Big Healing Book - Don't Believe These Alcoholics Anonymous Lies

Don’t Believe These Alcoholics Anonymous Lies

1. “Once an Alcoholic, Always an Alcoholic. You Are a Recovering Alcoholic.”

This is the opposite of what Jesus taught: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). You have been delivered from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13), which includes the power of addictions, which are part of that kingdom. Jesus does not want you to be a slave of a bottle or anything else, as that makes you something other than “free indeed.” The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and those works include alcoholism. When Jesus sets you free, you are no longer an alcoholic. You are not even a recovering alcoholic. You are a former alcoholic!

I know a minister who used to drink a 40-ounce bottle of whiskey every day until Jesus set her free. She has been free for a very long time and she has never gone back to drinking. You’ll never convince her (or me) that she is still an alcoholic! It is no longer a struggle for her to stay away from the bottle. When you’re free indeed, the struggle is over. You are not trapped in a never-ending “recovery” mode; you are “recovered!”

2. “It’s Important to Affirm That You Are an Alcoholic: My Name Is _____ and I’m an Alcoholic.”

As is if it isn’t bad enough to believe in your heart that you are an alcoholic, you can make things even worse by saying it with your mouth! This has the outward appearance of being open and honest because you’re admitting that you need help, but admitting you need help doesn’t get you free! A lot of people need help and admit it and are still not free! And once you’ve managed to get some measure of mastery over the bottle, it is downright harmful to keep confessing that you are still in bondage (an alcoholic). Jesus made it clear that if you say something with your mouth and believe it in your heart, that is what you will have (Mark 11:23). So if you go to a meeting every week and confess with your mouth that you are an alcoholic, you will struggle with alcoholism the rest of your life because you are shooting yourself in the foot with your mouth every week! (See Say What and Speaking to Mountains, Trees and Diseases for more about the power of your words.)

While the only official requirement to be part of AA is a desire to stop drinking, this “I’m an alcoholic” confession has become a standard practice in AA. It fits in with AA’s 12-step philosophy, which includes admitting that you have a problem. That is a valid first step, but in the world of AA, you have your problem forever and say so. You do yourself more harm than good if you’ve been sober but keep identifying as an alcoholic. Also, admitting to a problem doesn’t SOLVE it – you need to call on Jesus, not the generic AA “Higher Power,” to get free. That’s the next issue.

3. “It Doesn’t Matter Who ‘God as You Understand Him’ Is as Long as You Call on a ‘Higher Power’ of Some Kind.”

The generic AA “God as We Understood Him” will not set you free. It is not enough to believe in a higher power. The devil believes in God and it doesn’t do him any good. This twisted universalism is one of the most dangerous aspects of AA. It leaves you with the impression that any deity will do as long as you believe in him. The Bible, however, is clear that you can only call on the name of Jesus to be saved (Acts 4:12). Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either (1 John 2:23). There is no access to the real God’s throne other than by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19). Anyone who thinks he can have access to what a Higher Power has to offer without Jesus is sadly deluded, but AA promotes this delusion with its statements. If you want to be free indeed from alcoholism, you must call on Jesus, not Buddha, Mohammed, Allah, Krishna, Vishnu or some other “god” who doesn’t even exist. Think about that for a minute – how can a “Higher Power” who doesn’t even exist or a man whose bones are in the ground help you? He can’t, and you’re completely wasting your time if you’re not praying in the name of Jesus, no matter what AA tells you.

AA’s stated dependence on “a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience” can lead to all kinds of weird ideas about God as long as they are endorsed by the group. It is never right to base beliefs about God on experience – they must be based on the Bible! An AA group is by AA’s own words a “spiritual entity” with a “spiritual aim” and a “spiritual heritage” whose principle of anonymity has “immense spiritual significance” even though it must not express any views on “sectarian religion.” So they think they are “spiritual” but they cannot by their own rules endorse Jesus specifically. That is a deceptive “spiritual” mix. You should beware of any group that won’t confess Jesus but calls itself a spiritual entity! I would be much more comfortable recommending a group of peers helping each other with no spiritual overtones, though an explicitly Christian group would be far better.

What if you DO pray in the name of Jesus because your “understanding” of the “Higher Power” is that He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Then you CAN get divine help, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that anyone else can get help with a different “Higher Power.” And you don’t need an AA meeting to get help from Jesus. Anyone can call on Him for help.

