The first rule of thermodynamics and second rule of thermodynamics speak to movement. The idea of God as Omnisicent and omnipotent and omnipresent is summed up in his name as the Prime Mover. For thousands of year men and women considered began and begat.
I was reading the history of the Christian Oxford Movement and AA in Wikipedia and enjoyed seeing that Dr. Silkworth told Bill Wilson, who was a member of the Oxford Movement and follower of Sam Shoemaker, Frank Buchman’s Oxford Movement leader in America, that he should drop the word ‘sin’ and change the word to ‘illness’.
Dr. Bob was a member of the Oxford Group in Akron, Ohio which had had a major Oxford Movement Christian convention there. Seiberling, who introduced Bill Wilson to Dr. Bob said that the ‘miracle’ had occurred there in Akron the day or days before Bill Wilson arrived on his business trip, The whole of the Oxford Movement community had gathered with Dr. Bob and his wife to pray together for Dr. Bob, a secret drinker who had confessed, to have a miracle to cure his drinking. Whereas Freud had said alcoholism was worse than schizophrenia and incurable, Dr. Carl Jung had said he’d seen alcoholics cured by a spiritual awakening, rare as it was.
Jesus said , where two or more are gathered in my name there too am I.
Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson met and Alcoholics Anonymous began. These members of the Christian Oxford Movement took the central idea of Christianity that the spreading of the message was what saved the individual specifically to addressing addiction. Dr. Silkworth had told Bill Wilson while he’d not been able to get anyone else sober by his trying to evangelize the world, he had in fact for the first time stayed sober himself.. Now he and Dr. Bob and the Oxford movement would carry on Frank Buchman’s and Sam Shoemakers work serving the marginal and the alcoholic and addicted community.
The central tenet of the Oxford Movement was ‘grace’, God is a loving God and that good is the life that come from accepting God, a higher power, not self. Kurtz history of AA was indeed called ‘Not Self”.
Frank Buchman taught that the problems of individuals were ‘selfishness and fear’. Pride is the major sin of Christianity. In Milton’s Paradise Lost Satan prefers to worship his shadow than turn to the light of God. Martin Buber, the great Jewish theologian philosopher said that man sees himself and the other which he calls ‘it’ and is frightened of it until he realizes ‘it ‘ is ‘thou’. The paranoid lives in a world of “I and IT”. The enlightened live in the world of “I and Thou’. The AA movement and the Christian movement taught ‘Thy will be done, no my will” in same was as in Hinduism’s, yoga is the philosophy and action similar to YMCA which ‘yolks the body mind and soul of the individual to God.” Jesuss’ principal command was ‘do not be afraid’. He summed up his message as Love God and Love Your Neighbour as Yourself.
The word to ‘sin’ is an archery term that means ‘to miss the mark’. The idea ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ speaks even to psychopaths and sociopaths who think they are the ‘good guy.’ Zen and the Art of Archery and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance both speak to ‘works’. Christianity has struggled as other religions with whether one is saved by ‘works’, doing good, like the extreme OCD, or by Grace, the lucky ones of God’s choosing. Reincarnation and the ‘sins of father’s and even evolution have all been postulated to explain why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. The Sistine Chapels shows ADAM lifting his hand with his finger stretched out reaching for God. God reaches down. Which comes first . Again fate and free will and God as the Prime Mover. Obviously an archer who doesn’t lift his bow and nock his arrow isn’t going to hit the target but when the action of man reaching out meets God the miracle occurs. Grace is the free gift of God.
Determinism and Fate say there is no change. I say by this token then I’m at best a ‘voiceover on a comic strip’. The shallow thinkers of philosophy dominated these days by the unscientific religions of aetheism clings to ‘change’. Each dime a dozen politician promises change while secretly knownng that the reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefit from the status quo and most politicians and their cadre have merely wanted to place themselves on the royal seat which has throughout time been called King, Emperor, Furer or Comrade, so long as the status quo remains.
Yet fate or determinism and predestination and genetics, without a ‘mover’ means the. nature of creation/existence/all is static. The scientific agnostic accepts that there is ‘something’ that causes the ‘ripple’. The great American philosopher William James, father of pragmatism , focused on the action. God is said not to be a thought but rather an experience.
When alcoholics stopped drinking and joined non drinking members of spiritual communities they became free of the insanity and psychosis of addiction. The early AA groups said that the higher power was a ‘god of my understanding’ realizing that alcoholism and addiction was it’s own religion. The way the crack addict approaches his drug and his behaviour and his philosophy and his dealer are all the stuff of religion. The drama and story of alcoholism is the making of materialism saintly. It’s like mental wankerism though because like masturbation the experience is exclusive to the inclusive experience of love and love making. Play can be solitary or parallel or ultimately together.
