AA Big Book Pseudo-Christ - Another Gospel

We do not have life unless we have Christ, and Jesus Christ must be given the credit for the accomplishments of faith in God and knowledge of His presence, which cannot be achieved without Christ no matter what pseudo-Christ pretends.  Soulish accomplishment is not spiritual life.  Knowledge of God's existence, as has been widespread in our ancient past, is not enough to be reconciled to God, because our sin blocks us.  It may seem refreshing to admit God's existence, but it still doesn't solve our deepest problem.  Openly wicked people feel happy in their wickedness, and so moral excellence is also not salvation; the problem of sin persists to block relationship with the actual God who created the Universe.  Only by believing particular things and calling on Master Jesus due to those particular beliefs do we gain rebirth and the spiritual action of becoming a new creature happens to us, and we are put under the mastery of Jesus Christ and follow the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus instead of attempting to follow God's written Law, such as the 10 Commandments and all the others known to the ancient Israelites, which modern, western morality is based in.

There's a reason that the World is trying to outflank the Church in the area of morality.  Mimicking righteousness clears the way for the World to "go beyond" Christian morality in its headlong plunge, evolving its own morality, until no wickedness is beyond its ability to conceptualize and to realize.  Remember that antichrist is a look-alike of Christ, but inside is filth.  Morality without Jesus Christ, crucified and risen in accordance with the Scriptures and our call on His name in response is no morality but infinite evil that overtly, petulantly rejects revealed truth about the only good one there is and His good plan to save all who would trust Him.  Trusting pseudo-spirituality that we mentally contrive is the opposite of that, no matter the short-term, seemingly positive outcomes or what appears to be positively life-changing in the eyes of the flesh of mankind.

After meeting with Christians know a desire for God alongside a willingness to focus on the method of the twelve steps, I found it convenient to explore AA's Big Book.  In chapter 4, I found a detailed analysis of their pseudo-spirituality, and I've been shocked to see how closely it follows with many of the concepts I have ascribed to Liberalism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, and the strange confusion I've found and the weakness I've found in the Church.  The basic point comes out loud and clear, that acceptance of Jesus Christ is not necessary, but only a mere, rationally attained concept of an Intelligent Creator (as that god is known in scientific circles) is necessary to reap the benefits of miraculous soulish accomplishment beyond what human will can achieve and that this merest assent of the presence of any higher power is all that's necessary to experience the presence of God.

This concept, as it is slowly changing the true knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, goes hand in hand with the necessity for a clear salvation doctrine that separates Church from World.

We Christians know God personally, and His benefits should not be hacked away from knowledge of Jesus Christ - the only way to God - and be repackaged for functionality!

