’s letter to the Romans as a basis for some soul searching.

In the process of taking my own inventory, I sensed again why 12 Step Recovery has been used in the treatment of so many consuming and addictive problems. Not only is Step 4 consistent with the Bible’s, “Search me and know my heart,” but the rest of the 12 Steps are also rooted in the spiritual legacy of the Scriptures.

Yes, churchmen have often criticized the founders of AA for replacing the God of the Bible with “God as we understand him.” If 12 Step Recovery is regarded as a substitute for a Christ-centered faith, then any number of issues can be rightfully pressed. But I’m thinking that those of us who object need to be ready for another question. Does our way of “doing church” leave out elements of Christ-centered wisdom that the founders of 12 Step Recovery included?

Even in suggesting in my last post the importance of taking inventory, I realize that if “taking inventory” is going to help in the face of consuming problems, it needs a context that is at least as “biblical” as the whole program of AA.

Look again at the Twelve Steps and look at their parallel to the wisdom of the Bible. And if we’re going to focus on what they leave out– are we ready to include in our own “church life” what Recovery does more faithfully than we do?

Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over _____-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

If we can agree that such principles don’t make a church– can we also agree that if our church experience lacks appropriate Christ-centered equivalents– we have lost our ability to bring transformation to broken people– like us.

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