Alone alcoholics and addicts could not free themselves from the predator dealers and governments invested in selling all manner of delusions , the greatest being ‘Pride”. With the help of another they could be lifted out of the hole they’d dug themselves or if they didn’t dig themselves at least found themselves in. .
The idea that sin is ‘blaming’ is an abomination of Godliness. Accountability is not ‘blame’. Yet without accountability there could be no scientific endeavour.
It is said that there is shame in addiction and dignity in recovery. The experience of shame is that of being outside the group not only as a minority but as an active combatant against the majority. Live and let live is by contrast a central tenet of AA.
Frank Buchman was against the Nazi and the Communists recognizing them both as ungodly and aiming for perpetual war. The Oxford Movment wanted world peace. Having met with Himnler, Buchman said Himmler was unable to change and that the Nazi’s could not grasp the idea of peace. The Nazi’s, the National Socialist Movement of Germany believe that world war was necessary and all others but the religion of Socialism destroyed so that the Fuhrer would reign. Nothing new here folks. Genghis Kahn, Alexander, Napoleon, Mao and countless others over the same with different marketing and labelling. Marx believed in perpetual war until all were communists and peace would occur. This is similar to radical Muslim which maintains that Islam is a religion of Peace in that Peace will occur when all are Muslim.
The Christian Oxford movement was not a religion like AA would not be a religion. Religion has often been called ‘man made’ while ‘spirituality “ is God made. The experience of God is spirituality. The difficulty for the Aetheist, the Communist or Nazi is that they equate that ‘emotional’ experience of feeling good as ‘spiritual’. Spirituality by contrast is inclusive and accepting of God , not excluding God. In AA 12 steps the 4th step demanding ‘rigorous honestly ‘ (like the first step of the Oxford Movement - Absoluate Honesty) suggested that one look at and inventory their resentments and fears regarding people, institutions and principles. Obviously many still resent and fear God, especially atheists.
Dr. Bob , a surgeon and loving husband had throughout his life strove to be unselfish. Bill Wilson had a life long history of egomania and having been an officer in war leading an artilliary unit , never talked about his war experience. He wallowed often in self pity depression and refused to identify his depression with his persistent womanizing and cheating on his wife Lois who began the Al Anon movement of friends and families of alcoholics whose central tenet of survival was ‘detach with love’. Bill Wilson suffered anxiety and depression and was an ‘empire builder’ despite struggling with Pride long after his own spiritual awakening. He would throughout his life benefit from the guidance of Father Ed Dowling, the Jesuit Catholic priest.
Alcoholics in the Oxford movement were willing to focus solely on their drinking and stopping their drinking but when it came to their ‘moral behaviour’ overall they remained at variance with the Oxford Movement members who strove for “Absolute Purity’. Later AA’s would say that they divided from the spiritual Christian movement which had gained from Frank Buchman’s contact with Gandhi’s and Ravindranath Tagore when Buchman served with the YMCA spending lengthy time time in India and China. Hinduism teaches ‘Saints of all religions, I bow to you all.” The movement in Christianity has been ‘inclusive versus exclusive’ which different denominations arguing politically that only their group is ‘godly’. The joke follows that there is a ‘highway to hell and a stair way to heaven’.
Hell in Christian terms is not eternal but ‘for a long time’ , the agricultural measure of the days of Jesus. The time of god is only now and eternal is the present and this day. The idea of linear time is a mathematic invention of the modern era at variance even from eastern time which is perceived as circular. The idea of God as outside of Creation is quite bizarre as God is imminent and transcendent but it is common for the rhetoric of debate to create straw dog arguments such as God being an old guy on a cloud when religions collectively teach of the world with in and St. John specifically teaches that the Word as the very fabric of creation.
Physicists today are far more spiritual than so many of the religious leaders who can’t grasp the nature of Einstein’s E=MC2 , the interplay between energy and matter, psychosomatics or that spirit and matter are like the nature of light , both wave and particle depending on perspective. The Daoism of the east with Yin and Yang is central to the least taught book of the Bible, Job.
That moment of giving up the demon drink and demon drug and seeking the spirit of the natural high, children knowing and showing joy greatest before any chemical or process addiction, is the moment of the ‘new’ man, the ‘born again’ experience that Christian evangelists talk of or the ‘conversion’ experience Dr Frank Buchman ,Dr. Bob, Dr. Silkworth and even Bill Wilson spoke of . There was no need for the ‘white light’ experience of Bill Wilson but clearly as one accepted the Godly , or good path, the world and the life of the individual changed.
Hallelujah.
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