"All of A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural
desires. . . they deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation,
few Steps are harder to take than Five. But scarcely any Step is more
necessary to longtime sobriety and peace of mind than this one."
[Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, AA World Services,
1952]
"The thing to do with sin is to do what Nicodemus did: go and
search out someone with whom we can talk privately and frankly. Tell
them of these things and, with them as witness, give these sins and
our old selves with them, to God. You say that you can do this alone
with God; and I ask you, Have you succeeded in doing so? I said I was
going to do that for years, but it never happened until I let a human
witness come in on my decision. That is the "how" of getting
rid of sin if you are in earnest about doing it at all." [Samuel
Shoemaker, National Awakening, Harper and Row, 1936]
"Some people seek an easier and softer way by doing a
"general confession" to God alone. They are not about to
name specifically the humiliating, "awful" things they have
done out loud before another human being. But this very act of
specifically confessing things is what often leads to serenity. The
more afraid you are to tell about a certain act or thought in your
fifth Step, the more likely it is that confessing that particular
thing will put a new crack in your denial and free you in a new
area." [J. Keith Miller, A Hunger for Healing, HarperCollins,
1991]
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- Admitted.
The spiritual discipline of confession is central
to all Twelve Step recovery programs. Unfortunately few Christians
today have practical experience with the spiritual discipline of
confession. Or, if we do have experience with confession, we have
probably experienced this discipline as a shaming and
counterproductive exercise in self-blame. The biblical foundations
for confession are not difficult to find [See for example: James
5:16, Ps 32:3-5, Proverbs 28:13]. It is important to remember that
confession is presented in the Bible as a nonnegotiable part of the
normal Christian life. Working Step Five may be the first
opportunity many of us have had to learn how to practice this
spiritual discipline in a healthy way.
By the time we get to Step Five many of us have spent years learning
not to admit anything. We have learned instead how to blame, to
evade, to deceive, to deny. Many of us were raised in family systems
that were deeply committed to the 'Don't Talk' rule. Although often
unspoken, this rule is sometimes expressed in slogans such as:
"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at
all," or "You shouldn't wash family laundry in
public." Step Five is a healthy replacement for the 'Don't
Talk' rule. It may seem like a more difficult rule at first. It may
seem like it will lead to more shame rather than to less. But this
rule leads to life rather than to death. As A.A. rightly says of
this Step: it is "the beginning of true kinship with man and
God."
To God If we believe that God knows everything already, why
is it so difficult to tell God the truth? Think about it. If God
knows it already, why do we try to be evasive? The fact is that we
do. We pretend God doesn't know. We live as if God doesn't know.
Psalm 32 contains a powerful image of what it is like to try to keep
the truth from God:
"When I kept silent,
My bones wasted away
Through my groaning all day long."
[Psalm 32:3]
We expect silence to be the best course of action. But silence about
the exact nature of our wrongs leads to depression, sleeplessness
and exhaustion.
To ourselves. We are the principal victims of our denial.
The Bible is quite clear about this: "If we claim to be without
sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" [1 John
1:8]. Self deception is a drama familiar to all addicts. In Step
Five we start telling the truth to ourselves. What does this mean?
It means taking full personal ownership of the inventory we wrote in
Step Four. To admit to ourselves means 'taking it in,' 'not
avoiding' the painful realities we wrote about. This may take some
time. Painful truths 'sink in' slowly. But as Step Five helps us let
our fourth step work 'sink in' we are already being prepared for the
work to come in Step Six.
To another human being. It is possible (not a good idea,
but possible) to do the first four steps in some sort of isolation.
But Step Five requires us to talk to another person. The suggestion
of Step Five is that we start with telling the truth to God, to
ourselves and to one other human being. It is a first step towards a
life style of truth telling.
Why should we have to admit our wrongs to another person? Decades of
practical experience have shown that we can manage to hold on to our
denial if our confession is only to God and to ourselves. Making a
full confession to someone who understands the addictive process,
someone who has been there themselves, can introduce a completely
new dynamic to the process.
The exact nature of our wrongs. One way that people
commonly protect themselves from the full impact of Step Five is to
fall back on generalizations like "When I drank, I made a mess
of things." Generalizations are a kind of self-protection
strategy that is very common among Christians who understand the
doctrine of sin in only general terms. If sin is some kind of
abstract problem (connected perhaps with very distant relatives like
Adam and Eve!) then it is not a real, practical, pressing problem
that we face everyday. For some Christians this abstract
understanding of sin is compounded by a very abstract understanding
of what God has done for us in Jesus. Our problem with sin can
become a theoretical problem that God has already theoretically
solved! This step requires us to take a very different approach to
the material we identified in Step Four. We must have a very
specific approach to our own personal wrongs. There is a world of
difference between admitting to myself that I have 'a problem' and
admitting that last week I missed my daughter's recital because I
was too obsessed with work, money, alcohol, sex or whatever to keep
track of time. The specifics of Step Four make Step Five a lot more
painful. . . and a lot more powerful. It is in admitting to the
exact nature of our wrongs that we begin to develop the willingness
to change that will be central to Step Six. If we avoid the pain of
Step Five, we will never move on to Step Six.
Go on to
Step Six
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