Swimming With the Current – Grapevine Article August 2025 By John K.

To him, AA is a program of action, not belief. If we’re honest, kind and living in the love, we’re going the right way

When I was a month or so sober, a fellow came up to me after a meeting and declared emphatically, “You’ll never stay sober if you don’t accept God in your life!”

It was very clear that what he meant was a Judeo-Christian God—an omniscient and omnipotent third-party entity with agency in the physical world. I was taken aback. We had been discussing Step Two, and his statement seemed to fly in the face of assurances that AA did not require me to believe in anything.

I try to keep an open mind so I can’t say for certain that the man was wrong. What I do know for certain is that for the last 31 years I’ve been able to stay away from a drink and live a contented, purposeful life without that sort of a God in my life.

I’m not a huge fan of labels. The only one that matters to me is that I’m an alcoholic. The term agnostic implies some sort of doubt, which doesn’t really apply to me. And a lot of people think atheist means anti-theist, which also doesn’t apply to me. I fully support any spiritual path someone chooses if it supports their sobriety, so long as they don’t try to impose it on anyone else.

So, if you need to apply a label to me, you can call me a non-theist. I just don’t find the concept of a supernatural, third-party God relevant to me. The idea that there is something which decrees, “This airplane is going to land and that one is going to crash. This woman is going to win the lottery, and that man is going to get cancer,” just doesn’t resonate with me.

I’ve been privileged to attend meetings in many different places. I’ve met alcoholics from a multitude of faith backgrounds—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews and Jains, including members who follow indigenous spiritual practices or none at all. All these people have different rituals and doctrines. But they all speak of common principles, such as tolerance, forgiveness, generosity, humility, acceptance and above all, love. It seems to me that these people stay sober and grow as human beings despite their different ceremonies and sometimes contradictory dogmas because they use those universal spiritual principles as guideposts for living. That seems more important than whether or not there is a source of those principles.

My understanding of my place in the universe has continued to evolve during my years in AA. That’s a good thing. I don’t want to become spiritually stagnant.

Here’s where I am right now. I don’t think of God in the third person, as a “he,” “she” or “they.” Rather I think of God in the first-person, most often in the plural “we.” Not that we as human beings are God or even God-like, rather that there is a spiritual dimension to everyone and everything around us. It manifests when we gather. It’s that feeling I get when I walk into an AA meeting in a strange city, full of people I’ve never met, and the weight of the world slips from my shoulders. It’s what makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The fact that the word “we” figures so prominently in our program is a powerful statement.

I don’t feel the need for a God who cares for me personally. I’m insignificant, and I’m OK with that. I’ve lost loved ones in sobriety, and I’ve faced my own potential mortality a couple of times. I don’t need to understand why or believe it’s all part of some “master plan.” Fear is no longer the dominant force in my life.

I don’t know what happens when we die. I suspect it’s just “fade to black.” I don’t see any reason why what happens to us should be any different than what happens to an amoeba, an ant or an elephant, but who knows? I’ve always liked Woody Allen’s line, “I don’t believe in an afterlife but I’m taking a change of underwear just in case.”

My spiritual journey in AA has been truly wonderful. And much of that wonder comes from the fact there is so much we don’t know. On the physical plane, 95% of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, stuff we have almost no understanding of. On the spiritual side, I think our ignorance is even more profound.

The spiritual part of my alcoholic sickness was a sense of hopelessness and despair. That was because I was consumed by selfishness. I had cut myself off from the spiritual beauty that surrounds me.

One of the surest ways to drown is to swim against the current. The current is shaped by the natural forces that govern the motion of water. It needs no supernatural explanation. Perhaps there is a natural spiritual current in the universe which has something to do with tolerance, forgiveness, humility and the rest. I’m not sure that needs a supernatural explanation either.

In the end, whatever I believe or don’t believe is largely irrelevant. I was taught that AA is a program of action, not belief. What I know is that when I’m honest, people will generally respect me. If I’m kind, they will treat me likewise. When I align “my will and my life” with those great spiritual principles, when I live in love, I’m happier and feel more fulfilled. I have contented sobriety.