Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
If Alcoholics Anonymous were a self-help program, Step Six might read something like this: “Became determined in our minds to overcome all our character defects.”
Mercifully, this is not what we are asked to do in AA. In fact, no action at all is called for in Step Six. I cannot imagine more passive language than “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” We are not admonished to reform our character, to make deep and sincere resolutions to change our objectionable behavior, to give up anything at all, nor to take on new responsibilities or even new attitudes. The words of the Step sound more like a progress marker on the road to recovery than a call to more action.
Being entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character was almost a rest stop on my trudging the road to happy destiny; a pause that I desperately needed. For too long I had really tried to be a better person. Attempts to control my drinking ended in total defeat and a sense of hopelessness and aimlessness. Then I came to AA. At the very first meeting I got a tiny glimmer of hope–a softness that I didn’t understand or particularly seek. I was so tired of trying that the relief in simply giving up was as near to joy as anything I had ever experienced.
But in the AA meetings I attended people talked about a lot of things other than alcohol. They talked about honesty. I couldn’t be totally honest because (I thought) if people really knew what I had done, and was still doing, I might lose my job or at least be totally disgraced. People talked about asking for help, but I pretended to be self-sufficient. They talked about fear and I acted brave and strong. Whole meetings were devoted to discussions of gratitude. I felt more self-pity than gratitude, but I said I was grateful and continued going to meetings.
Nearly every topic, except the First Step, filled me with guilt, shame, and fear, but I hid it well and resolved to try even harder. I approached AA exactly as I had lived for so many years before and during my drinking. “I will do this thing,” I thought, but I was never quite able to pull it off. I got so very tired of trying!
All these things that troubled me so much came out in my Fifth Step: my selfishness, dishonesty, repeated failure of self-reliance, and my fears. Once again, I hit a kind of bottom. I not only was defective but I couldn’t do anything about it. Nothing!
I didn’t feel lost anymore, or hopeless. Neither was I filled with the kind of faith in a Higher Power many in AA expressed. The idea of God doing for me what I could not do for myself was agreeable to me, but I didn’t know what to “do”! Step Six said that I was now entirely ready to have that happen. I believed that, and it was true. The relief I felt at this time brought real joy, a change from the inside out. Then I thought about how God might do these things for me. Thinking about it didn’t help at all; in fact, pondering the matter only produced new doubts and questions.
I worried about wanting something with an urgency akin to alcoholic craving and that God’s way of removing that defect would be to deny me the fulfillment I sought, or that I would be compelled to do things I really didn’t want to do. I feared that a certain grim asceticism would be imposed upon me. Self-denial never held any lasting appeal to me!
These doubts and fears were not things I could share with anyone–not even my sponsor who had heard my entire Fifth Step. I feared he would think I was unwilling–the very worst offense in AA! I felt pressured to get on with the real action Steps, Eight and Nine. So I did the very same thing I did with every other Step up to that point. I took a chance! The chance I took was that this thing just might work out for the best. Maybe, just maybe, what God had in store for me would be good and maybe I would even like it. At last, after years of trying to figure out what was right and then trying even harder to do it, I was entirely ready to have God remove all my defects.
That chance was certainly worth taking. After all, if life became too grim I could always reclaim control and try again on my own. For one week, morning and night, I said the Seventh Step prayer. The words “My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. . .” reminded me of words from a hymn that we sang in church when I was growing up: “Just as I am. . .I come to Thee.” I didn’t have to do anything! I was me, still living in a lot of the mess that I had made. That was okay for the moment. But I knew that change would have to occur and that I would need to participate in the process.
Change did occur. I was surprised, as I continued with the next six Steps, that what really changed about me was my “wants.” The urgency of self-gratification left me. Personal ambition (a quality I always valued) became focused on being useful to God and others. I found myself telling the truth most of the time and found that others valued that more than my super-human efforts of the past. I have stopped fighting, I hate no one, and I now know the meaning of the word serenity. God is doing for me what I could not do for myself.
Sometimes people try to make the Sixth Step into an action Step. I hear statements at Step meetings like “It does no good to ask God to remove your defects unless you are willing to take the action necessary.” Another oft-quoted adage in meetings is “God helps those who help themselves.” However, I have no reason to believe that at all. The more I tried to help myself the more self-reliant I became and the farther I was from any real dependence upon God. When this self-reliance failed (as it inevitably did), fear possessed me and I drank. What I find to be true now is that God helps those who trust him.
Of course action is necessary. We do not try to escape from life’s demands. My problem, though, was trying too hard to figure out what to do, then trying too hard to do it on my own, depending totally on my own resources and imagined strengths. The point of Step Six is that we stop this self-centered imagining and planning. We don’t ask to see anything in the future, make no commitments to specific goals, and surrender ourselves to a future yet to be revealed. Without this break from busy action I could not have continued with the AA program. With it, I am changing–from the inside out.