Step 2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

What separates humans from other animals and even from other early humanoid beings, is this front part of our brain, the frontal lobes. All vertebrates have them, but in other vertebrates they are much smaller. Ours in comparison are huge. They make up almost one half of our brains size.

Other parts of our brain, and their various functions, are something we share with all animals, even though our brains are of many different shapes. They work automatically. They cause us to breathe, they tell our hearts to beat, they control our metabolism, our need for sleep, our need to eat and drink. Those parts of our brain are on call, thank God, all the time. There’s no turning them on or off willingly.

We share half our brains with everything else, but we only share our developed frontal lobes with each other. They are that part of the brain which makes us, according to our definitions, human.

It is where our consciousness rises from. We can think abstractly about the world- we are not merely reacting to the sticks in our path or to the raindrops or to our instincts, like ants, who don’t have frontal lobes. And unlike dogs or birds or snakes, who do have small frontal lobes, ours have developed in ways that allow us to imagine events before they happen. And that’s the key to our human consciousness. We know, pretty well, the consequences of our actions. And that’s because of something else our frontal lobes enable us to do: remember for a long time.

Our ancestors remembered that where the little trees were growing at the edge of their camp was exactly where they had their old apple cores. Putting that memory together with the all important question, “What if..?” – two important frontal lobe functions- enabled farming to begin. And agriculture- a fairly recent event in human history- changed everything.

Those frontal lobes went into overdrive, because for the first time in maybe a million years of human history, humans no longer had to spend ¾’s of their time thinking about what they were going to eat. They had time to relax, to think, to converse, to philosophize about an endless flow of “What if’s”. They even began, and this is really recent in the history of humans, they even began to write down in an always developing language, some of the things they were thinking about and that they had discovered.

Without frontal lobes, without this uniquely developed human part of our brains, we would, if we existed at all, certainly not be here in this place today. This building would not have been able to be imagined. The lack of memory about how things in our environment interact with each other would have prevented anyone from putting stones on top of each other to build a wall, or to make paper, or to write down, of all the abstract abilities of humans, music!

We would also, without this part of our brains, have never looked beyond the food we needed right now and been able to perceive God. Nor, would we have been able to recognize and respond to the voice of God.

There is a passage in Paul’s letter to the Roman church which talks about this. Now even though the Apostle Paul didn’t know a thing about frontal lobes or brain physiology, he is writing about something here that we can understand in a new and, I think, really interesting context. (In fact, at the time Paul was writing, it was believed that our emotions and most of our thinking came out of our hearts- what this thing up here was, was still something of a mystery.)

Paul was writing to people about the people they lived among in Rome, who didn’t acknowledge or understand God, or who had rejected God. He’s kind of harsh on them, but that’s the way Paul was. His long term memory was filled with memories of jail cells and whippings. Those memories influenced his present thinking, whether he was aware of that or not. Nonetheless, he was a very intelligent and learned man, and great truths emerge from his writing. Romans 1, verse 19:

¹⁹For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; ²¹for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.”

Humans have, Paul is saying, the ability to see beyond what is there in front of them. And if they fail to see the obvious God who is there, as Paul says it’s possible for anyone to see God, they “become futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds are darkened.”

Futile thinking is a lot like the powerlessness that I was talking about last week in Step 1 of the 12 Steps: “We admitted that we were powerless over our dependencies..” Anyone who is focusing inward, toward themselves and themselves only, will end up with a life that becomes unmanageable. Humans need reasons to exist that are larger than themselves. They need to be able to imagine possibilities, to plan, to dream; humans need, and this is what the frontal lobes and God gives us that makes us human, humans need, in order to thrive, the ability to hope.

The addict is without hope. Be it alcohol, drugs, or anything else that stands between humans and their God-given possibilities, hope is sacrificed on the altar of immediate gratification. Self gratification can be- let’s not lie about it- self gratification can be loads o’ fun the first time, or for the first few days, or even for years. I am told that the very first puff of heavy metal laden methamphetamine smoke is almost glorious in its power, as it drains away adrenaline and dopamine reserves that have taken a lifetime to build up. That ‘glory’ will never be experienced again- there are no more reserves to draw upon- but the addict will pursue that false hope for the rest of their short lives.