What about all the people AA has helped? Does it help people stay sober? A “help group” without Jesus can get some results – look at the various weight-loss groups out there that don’t profess any tie to Christianity but do help people lose weight. Positive peer pressure and accountability can help people stay out of habits. I don’t object to help groups in general. The issue is that AA, unlike many groups, claims to be “spiritual” without Christ, which is a dangerous, devil-inspired mixture.

Speaking of evil spirits, if an alcoholic has a demon, only the name of Jesus can drive it out. The demon will be glad if you try to cast it out in the name of Higher Power or God as We Understood Him, as it is not compelled to submit to those names. AA, run by the book, will never help a demonized person. Asking God to remove your character defects will not make a demon leave!

4. “Alcoholism Is an Illness.”

The Bible commands you not to be drunk with wine (Ephesians 5:18), so if you are a drunkard (the Biblical term), the root of your issue is not an illness problem from which you need to be healed but a sin problem of which you need to repent. Every time you get drunk, you are sinning against God and you are morally accountable for that sin. Alcoholism doesn’t just “happen” to you like a flu bug or another real disease. You can never become an alcoholic if you choose not to drink.

The sin of alcoholism can certainly result in various diseases such as liver problems, skin abnormalities and so on, to say nothing of the chemical addiction and craving it creates. But these medical issues are the results of the sin of alcoholism, not the cause. God is merciful. He is willing and able to heal diseases that are your own fault, as Psalm 107:17-20 shows us. Of course, if you keep doing what is making you sick, you will believe in vain for healing; it is like believing to be pain-free while continuing to hit yourself with a hammer. Once the sin problem is fixed, you will stop making yourself sick.

We live in a fallen world where people don’t like to take responsibility for anything, preferring to see themselves as victims of circumstances. But if you want to be set free from alcoholism, you have to take responsibility for your own actions and realize that alcoholism is a moral failure on your part, not some disease you caught that you can’t help. It is your fault that you became an alcoholic in the first place. That is true even if you are one of many people who got hooked immediately after their first drink. Drunkenness is a sin forbidden by Scripture. If you believe the AA lie that alcoholism is an illness (as opposed to the cause of illness), you will never take personal responsibility for your sin, which is an essential step to getting free from it. Nobody repents of an illness! If you claim that adverse circumstances made you drink, you are no better than an adulterer who claims that some woman came onto him and it was her fault. When life gets tough, you are supposed to turn to God, who is a very present help in time of trouble (Psalm 46:1-2), not a bottle. God will give you real help; the bottle only offers temporary escape from misery while causing even more misery later for yourself and those around you.

The fear of the Lord is to hate evil (Proverbs 8:13). Drunkenness is evil. You need to HATE drunkenness the same way God does so that you are determined to be rid of it. It is hard to have that kind of hatred for it if you just think it’s an illness that could come on anyone. Remember that God doesn’t hate YOU; He just hates EVIL, including whatever evil you’re doing. He loves you enough to set you free from it if you’ve been struggling to break free in your own strength.

I am not trying to get you to beat yourself up for your sin; doing so is fruitless. I am trying to stop you from trying to use the wrong tool for your situation. Sickness is fixed by healing. Sin is fixed by repentance. Trying to fix sin with healing is like trying to use a screwdriver to pound nails. The good news is that if you are willing to repent of your sin, all heaven will stand behind your decision. You can start acting on God’s statements that sin shall have no dominion over you (Romans 6:14) and that you are dead to sin (Romans 6:11). You can start declaring by faith, “The sin of alcoholism shall have no dominion over me! I am dead to the sin of being a drunkard!”

I am not belittling the fact that your body can become chemically addicted to alcohol, tobacco, opiates and other things. I understand that chemicals can get a strong grip on your life. The sin of viewing pornography and the sin of fornication can lead to addiction as well. However, sin is still sin. I realize that many organizations classify alcoholism as a disease due to the chemical changes it can cause in your brain that make it difficult to break free from the addiction. However, Jesus wants to set your body free of the “chemical addiction” side of alcoholism, and He will do so if you call on Him in faith to rid you of this work of the devil in your body. You need to call on Jesus to help you rather than just trying to tough things out with human will power. Trying harder not to sin is not the answer; learning who you are as a born-again Christian (no longer the slave of sin) is much more helpful. Then you can declare, “My name is ____ and I’m NOT an alcoholic anymore! Jesus has made me free!” (If that’s not okay with your AA group, you shouldn’t be okay with your AA group either!)

