We Agnostics

In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little contr ol over the amount you take, you ar e probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experi- ence will conquer. To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster , especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. But it isn’t so difficult. About half our original fellowship wer e of exactly that type. At first some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life —or else. Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But cheer up, something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics. Our experience shows thatyou need not be disconcer ted. If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matterhow much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how wer e we to find this Power? Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. Thatmeans we have written a book which we believe tobe spiritual as well as moral. And it means, of course, that we are going to talk about God. Here difficultyarises with agnostics. Many times we talk to a newman and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoho-licproblems and explain our fellowship. But his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God, for we have re-opened a sub-ject which our man thought he had neatly evaded orentirely ignored. We know how he feels. We have shar ed his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been violently anti-religious. To others, the word “God’’ brought upa particular idea of Him with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood. Perhaps we re-jected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection we imagined we hadabandoned the God idea entirely. We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a Power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, evencowardly. We looked upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems, and inexpli-cable calamity, with deep skepticism. We looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly. How could a Supreme Being have anything to do withit all? And who could comprehend a Supreme Beinganyhow? Yet, in other moments, we found ourselves thinking, when enchanted by a starlit night, “Who, then, made all this?’’ There was a feeling of awe andwonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost. Yes, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experiences. Let us make haste to reas-sure you. We found that as soon as we were able tolay aside prejudice and express even a willingness tobelieve in a Power greater than ourselves, we com- menced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God. Much to our relief, we discovered we did not need to consider another ’s conception of God. Our own conception, however inadequate, was sufficient to make the appr oach and to ef fect a contact with Him. As soon as we admitted the possible existence of aCreative Intelligence, a Spirit of the Universe under-lying the totality of things, we began to be possessedof a new sense of power and direction, provided wetook other simple steps. We found that God does notmake too har d ter ms with those who seek Him. T o us, the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies, too, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him. Afterward, we found ourselves accepting manythings which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth, but if we wished to grow we had to begin somewher e. So we used our own conception, how- ever limited it was. We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. “Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?’’ As soonas a man can say that he does believe, or is willing tobelieve, we emphatically assure him that he is on hisway. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structur e can be built. * That was great news to us, for we had assumed we could not make use of spiritual principles unless weaccepted many things on faith which seemed difficultto believe. When people presented us with spiritual appr oaches, how frequently did we all say , “I wish I had what that man has. I’m sur e it would work if I could only believe as he believes. But I cannot ac-cept as surely true the many articles of faith which areso plain to him.’’ So it was comforting to learn thatwe could commence at a simpler level. Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, *Please be sur e to read Appendix II on “Spiritual Experience.” we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. Many of ushave been so touchy that even casual reference tospiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. Thissort of thinking had to be abandoned. Though someof us resisted, we found no great difficulty in castingaside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual mattersas we had tried to be on other questions. In this re-spect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat usinto a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was atedious process; we hope no one else will be preju-diced for as long as some of us were. The reader may still ask why he should believe in a Power greater than himself. We think there are goodreasons. Let us have a look at some of them. The practical individual of today is a stickler for facts and results. Never theless, the twentieth century readily accepts theories of all kinds, provided they arefirmly grounded in fact. We have numerous theories, for example, about electricity. Everybody believes them without a mur mur of doubt. Why this ready acceptance? Simply because it is impossible to explain what we see, feel, direct, and use, without a reasonable assumption as a starting point. Everybody nowa days, believes in scores of assump- tions for which there is good evidence, but no perfect visual proof. And does not science demonstrate thatvisual proof is the weakest proof? It is being con-stantly revealed, as mankind studies the material world, that outward appearances are not inward reality at all. To illustrate: The prosaic steel girder is a mass of electrons whirl- ing around each other at incredible speed. These tiny bodies are governed by precise laws, and theselaws hold true throughout the material world. Sciencetells us so. We have no reason to doubt it. When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material world and life as we see it, there is an All Powerful, Guiding, Creative Intelli- gence, right there our perverse streak comes to thesurface and we laboriously set out to convince our-selves it isn’ t so. We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments, thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of noth-ing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere. Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God’s ever advancing Creation, weagnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and theomega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain ofus, wasn’t it? We, who have traveled this dubious path, beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties ofvarious faiths may be, those faiths have given purposeand direction to millions. People of faith have a logi-cal idea of what life is all about. Actually , we used to have no reasonable conception whatever . We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual be-liefs and practices when we might have observed thatmany spiritually-minded persons of all races, colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves. Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people, and sometimes used their shortcomings as abasis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of in-tolerance, while we were intolerant ourselves. Wemissed the reality and the beauty of the forest becausewe were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees. We never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing. In our personal stories you will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and conceives of the Power which is greater than himself. Whether weagree with a particular approach or conception seemsto make little difference. Experience has taught usthat these are matters about which, for our purpose, we need not be worried. They are questions for each individual to settle for himself. On one proposition, however, these men and women ar e strikingly agreed. Every one of them has gained access to, and believes in, a Power greater than himself. This Power has in each case accom-plished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. Asa celebrated American statesman put it, “Let’s look atthe record.’’ Here are thousands of men and women, worldly in- deed. They flatly declar e that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to takea certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary changein their way of living and thinking. In the face ofcollapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resour ces, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them. This happened soon after they whole- heartedly met a few simple requirements. Once con- fused and baffled by the seeming futility of existence, they show the underlying reasons why they weremaking heavy going of life. Leaving aside the drink question, they tell why living was so unsatisfactory. They show how the change came over them. When many hundreds of people are able to say that the consciousness of the Presence of God is today the most important fact of their lives, they present a powerful reason why one should have faith. This world of ours has made mor e material progress in the last century than in all the millenniums whichwent befor e. Almost ever yone knows the reason. Students of ancient history tell us that the intellect of men in those days was equal to the best of today. Yet in ancient times material progress was painfully slow. The spirit of modern scientific inquiry, researchand invention was almost unknown. In the realm of the material, men’s minds were fettered by supersti-tion, tradition, and all sor ts of fixed ideas. Some of the contemporaries of Columbus thought a roundearth preposterous. Others came near putting Galileo to death for his astronomical heresies. We asked ourselves this: Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spiritas were the ancients about the realm of the material?Even in the present century, American newspapers were afraid to print an account of the W right brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. Had not all effortsat flight failed before? Did not Professor Langley’sflying machine go to the bottom of the Potomac River? Was it not true that the best mathematical minds had proved man could never fly? Had notpeople said God had reserved this privilege to the birds? Only thirty years later the conquest of the air was almost an old story and airplane travel was infull swing. But in most fields our generation has witnessed com- plete liberation of our thinking. Show any longshore-man a Sunday supplement describing a proposal toexplore the moon by means of a rocket and he willsay, “I bet they do it—maybe not so long either.’’ Isnot our age characterized by the ease with which wediscard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget whichdoes not work for something new which does? We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn’t apply to our human problems this same readiness to changeour point of view. We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emo-tional natur es, we were a prey to misery and depres- sion, we couldn’ t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people—was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more impor tant than whether we should see newsr eels of lunar flight? Of course it was. When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, wehad to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideasdid not work. But the God idea did. The Wright brothers’ almost childish faith that they could build a machine which would fly was the main-spring of their accomplishment. Without that, nothing could have happened. We agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that self-sufficiency would solve our problems. When others showed us that “God-suf- ficiency’’ worked with them, we began to feel like those who had insisted the Wrights would never fly. Logic is great stuff. We liked it. We still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to reason, to examine the evidence of our senses, and to draw conclusions. That is one of man’s magnificent at- tributes. We agnostically inclined would not feel satisfied with a proposal which does not lend itself toreasonable approach and interpretation. Hence weare at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical tobelieve than not to believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when we threw up ourhands in doubt and said, “We don’t know.’’ When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self- imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, wehad to fearlessly face the proposition that either Godis everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’ t. What was our choice to be? Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn’ t duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith. The outlinesand the promise of the New Land had brought lustreto tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits. Friendly hands had stretched out in welcome. We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow, we couldn’t quite step ashore. Perhaps wehad been leaning too heavily on Reason that last mileand we did not like to lose our support. That was natural, but let us think a little more closely. Without knowing it, had we not been broughtto where we stood by a certain kind of faith? For did we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What wasthat but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one wayor another, we discovered that faith had been in-volved all the time! We found, too, that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental goose-flesh that used to bringon! Had we not variously worshipped people, senti-ment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, witha better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld thesunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved something or somebody? How much did these feel-ings, these loves, these worships, have to do with purereason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were notthese things the tissue out of which our lives wereconstr ucted? Did not these feelings, after all, deter- mine the course of our existence? It was impossible tosay we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship. In one form or another we had been living by faithand little else. Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn’t be life. But we believed in life—of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, yet, there it was. Couldwe still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass ofelectrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Of course we couldn’ t. The electr ons themselves seemed mor e in- telligent than that. At least, so the chemist said. Hence, we saw that reason isn’t everything. Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, though it emanate from our best minds. What about people who proved that man could never fly? Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who roseabove their problems. They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled. We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn’t true. Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in ever y man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, bypomp, by worship of other things, but in some for m or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling wehave for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fear-lessly , but He was ther e. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep downwithin us. In the last analysis it is only ther e that He may be found. It was so with us. We can only clear the ground a bit. If our testi- mony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, encourages you to search diligently within yourself, then, if you wish, you can join us on the Broad Highway . With this attitude you cannot fail. The consciousness of your belief is sure to cometo you. In this book you will read the experience of a man who thought he was an atheist. His story is so interest-ing that some of it should be told now. His change ofheart was dramatic, convincing, and moving. Our friend was a minister’s son. He attended church school, where he became rebellious at whathe thought an overdose of religious education. Foryears thereafter he was dogged by trouble and frustra-tion. Business failure, insanity, fatal illness, suicide—these calamities in his immediate family embittered and depressed him. Post-war disillusionment, evermore serious alcoholism, impending mental and physi-cal collapse, brought him to the point of self-destruc-tion. One night, when confined in a hospital, he was ap- proached by an alcoholic who had known a spiritual experience. Our friend’s gorge rose as he bitterly cried out: “If there is a God, He certainly hasn’t done anything for me!’’ But later, alone in his room, heasked himself this question: “Is it possible that all thereligious people I have known are wrong?’’ While pondering the answer he felt as though he lived inhell. Then, like a thunderbolt, a great thought came. It crowded out all else: “Who are you to say there is no God?’’ This man recounts that he tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It pour ed over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a greattide at flood. The barriers he had built through theyears were swept away. He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love. He had stepped from bridgeto shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious com-panionship with his Creator . Thus was our friend’s cornerstone fixed in place. No later vicissitude has shaken it. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night, years ago, it dis- appeared. Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at suchtimes a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seeminglyhe could not drink even if he would. God had restoredhis sanity. What is this but a miracle of healing? Yet its ele- ments are simple. Circumstances made him willing to believe. He humbly offered himself to his Maker—then he knew. Even so has God restored us all to our right minds. To this man, the revelation was sudden. Some of usgrow into it mor e slowly . But He has come to all who have honestly sought Him. When we drew near to Him He disclosed Himself to us!