The drunk begins to sweat and worry about 6:00 on Saturday evening if there is nothing in the house to drink tomorrow. (Liquor stores close early Saturday night and are not open on Sundays.) The bulimic will look forward to those few minutes alone each day when she, or he, can stuff themselves full with fleeting happiness and futile love from the refrigerator or Taco Bell. The shopaholic will hide credit cards, order new ones, and juggle them all for the false sense of immediate power and joyless gratification of buying another pair of shoes, another car, or a new whatever it is that Apple or Microsoft or Abercombie and Fitch says to buy, which will finally make them whole and happy and satisfied.

But the darkness descends. It is inevitable. The need for real joy, the need for happiness, the need for true love- the need for hope, those needs are as hard-wired into our God-imaged consciousness as are the needs we don’t have control over, like breathing. The day inevitably comes when the false light of perversions, or addictions, or dependencies, burns out. The frontal lobes are almost non-functioning at this point, clouded over by the reptilian part of our brain which screams “more more more” of whatever we have been feeding our souls. God’s doorway into the Kingdom of God, has become a static-filled, unreceptive squawk box, full of nothing more than a lot of false information put there by ourselves or accepted by us from others.

It is the darkness of meaninglessness, the joylessness of futility, and there is nothing more awful. Some people, too many people, have no one at that point to reach out to, or have nobody- even more tragically- reaching out to them. And those saddest of human stories ensue.

For the fortunate ones, and there are many of us, for the fortunate ones there are those persons nearby who have not given up on us, moms and dads and grandparents who have never stopped praying for us, friends who able to see beyond the mess we are, who are able, even when we can no longer do it ourselves, to hold onto hope for us.

That hope of others can also be read about. It may be a brochure picked up months ago and stuck on top of the refrigerator- “I’ll get around to reading it someday.” A friend of mine from high school told me that those were her exact words one day eleven years ago. Then one day ten years ago, waking up one morning with someone she didn’t know, again, she went to that little dust covered brochure and read, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol..” And Patty began, again, that morning, despite a horrible hangover, to be born again.

That’s how it works. When we begin to take our own egos out of the equation, the answers will begin, if we let them. Listen to this remarkable little episode written about by the prophet Daniel about 2500 years ago. It’s Daniel 9, beginning at verse 19. He was pleading to God, in a prayer for himself and his people. He had run out of options, as had the nation.

“Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, listen and act and do not delay! For your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people bear your name!”

It’s a demand. He’s pleading, he’s desperate. Here’s what happened, verse 20:

“While I was speaking, and was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God on behalf of the holy mountain of my God— ²¹while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. ²²He came and said to me, ‘Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. ²³At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved.”

At the moment Daniel began to speak, a word went out in the heavens, and Gabriel, messenger of God, was on his way to Daniel. At the moment we are able to say the words of Step Two, however garbled and confused and even silly they may seem, God hears.

“We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

God hears, and Gabriel is on his way. God hears, and Jesus, who’s been knocking at the door for years, has an opportunity to enter in. That’s why, at an AA meeting, surprisingly enough to many people, that’s why there is always room for the drunk who wanders in. A person doesn’t have to be sober to call out in desperation- most of them, in fact, are not. But room is made for even the sick drunk who can barely stand up, because everyone else there knows that a power greater than that drunk, greater than any of them, is on the way. And because of that power, that power that has made, kept, and is keeping them sober, they’ve learned something about God’s love for the least of these, that many people have missed.

For the person who can say that there is a power greater than themselves, even if hey know nothing about the name, the personality, or the history of that power, for the person who can admit that they can no longer manage being the King or Queen of their own lives, for the self-centered person who is able, even for a moment to step out of the spotlight of their terminal unique-ism, for that person, new birth begins. And God is on the way to assist in the delivery.

The sun has begun to just peep over the eastern horizons, a sunrise has just begun. The opening chords of a great symphony, have just sounded. A single swipe of oil paint has just been brushed over what will become an ageless masterpiece. “Behold!” Paul would later write, “all things have become new!”

