There is a well-known quote from the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (the 12 and 12) of Alcoholics Anonymous: "In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life." (p.75) Most recovery groups are familiar with the concept but few of us really get to the place where we long for change enough to choose pain. Only those of us who are hopeless addicts, destroyers of ourselves and others, really need change that much, right?
The twelve steps are beautiful in their simplicity and relentless in cultivating humility. As we say often in recovery, "Steps are easy, but change is hard." Our first piece of humble pie comes with admitting what we are. Twelve steppers aren't the first to do this. The Apostle Paul was pretty good at reality, Peter had to come to grips with his failures, and David's Psalms are some of the most shockingly honest admissions ever offered publicly. Secondly, we admit we need help because we cannot even manage our own lives. That's a smack in the face to pride. We ask for help, believing that God will do it for us every day--remaining basket cases without his involvement.
Now we really get into humility. We start to take ourselves apart, to look at the "exact nature of our wrongs." The fig leaves come off and we not only face ourselves, we show ourselves to be what we are. We admit again. Painful humility. But that's not enough. What about those parts of ourselves that made us do all those awful things? What kinds of ugliness, corruption, anger, fear, and weakness drove us to such lengths? What are the things about myself that I most wish I could change and most want to hide but can't do anything about? OK, the next step in humility is to list those things and then share them as well.
We ask God to change us. The same way that we admit what we are and ask God to manage our lives daily, we admit what we have done and ask him to change US so that we don't continue hurting others. And now it is time to humbly admit to others how we have hurt them. We face the victims of our crimes and admit what we have done. We say things like I lied to you and pretended I was your friend and hurt you behind your back. I stole from you. I used you. I was afraid you were better than me so I undermined you. We get real with those we love and those we've hated.
We admit the suffering we have caused and, in this way, to suffer some in return for it. We walk alongside those we have hurt to carry the hurt in a small way, and so gain freedom from that chosen painful humility. It is, finally, a good-hearted selfishness. My price of admission was in statements like "I manipulated you through telling you what you wanted to hear and not telling you the truth about me. I harbored resentments against you and blamed you so that I could avoid looking at myself. I built a case against you and made you take the fall for what I should have admitted instead." But we don't stay here. We don't stop with the faults, there is an even greater step in humility--the beautiful life that awaits us.
We make this humility our way of life. We admit when we are wrong and make it right quickly. We confess. We own up to our problems and our mistakes. It is a life with short accounts, dependent on God, and fully facing reality. Pride and selfishness can have no place in a life of honest humility, really a life of holiness. And to be very honest, I am not even close to either honesty or humility. I still pretend and I still hide. I still get cocky. But, maybe less so today than yesterday. There is more of me now that hungers for humility--that great transformer of pain into beauty.
Admitting. Admission. The same word in different forms. It is through admitting that we gain admission into this new life. It is through honest humility that we gain holiness. God is Great. God is powerful. But whoever thought that God would be the opposite of greatness? Power does not equal pride. It is through being lowly that we find Him. May we find Him now.