5. “You Will Always Need Alcoholics Anonymous for the Rest of Your Life If You Want to Stay Sober.”

This goes along with the earlier lie, “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” If you’re never better than a “recovering alcoholic,” you’ll conclude that you need to be at AA every week to avoid “falling off the wagon.” I’ve met people who are sporadic at best in their church attendance, which is commanded by Scripture (Hebrews 10:25), who would not dare miss their weekly AA meeting, which is not commanded by Scripture. This is a sure sign of wrong priorities that will lead to staying in bondage. AA is not a substitute for church and it is not even a Christian organization (see the next lie below).

The minister I referred to above has stayed free without ever attending an AA meeting in her life. Attending AA meetings is definitely NOT a prerequisite for staying sober.

6. “Alcoholics Anonymous Is a Christian Organization Based on Christian Principles.”

Many people mistakenly assume that AA is a Christian organization because the local group holds meetings in the basement of a church building. After all, its 12 steps are in a frame on the wall, probably next to the same drab-looking painting of Jesus that seems to be a standard fixture in church basements. (By the way, the real Jesus has more joy than anyone else (Hebrews 1:9); He doesn’t look like He’s just been eating raw lemons.)

This lie is told about AA, not by AA. The AA organization officially states that it is NOT “a religious-based or Christian organization.” If you can’t take my word for it, take theirs! In its own words, it’s a “spiritual organization, rather than a religious one.” In fact, some AA members make AA itself their “higher power” – and AA even says so explicitly in its pamphlet, “Many Paths to Spirituality,” which speaks positively of having whatever “beliefs” work for you, which is totally opposed to Jesus’ message (John 14:6). When an organization is okay with you making it your god, that should be a red flag!

AA was founded by a spiritualist – someone who tried to talk to dead people, which is forbidden by Scripture (Deuteronomy 18:10-11). It was NOT founded by a real Christian. In fact, he thought spirits helped him with his AA writings. Do you want to rely on literature inspired by one or more evil spirits? While AA was patterned after a Christian organization called the Oxford Group, AA stripped out the Christian-specific aspects of it to try to make it accessible to people of different ignorances. (The world calls other religions “faiths” but the Bible says there is only one faith (Ephesians 4:5). So biblically speaking, other religions are ignorances – the Buddhist ignorance, the Jewish ignorance, the Muslim ignorance, the Hindu ignorance, and so on.) By replacing Jesus with a generic Higher Power, AA took out the best way to get someone free from alcoholism. The evil spirits helping AA’s founder must have been satisfied with the results of their inspirations, as the devil loves to promote the idea of being “spiritual” without Christ and the idea that you can never totally get free from bondage.

I’ve met plenty of Christians who go to AA meetings, but that doesn’t make it a Christian organization. Some local chapters may actually dare to present Jesus and if they do, they can see better results than chapters that play by the AA rules. But they are violating AA’s requirement that forbids endorsing any religion. And even then, if they introduce any of the lies above, they will get mixed results.

A local non-AA group may do a Christian version of “twelve-step” recovery. It should get better results due to its inclusion of Christ. It also may not buy into some of the AA lies. However, while some of the AA and non-AA “steps” are unobjectionable, you don’t really need 12 steps to get free. Repent and call on Jesus to set you free! And don’t bother asking a generic Higher Power to correct your character defects – you should call on Jesus to make you a new, reborn person on the inside without character defects. Then all you have left to do is keeping your flesh under by the Spirit (Romans 8:13).

So why does AA continue to be so popular? I believe it is for the same reason that cultic Eastern religion-based “healing centers” have been popping up like weeds. The Church in general has failed to understand the power and victory that we have in Jesus, so it has not presented the power of the gospel to set people free from disease and sinful habits such as alcoholism. Thus, people naturally turn somewhere else for answers. May this change as the Church develops a deeper understanding of what Jesus really did for us and the power that is available in His name! May it become commonplace for people to be set free Satan’s bondage of alcoholism in church services and even on the streets!