It is good to mark such a time and place with a symbolic act, so that we remember (and we will need to remember in the days and years ahead), so that we will remember the where, when, how, and why of everything becoming new with us. With one man I was with, it was a joyful emptying of probably $500 worth of liquor from the liquor cabinet which had become a household altar. Another man sat in the parking lot of the church in Dallas and smashed with a hammer a very large collection of porno tapes. Others have cut up all the credit cards except one for emergencies which they then freeze inside a block of ice, which gives them time think should that thing they suddenly “really need” rear its head again.

For me, it was symbolically, prayerfully, with witnesses, handing over to Jesus the last and final six-pack. If I want another one- ever- I’ll have to wrestle it from Jesus’ arms to have it. And I’m not willing to do that.

Now, is all over? Is it a downhill slide at this point into sobriety and wholeness from this point on? There are ten more steps; the answer is no, sobriety has just begun. The important thing though, is that is has begun!

The body will scream for more. The soul will ache with a parched pulse for more of whatever it is that closed down the receptors of the brain to the breath of God. The lies we told ourselves- “I can handle it”, “Just one won’t hurt”, and “I’ll start again tomorrow” will eloquently and seductively begin their song, and dance, again and again. The words, “Unmanageable” , “Came to believe”, and “restored sanity” are not one time spoken events. They need to be repeated daily sometimes, affirmed hourly some days, or breathed constantly to remind ourselves that “God is here, we are not alone, thanks be to God.”

And, finally, what is that sanity to which we hope to be restored? It is that full functioning of those frontal lobes which define our humanity. It is that renewed capacity to see beyond ourselves- to know that we are a part of a community, citizens of the Kingdom of God which we are getting to know better and better. It is the ability to plan beyond the next hour or the next day, it is the renewed ability to imagine our lives in the colors and sounds of continuing Creation, it is the ability to know, as Gabriel told Daniel, that we are greatly beloved.

It is the ability to hope.

Amen

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over ourselves- Hitting Bottom

Two biblical incidents, two different scenarios, two different sets of characters, separated by two thousand years:

The first comes from the beginnings of the story of the Exodus. God is speaking to Moses, getting Moses ready for the role he will play:

Exodus 3: 7-12: Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ ¹¹But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ ¹²He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’

The second incident is from the New Testament. Matthew 8: 5-13: When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him ⁶and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, in terrible distress.’ ⁷And Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ ⁸The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ ¹⁰When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.

As Christians, these are two of our sacred stories. These are two of the stories that we’ve allowed to speak to us across the centuries. A sacred story is not sacred just because it comes from the Bible, but a story is sacred because it speaks to us at our deepest core; it sounds a chord within us. A sacred story can set to life a melody within our beings that allows us to dance in the steps of the Creator.

What do these stories have in common? In both cases, someone had come to end of their personal capacity to cope. They no longer had it in themselves to fix what was wrong in their lives. They had run out of all human resources. They had hit bottom. After many years of slavery, the Israelites in Egypt had lost hope. The Roman centurion was helpless in the face of his beloved servant’s illness. The Israelites cried out to a god they knew very little about after generations of living in Egypt. The Roman centurion went to a wandering Jewish teacher, about whom he had heard, but about whom he knew very little else.

Both the Israelites and the centurion were desperate. But desperation alone has never fixed anything. Both took the next step, the first step, the most difficult step of all and said, in effect, “I need your help.” Both had to reach outside of themselves and admit to another their own lack of resources. They had to drop their pride, their fears of what others would think about them; they had to admit their weakness, their impotency. They had to admit, because there was no further place to fall, that they were at the bottom of their lives and their hopes; they had nowhere else to go.

The words, “I need help” are the most difficult words that most people can say. Pride blocks those words in our throats; none of us wants to admit our dependency on others. Or our personal failures. The first human story in the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve, is a story about each blaming the other, each refusing to take personal responsibility for the misbehavior in which they had been caught. Both refused to say, “I screwed up. I failed. I’m a mess.”

Pride is the cancer at the center of almost every human problem. Because of pride, we strap masks of competency and strength over our faces so we think that the people around us will think that we’re OK, we’re fine, we’re cool, “couldn’t be better!”

