STEP ONE

Who cares to admit complete defeat?  Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, sin in hand, we have warped our minds into such obses- sions for destructive living that only an act of Providence can remove it from us.

  No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Our sin, now becomes the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self- sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete.

  But upon entering Christ we soon take quite another view of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength.  Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.

We know that little good can come to any sinner who comes into Christ unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences.  Until he so humbles himself, his life – if anything  – will be precarious. Of real happiness he will find none at all. Proved beyond doubt by an immense experience, this is one of the facts of life in Christ. The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which the whole Body of Christ springs and flowers.

When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached the Church expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we are told, that as far as sin is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. Our elders declared that we were the victims of mental obsessions so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it. There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will. Relentlessly deepening our dilemma, our elders pointed out our increasing sensitivity to our favorite sin that is now causing us so much trouble.

Believers who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their sinfulness. As this trend grew, they were joined by young people who were scarcely beginning their sinful lives. They were spared that ten or fifteen years of heartache so many of us had gone through. Since Step One requires an admission that our lives had become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step?

It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would them personally.  By going back in our own sinful histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our sinfulness even then was not a matter of habits, that it was indeed a beginning of a fatal progression. To the doubters we could say, "Perhaps you're not a sinner after all. Why don't you control your life for a while and see if you can do it without harming yourself or others, without sin, meanwhile bearing in mind that we have told you of sin and righteousness in Christ?" This attitude brought immediate and practical results. It was then discovered that when one believer had planted in the mind of another the true nature of our malady, that person could never be the same again. Following every sinful binge, he would say to himself, "Maybe those believers where right..." After a few such experiences, often years before the onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us convinced. He had hit bottom as truly as any of us.  Satan himself has become our best advocate.

  Why all this insistence that every believer must hit bottom before experience true spiritual life?  The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the teachings of Christ unless they have hit bottom. For practicing His teachings in the remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no believer who is still in his sins can dream of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about God in our daily lives, let along meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry the Lord's message to other suffering believers? No, the average believer, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this prospect – unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.

Under the lash of our bondage to our own sins, we are driven to Christ, and there we discover the fatal nature of our situation. Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. We stand ready to do anything which will remove anything from us that would block us from our Lord.