"First, let us face it [sin] for a fact. Face the worst, in
reality and in possibility. Don't brood on it, but face it . Are you
afraid you have an incurable disease? Face it: get a thorough medical
examination, be honest with yourself, and with those who have the
right to know about you. Do you have a dark spot of unbelief in your
heart, so that your religion is a kind of wearing of a mask? Face it:
admit it to yourelf; remind yourself that it is not a final condition
of mind, and expose yourself to searching religious experience, and to
reading great books about religion. But don't fool yourself, be honest
with yourself - and be especially honest as to the possible moral
causes for unbelief in yourself, where sin hides faith from our eyes.
Is there sin gnawing away at the vitals of your life? Face it: don't
say you are not taking account of it, it's not a very big sin, you
think it may wear off. Sin doesn't work that way. Look it in the face,
and grapple with it, else you will carry it with you. Is your
conscience pressing something upon you which you do not want to do?
Face it: don't flinch and run away, for you cannot alter your deepest
conviction, you can only obey it, or live a divided life'." [Samual
M. Shoemaker, If I Be Lifted Up]
"Imagine you are transferring the ownership of your life to God
in the same way you would transfer ownership of a business. One of the
first things you would do in negotiating to sell a business would be
to take an inventory to discover the damaged or out-of-date goods that
are no longer salable. In Step Four we call it a "moral"
inventory because we compile a list of traits and behaviors that have
transgressed our highest, or moral, values. We also inventory our
"good" traits and the behaviors that represent them. In our
life's moral inventory the defects or dysfunctional behaviors might
include some that once worked; some dysfunctional behaviors may have
saved our lives as children, but they are now out-of-date,
self-defeating, and cause us a great deal of trouble when we use them
as adults." [Keith Miller, A Hunger for Healing, Harper,1991]
"Our understanding of the moral nature of the inventory will be
greatly enhanced if we first distinguish between moral and moralistic.
When we are moralistic, we are judgmental and opinionated. Our
language is full of shoulds and oughts. As John Keller states: "moralism
is 'shouldism': You shouldn't feel that way." Moralism is about
finger pointing and blaming. It is highly conditional, critical and
nonaccepting. Moral, on the other hand, evaluates right and wrong in
accordance with God's law of love, as exemplified by the life and
teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. A moral inventory uses the law of love
as its standard." [Martin M. Davis, The Gospel and the Twelve
Steps, RPI Publishing, 1993]
"Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover
what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to
find exactly how, when and where our natural desires have warped us.
We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and
ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can
move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort
to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us.'
[Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, AA World Services,
1952]
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- Searching.
The word searching implies that we are looking
for something that has been hidden and that we will need to be
thorough in our efforts. When we start working Step Four we quickly
realize how instinctive it is for us to be evasive, to blame, to get
distracted. Most of us have not taken inventory of ourselves in a
long time - maybe never. We have hidden the truth from ourselves and
it will now take a disciplined effort to pay attention.
It is probably important to emphasize that nothing in this Step is
meant to suggest that we are globally responsible for everything. We
may have been harmed in many ways by others. But the heart of this
Step is to begin identifying the things for which we are
responsible. We cannot fix anyone else. We cannot take
responsibility for other people's poor choices. But we can start to
identify the things for which we are responsible.
Working this Step will require a sustained effort to get past all
the creative forms of denial that have protected us from the truth.
Fortunately, God is prepared to help us in this task. We do well to
pray with the Psalmist:
"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my
anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead
me in the way everlasting." [Psalm 139:23-24]
Fearless Calling this self evaluation 'fearless' might be
confusing. It doesn't mean we will not be afraid. That's a bit too
much to expect. We will experience fear. To call an inventory
fearless means that we will be courageous in the face of our fears.
When the fear comes - and it will come - we will keep on. For many
of us, our addictions are the main tool we have used for managing
our fears. Letting go of that destructive pattern and continuing to
work this Step in spite of the fear will create a new and
potentially lifesaving pattern for fear management.
Moral Inventory. Inventory taking is not a new idea. The
early church knew the importance of this spiritual discipline and
connected it directly to it's public worship. As Paul said, "A
man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks
of the cup" [1 Corinthians 11:28]. Unfortunately, this
spiritual discipline has been abused at various times in the history
of the Christian church. It has been used against people rather then
for them. It has been used to create shame rather than freedom. But
most commonly the biblical mandate for inventory taking has simply
been ignored. And we have suffered spiritually as a result.
A moral inventory is not just a listing of bad actions for which we
are responsible. It might help to think of Step Four as essentially
a restatement of Lamentations 3:4:
"Let us examine our ways and test them and let us return to the
Lord"
This puts it well: we are to examine our ways, the character of our
lives. In the Twelve Step tradition people are given a structure, a
process and a community that helps them in this self examination. In
Twelve Step programs people are often encouraged to begin a moral
inventory by focusing on resentments. While this might seem at first
like a focus on how other people have hurt us, in reality it is part
of the process of taking responsibility for our own actions. The
resentments which we inventory are our resentments. They are how we
have chosen to respond to painful situations. As we begin to take
full responsibility for the way we have responded to life, we
gradually learn to let go of things for which we are not responsible
and to hold ourselves accountable for our own actions and responses.
Resentments are an important focus because they are one of the most
common causes of relapse in recovery. There is an old slogan in AA
that says this well: "Having a resentment is like drinking
poison and expecting someone else to die."
A second focus that is frequently encouraged in Twelve Step programs
is a focus on fears. The reason for doing a moral inventory of our
fears is that, next to resentments, fears are one of the things that
most commonly lead us to relapse. Making an inventory of our fears
forces us to look closely at how we manage our fears. As we look at
what makes us afraid we will be given many opportunities to find out
how thoroughly we have worked Step Three. Gradually we will learn
that God can be helpful to us when we are afraid. Gradually,
one-day-at-a-time, we can turn our fears over to a Power greater
than our own.
Go on to
Step Five
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