Which makes Step One of the Twelve Steps the most difficult one. Here’s how it was originally written by the alcoholics were getting sober:

“We admitted to ourselves that we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

One of those drunks that formulated that statement- because he lived that Step- was a successful surgeon, Dr. Bob. The other was a successful insurance salesman- Bill W. For years, both beginning in college, their lives had been defined by alcohol. It had been a problem, many, many, many times for each of them in different ways. But they would choose, on their own, to not drink for a day or two, even a week or two on occasion. Thus, for years, they fooled themselves; they were able to believe, to convince themselves, that they chose to drink, and they, of their own volition and strength, could choose not to drink.

But Dr. Bob came to a point where he could o longer operate without a nurse giving him drinks of beer to calm his shaking hands. Bill W. came to a point where he was, he knew, going to lose Mrs. W and his family. They met each other at Akron General Hospital, coincidentally some might say, and they began a conversation that continues around the world in hundreds of cities and thousands of meeting rooms, to this very day.

And it was a conversation based on helplessness. They had each tried and tried and tried on their own to stop drinking, but were unable, by themselves, to stop. The Egyptian’s slaves- the Israelites- had lived for generations with the hope that things would somehow get better, but there was always another pyramid to be built, and finally, they gave up that foolish hope. The centurion could command his soldiers and slaves with a single word, but he had no authority, no command whatsoever over the disease of his servant.

The cries heard by Dr. Bob and Bill W., each to the other; the cries heard by God of the Israelites; and the cries heard by Jesus of the centurion, all of these cries were born from the forlorn, lonely, and brutal bottom of these peoples’ lives. And that’s the lesson today, and it’s two-fold: one of those lessons is about helping others to reach the bottom of their lives and the other is about calling out for help ourselves, when we need it.

First, why would we ever want to help another hit the bottom of their existence? Why would we want to see such a terrible thing happen? Here we must discuss what has come to be known as tough love. Unfortunately, more and more people, even here in this town, are being forced to confront it, know about, and act on it. Methamphetamines have made this formerly unknown part of acting love more and more necessary to more and more people. Addiction to any substance will eventually lead to this point, but meth has sped the whole process up exponentially, so the moment a problem is suspected is the moment tough love must be begun. And it will be the second most difficult thing loved ones and friends of the addicted will ever have to go through. The worst thing, of course, is what happens if nothing is done, and that is death.

As long as the meth user, and eventually the alcoholic, the pain-killer addict, or other substance abuser, has access to a warm bed at your house, your checking account, your car, and your enablement, he/she hasn’t hit bottom. And until he/she does hit bottom- that’s the way it works and has worked for 4000 years now- until they hit that bottom where there are no more of their or your resources to draw on, then they have not hit the bottom they must hit in order to cry out for help. As long as there is an illusion existing in their minds that there is a place to sleep, 25 bucks to be gotten, or something they can steal and sell, they are maintaining an illusion of control. And it’s that illusion which will, in the case of meth, kill them. Unless we can help them find whatever there bottom is, they will die.

Tough love is risky, because all we’re doing is increasing the chances that they will live; there are no guarantees. And it will almost always get worse before it gets better. For some parents, and I’ve talked about I right here in town, the goal must be rehab. But if the kid is over 18, that’s not an easy option. That’s when we do what is necessary, and this sounds horribly heartless I know, but when rehab is not possible, then county jail is the next best place. County jails have saved countless lives in the last ten years of the methamphetamine plague, because for many middle class people, that is about as bad as they could ever imagine it getting. County jail at least gives persons the opportunity to sober up, learn a little bit about addiction, and, hopefully- and this is the point- cry out. For the meth addict, there are only two other opportunities to stop- state prison and the funeral home.

I will say this again, if you know of a family facing this kind of crisis, there are people here in town, available anytime, to encourage, care for, and walk them through this tough love process. My number, for one, is on the back of every bulletin, and I’ll help make those kinds of arrangements. And there are others.

