| E-Mail | | Contents | | V&FT
Some have said "there are many paths to God." In a sense this is true. Each of us have rebelled against God in our own unique ways. Each of us have harmed others in our attempt to be our own god. In the end, everyone must have their own program of "recovery."
This website combines insights from at least two programs, and the reader is invited to mix and match these steps in order to chart a unique path back to God.
The 12 Steps of A.A. |
Vine & Fig Tree's Path to Virtue |
Gothard's
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| 1. We admitted we were powerless over [our addiction] -- that our lives had become unmanageable. |
Authority (2) |
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| 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. |
Sanity as God's Gift. |
God's Design for Our Lives (1) |
| 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. |
Repentance |
"Ye must be Born Again" |
| 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. |
Finding out in detail |
Responsibility (3) |
| 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. | ||
| 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. |
Stop justifying our sins, imperfection, and mediocrity |
Suffering (4) |
| 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. |
Ownership (5) |
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| 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. |
Responsibility (3) |
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| 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. | ||
| 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. |
"Salvation" is a life-long process of putting to death the "old man" . . . |
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| 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. |
. . . and putting on Christ |
Success (7) |
| 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics,[7] and to practice these principles in all our affairs. |
Carrying the message "to the least of these" |
Freedom (6) |
| "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves." -- The Big Blue Book, p. 58 |
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Vine & Fig Tree |