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 1)need for spiritual basis in life
1a)agnostics and atheists couldn't get there
2)code of morality or philosophy
2a)willpower insufficient to do these things
3)a power greater than ourselves, instead of our willpower to do what we couldn't
3a)opening the mind to accepting any creative intelligence underlying the totality of things
3a1)the vagueness of God is for the purpose that each individual, no matter what religion or atheism or agnosticism, can gain the benefit of having some spiritual basis in life
3a1a)the vagueness is adequate, because it's only a starting point for spiritual growth; having faith in any higher power is enough to empower changes in life
3a2)the details of God were not necessary for the purpose of living a better life, including the struggle against alcoholism
3a3)the realm of spirit is all-inclusive (pg. 46, 4th ed.)
4)take all the spiritual terms you've heard and ask what they mean to you; redefine known spiritual concepts to fit yourself
4a)this starting point leads to spiritual growth that reaches places that had always seemed out of reach
4b)belief or willingness to believe -anything- is the cornerstone on which "effective" spiritual structure is built
4b1)this is "great" news..
4b1a)it does not require faith in many unbelievable things, but only this one thing
5)knowledge of the destructive nature of alcoholism is often enough to overcome obstinacy and prejudice against the core idea of a spiritual side to life
6)there are solid reasons to believe in a greater power
6a)even though proof is demanded to know things, we still accept, for instance, theories of electricity, because we need a starting point to explain what we experience about it
6b)it's scientific to realize that the outward appearance is not the same as the inner structure
6b1)the solidity of a steel girder made up of fast-moving particles
6c)an all powerful, guiding, creative intelligence is just like this, but we can be obstinate in accepting this fact along the same lines as we accept the others
6c1)we accept the fact of the higher power in order to see ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation
6c1a)seeing ourselves as intelligent agents and spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation removes blockages in our souls that hindered us from doing higher things in our souls, because our antagonism against even God's existence always stopped us when we would have made those soulish breakthroughs (NOTE: 6c1a is my summation of what they meant but didn't exactly state here)
6c1b)lay aside prejudice against organized religion
6c1b1)people in organized religion have a power we want: they have purpose, direction and a logical idea of what life is about, as well as a degree of stability, happiness and usefulness
6c1b2)we overlooked the profit in religion because we saw their shortcomings; this was a mistake that can be handily avoided by reducing all religion to the mere acceptance of an intelligent designer (NOTE: 6c1b2 includes some of my own summation, and is not directly taken from the book)
7)for our purposes, it does not matter what the conception of the higher power is
7a)all agree on one thing, though - all have gained access to and believes in a power greater than himself, which is able in each case to accomplish the miraculous - the humanly impossible; the success rate of this method is extremely high
7b)worldly people can achieve revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking
7b1)normal human ability contrasts with the benefit
7b1a)in the face of collapse and despair
7b1b)in the face of the total failure of their human resources
7b2)the nature of the benefit
7b2a)a new power, peace, happiness and sense of direction *flowed into them*
7b3)the method to get the benefit
7b3a)believe in a power greater than themselves
7b3b)take a certain attitude toward that power
7b3c)do certain simple things
7b4)the benefit is a change of belief that life is futile, which change uncovers their underlying reasons for taking life so hard and finding it unsatisfactory
7b4a)the consciousness of the presence of God is the most important fact of their lives
7b4a1)this is remarkable evidence of the desirability of having faith
8)material progress in the past has been slow
8a)people in the past were just as intelligent as us
8b)they didn't progress due to their prejudices, fixed thinking and traditions
8c)we are better off for having the facility of readily discarding old ideas for the new, more functional one
8c1)we should do the same with our human problems and be willing to change our *point of view* (NOTE: I read that as change our point of view, philosophy, concept of God or religion in order to solve personal problems)
8c1a)personal relationships
8c1b)emotional natures
8c1c)misery and depression
8c1d)couldn't make a living
8c1e)feeling of uselessness
8c1f)full of fear
8c1g)unhappy
8c1h)couldn't seem to be of real help to others
8d)overcoming human problems is even more important than material progress
8d1)the God idea of a Universal Spirit works
8d1a)the Wright Brothers had an almost childish faith that their airplane would work, and that faith was the mainspring of their accomplishment; without faith, the material gain would not have been achieved
8d1b)the atheistic or agnostic idea that self-sufficiency works is disproven
8d1b1)logic is still useful and need not be discarded in order to have faith in a higher power
8d1b2)taking the last step that seems to abandon reason is accomplished by:
8d1b2a)realizing we leaned to heavily on reason during the last leg of our journey toward faith and just didn't want to lose our support
8d1b2b)realizing we had already been relying on faith
8d1b2b1)we had faith in our own reasoning, and our own ability to think
8d1b2b1a)we had been abjectly faithful to the god of reason
8d1b2b2)faith had been involved all the time
8d1b3)we had already been worshipers, too!
8d1b3a)we worshiped people, sentiment, things, money and ourselves
8d1b3b)we worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea or a flower
8d1b4)we had loved someone
8d1b5)feelings, loves and worships have little or nothing to do with pure reason
8d1b5a)in the end, we realized we had been living by faith and little else!!
8d1c)without faith, life wouldn't be life
8d1c1)*we believed in life*
8d1c1a)we believed in life without the type of proof found in physics or math
8d1c1b)this belief in life made us stop believing the things that made us feel depressed, namely, the nothingness of materialism
8d1b6)reason isn't everything
8d1b6a)reason isn't dependable!
9)each person has a fundamental idea of God
9a)belief in a higher power
9b)miraculous outcomes in human lives
9c)faith in some kind of god is part of our make-up, like the feeling we have for a friend
9c1)we had to fearlessly search for him, but we found he was there
9c1a)we found him within ourselves
9c1b)*he is only found within ourselves* (pg. 55, 4th ed.)
10)if we've cleared the way a bit, then you join us on the *"Broad Highway"*
11)story of an atheist
11a)"Who are you to say there is no God?"
11b)knowledge of the existence of God was taken to be his "cornerstone"
11c)he gave up alcohol quite forcefully
11d)this is a miracle of healing
12)"He  has  come  to  all  who have  honestly  sought  Him".
13)"When  we  drew  near  to  Him  He  disclosed  Himself to  us!"

What a perfect approximation of pseudo-Christ religion this is!  God has His Holy Book, and this false religion has its look-alike Big Book.  They compete.

The idea (4b1a) is that a power greater than myself exists who had intelligently formed the Universe in all its forms, functions and devices, and mere acceptance of this simplified form of religion is enough to effectively and functionally and mechanically build spiritual structure to empower mundane life-change, because that spiritual structure is more functionally powerful than willpower (2a, 3).  Acceptance of this greater power, especially suited to atheists and agnostics, is only the first step, though.  This false gospel (see 4b1 to see the little phrase that claims more greatness than the actual gospel) mimics the effective mechanical functions of The Holy Spirit, Who is a living spirit and not a mere force.  In fact, the personality exists with evil spirits that this kind of thinking opens vulnerable alcoholics up to (and the whole World, as it's been adapted in more recent times with the spreading and normalization of New Age thoughts), but those evil spirits would often like to hide themselves, exposing only their power, I suppose to more effectively inculcate their victim, because they'd be rejected if they were known.

11)It's not revealed here whether or not that man accepted the reality of Master Christ Jesus' death for our sins, burial, resurrection and subsequent witness and, due to that belief, called on the name of the Master for salvation by verbally confessing "Master Jesus". If not, then the man is delivered from the power of alcohol and some of his previously disordered thought patterns, but is not saved and, emphatically, does not know - and is not known by - God!

12-13) In the end of this argumentation, straightforwardly biblical phrases have been repurposed to mean lying things perpetrated on the unwary.