“As We Understood Him”

PRAISE be to Thee, O Lord, my Best Beloved! Make me steadfast in Thy Cause and grant that I may be reckoned among those who have not violated Thy Covenant nor followed the gods of their own idle fancy. Enable me, then, to obtain a seat of truth in Thy presence, bestow upon me a token of Thy mercy and let me join with such of Thy servants as shall have no fear nor shall they be put to grief. (Selections from the Writings of the Báb, p.215)

Although Twelve Step groups are firmly anchored in spirituality, they do not constitute a religion in and of themselves. Rather, the Twelve Steps are described as a “spiritual program” that constitutes an effective framework for the process of abuse and addiction recovery. The Twelve Steps impose no particular image or conception of God upon those who follow them; rather, deliberately and as a point of principle, the conception of God (or “Higher Power”) is left to the discretion of the recovering individual. Step Two suggests that a “Power greater than ourselves” can restore a recovering person to sanity, which leads to Step Three’s decision to “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him“—emphasis preserved.

Baha’is, as a general rule, accept the existence of God. In the eyes of many, they might seem to be ahead of the curve: others who enter the process of recovery with the Twelve Steps have, whether by disillusionment or negative past experience, given up on religion entirely—perhaps along with their belief in God. One might argue, though, that while their acceptance of the existence of a Power greater than themselves may be essential to recovery—and a healthy level of comfort with religious language and terms will help remove certain barriers—it does not necessarily follow that their relationship with God in recovery will be any easier.

As an example, one could consider a person (yes, even a Baha’i) who has a firm belief in the existence of God, but whose personal conception of God is of a judgemental, rigid God who demands perfection and continual sacrifice. While such a conception of God is not borne out by Baha’i teachings, being a Baha’i doesn’t mean understanding every Baha’i teaching perfectly. More often than not, our personal conception of God is patterned upon our early relationships with our very first figures of authority: our parents. If our parents were harsh and judgemental, our conception of God is likely to be harsh and judgemental; if our parents were aloof and distant, our conception of God is likely to be aloof and distant, and so on. We could conclude from our example that just because one identifies with a religion and believes in God, doesn’t mean that one will understand how God can play a positive role in one’s life.

How do the Baha’i writings describe God? Baha’u'llah refers to God as an “unknowable Essence”, whose innermost reality is incomprehensible to human beings. However, through God’s Manifestations, those “Primal Mirrors which reflect the light of unfading glory”, we can know of God’s names and attributes, and come to know His will for us.

“The door of the knowledge of the Ancient of Days being thus closed in the face of all beings, the Source of infinite grace … hath caused those luminous Gems of Holiness to appear out of the realm of the spirit, in the noble form of the human temple, and be made manifest unto all men … By the revelation of these Gems of Divine virtue [i.e. the Manifestations of God] all the names and attributes of God, such as knowledge and power, sovereignty and dominion, mercy and wisdom, glory, bounty, and grace, are made manifest.” (Gleanings, XIX, pp. 46-49)

Similarly ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who states that the reality of man “stands between light and darkness”, says:

“The holy Manifestations of God come into the world to dispel the darkness of the animal, or physical, nature of man … They liberate man from the darkness of the world of nature, deliver him from despair, error, ignorance, imperfections and all evil qualities … ” (Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 465-466)

God, being the All-Knowing, knows that we are the “children of the half-light”; he is aware of our every imperfection, and still, He loves us. That’s why He regularly sends His Manifestations to uplift and educate us, and it’s why we were created. We know from Baha’u'llah’s writings that God created us because of His love for us, that He placed within us the essence of His light, and that He created us rich, noble, and able to mirror forth all of His names and attributes.

Realizing that God loves us no matter what we do is often a challenge to those of us who have adopted negative core beliefs about ourselves, e.g. “Nobody will ever love me”, “I’ll always be a bad person”, etc. As we begin to accept and understand our positive relationship with God, the All-Merciful, the Loving Creator, we challenge these destructive core beliefs, and we begin to re-examine our relationships with our family of origin—which is, more often than not, where those core beliefs were nurtured, and where our negative conceptions of God were born.

Step Five and “Confession”

Of particular concern to all Baha’is involved with addiction recovery and Twelve Step programs is Baha’u'llah’s interdiction on the confession of sins, as given in His Tablet of Bisharat (Glad-Tidings):

When the sinner findeth himself wholly detached and freed from all save God, he should beg forgiveness and pardon from Him. Confession of sins and transgressions before human beings is not permissible, as it hath never been nor will ever be conducive to divine forgiveness. Moreover such confession before people results in one’s humiliation and abasement, and God—exalted be His glory—wisheth not the humiliation of His servants.

In examining the Twelve Steps, one finds that Step Five—which is meant to follow an intense period of self-examination through the taking of a fearless and searching moral inventory—asks the recovering person to “admit to God, to [them]selves and to another human being the exact nature of [their] wrongs.” Does this constitute the sort of “confession of sins” forbidden by Baha’u'llah? In a letter to an individual Baha’i dated 26 August 1986, the Universal House of Justice indicates that “the sharing of experiences which the members [of Twelve Step groups] undertake does not conflict with the Baha’i prohibition on the confession of sins; it is more in the nature of the therapeutic relationship between a patient and a psychiatrist.”

So, with all this in mind, how can we go about Step Five? Well, Baha’u'llah has revealed a useful prayer for when we go about admitting to God the exact nature of our wrongs. It can be found in the ninth Glad-Tidings—in the same place He writes about confession, He shows us a way we can confess our sins directly to the God of our understanding. From God, He writes, we should “implore mercy from the Ocean of mercy” and “beg forgiveness from the Heaven of generosity”. God alone knows everything that is in our hearts, and from Him, Baha’u'llah tells us, we are to seek forgiveness and mercy.

And as for performing Step Five with another human being? The inventory we complete as part of Step Four is a “sharing of experiences” that does not constitute confession. The person with whom we choose to complete Step Five, being just one among the many creations of God, can never have the same special relationship with us as we have with our Creator. Therefore, while we are free to recount to them the things that have befallen us during our days, we should expect neither mercy nor forgiveness nor any form of absolution from them. Rather, the effect of this sharing of experiences is to break the secrecy surrounding these dark periods of our lives and to remove the power they have had over us. As the recovery slogan says, “we are only as sick as our secrets.” The simple act of sharing with a sponsor or partner in recovery something which we have spent our lives hiding, of bringing forth that secret source of shame into the light of day, allows us to see it objectively, for what it really is—no more, no less. Among other things, this new perspective helps us to know our own selves better, to “recognize that which leadeth unto loftiness or lowliness”, in a way that might not have been possible had we tried to face our shame alone.