Alcohol, even heroin, does not always need that kind of drastic action, but often it does. Those addictions, too, will always end in the early deaths of those addicted or of others. The only saving grace of those problems is that the bottom is often, not always but often, a few steps up from county jail. The unmanageability of one’s life, the inability to take control over something one wants to have control over, is the realized bottom which a person must come to. That can happen in the gutter, in jail, in a rehab center, or even in the living room of one’s own home. Thank God, it can happen in the living room of one’s own home. Confrontation may be enough to start the addict down the road to recovery. Maybe, hopefully. Confrontation takes courage too, of course, lots of it, maybe even a couple years of it. But confrontation is often the very best way possible of saying, “I love you.”

The other lesson to be learned from Dr. Bob and Bill W, from the Israelite slaves, and from the Roman centurion, is about our own need for help. Not just help with addictions. And I want to emphasize again, that’s not what this series on the Twelve Steps is only about. This is about addictions and about becoming better disciples, better followers of Jesus Christ, and more joy-filled, happy humans.

Our own need for help, from God, from others, also involves dropping the mask of invulnerability. It also, to a greater or lesser extent, but no less difficult ways, involves admitting, out loud, to ourselves, that we need help. Just a couple weeks ago, my car stopped running out at the dam one night where we’d taken the dogs to walk. Stick the key in, turn the ignition and that sickening sound of…click, click, nothing. Well, maybe if I turn it this way, or this way, it’s not like there are a lot of options. Maybe if I speak to the key gently, or to the battery harshly. Maybe if I put up the hood, wiggle the wires, look real hard at it in the dark. Maybe. Nope, still nothing.

So, in a mini-process of admitting to myself that I was powerless over my car, and that my life, and that the lives of my wife and the two dogs, for these moments, had become unmanageable, we called friends to help us. They had something we needed- a vehicle that ran to get us out of there. And we were pretty sure that that they had the willingness to help us in our powerlessness.

Not a big deal now, in retrospect. The car got towed the next day, fixed, and got me here this morning. The key to its not being a big deal though, is that we gave up, made the call for help and most importantly, were responded to by people willing, even anxious to help.

Now, as I think back, and I invite you to think back, too, about circumstances you have faced, whenever I’ve been in trouble and asked for help, I’ve gotten it. Maybe not on the first cry, but soon thereafter. “Mommy!” we learn early on to cry out easily when we’ve fallen off our bike, and we knew she’d come running. Later on, after years and layers of pride have settled on our thick hides and thickening hearts, it’s not so easy. I saw a lady get hit by a car in downtown Dallas years ago. Right in front of me. I ran out to her, and she immediately started apologizing for being a bother. 30 seconds earlier she was spinning in the air, and now she was apologizing for needing help. That’s pride. But it’s exactly the same kind of pride- a misbegotten, kind of silly self-love- that has stopped me about ten thousand times from asking for help when I needed it. Or feeling badly when I was forced to.

It’s easier to cry out when we are hurting physically. 9-1-1: that’s what it’s there for. But emotionally and spiritually I’ve needed help many times, too, and tried to suck it up, go it alone, be a man..and accomplished nothing more than strapping the mask of “Nothing Wrong” around myself even more tightly than it had been. And that mask- like meth, or alcohol, or any other destructive fix, can kill us, too. It suffocates us slowly, our own pride asphyxiates us over years. Our fears of needing help, of admitting our weakness, or of expressing needs which we can no longer conjure up solutions for, can choke the happiness from life. It can take the gifts of God’s grace in our lives and turn them mundane. Our pride can make the sacred into something profane, our blessings into joyless desires for more of them.

It’s been said that the three hardest words to say to another person are, “I, love, you.” But the three hardest words we have to say to ourselves are “I, need, help.”

They are hard words to say, but remember the Israelites in the mud pits of Egypt. When they finally said “Help!” they were heard. Remember the Roman centurion, he was heard, too. Think even of some poor slob in his living room one day, 23 years ago, who’d hit that bottom- and would hit bottom again a few more times. Every time he’s hollered help, he’s gotten it.

Psalm 46:1: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble." As are the people of God. But that help begins here, for each of us, by taking off the mask, and admitting to ourselves that we need that help.

Next week, Step Two: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” All of the Steps are liberating, but not all of them are fun. This one can be fun.

Be here, bring a friend.

Amen.