Quality of Faith

Quality
"To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle. To most A.A.s, he is not. There are too many of us who have been just like him, and have found the riddle's answer. This answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot.

We supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest appraisal, we found we had only been superficial. Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling. In both cases, we had been asking for something for nothing. The fact was that we hadn't really cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession."

© 1952, AAWS, Inc. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pg. 32