Nine Step Pagans

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the website ninesteppagans.faithweb.com/main.htm, with the title: “Nine Step Pagans: Recovery with a Difference. Initiated as a  pagan-friendly but not other-exclusive alternative to Judeo-Christian-oriented recovery groups, Nine Step Pagans - that is, pagans rising above chemical or behavioral slavery - is an organization of individuals who recognize in themselves a tendency toward addiction or unhealthy compulsive behaviors, and a desire to overcome this tendency. For the purpose of the organization Nine Step Pagans, the noun ‘pagan’ refers to a person whose faith and worship includes a deep, abiding respect and love for the creation of which humans are a part, and a desire to live in well-balanced relationship with self and the rest of the natural world.”

Tom: It’s a legitimate organization. You’ve met some pagans. I remember you sitting next to one on an airplane.

Dave: By the way, the pagan sitting next to me on the airplane was in our military, remember?

Tom: Right, right.

Dave: And he said there were quite a few pagans, and they have their worship ceremonies out in the woods together.

Tom: And they also have their problems: drugs, alcohol, so on and so forth. 

Now, I’d like to go over some of the Nine Steps, but before I do, on their website they say, “The invaluable influence of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps of that organization is gratefully acknowledged.” So they utilize it, and of course AA doesn’t recognize other groups that use their 12 Steps or modify their 12 Steps, and so forth. But this is to deliver them or put them in at least a sobriety or recovery phase, which never ends, according to AA and according to this group.

But the first one is “Step One: We came to feel enslaved by excessive behaviors, which were harmful to us, throwing our health and relationships out of balance through addictions, compulsions, or both.” And you’ll find this not just in AA 12 Steps, but all the other modifications, a variation on this one.

One of the other ones I wanted to read though is Step 4 - it says, “We sought help from our deities, fellow humans, healers, clergy, groups, or whatever source necessary to aid us toward freedom and health.” So this works for them, Dave, it seems.

Dave: Yeah, and they’re not particular about it. It seems that any of them will work, and that’s one of the arguments that I use with those who practice particular variations of the 12 Step Program: Why have any variety to it? Why even try to justify it from the Bible? Why dress it up with biblical verses?

Tom: Or add Jesus as your “higher power.”

Dave: Yeah, when it works…any higher power works, so they say. Then where does that put Jesus as your higher power if other higher powers work just as well, apparently? Tom, that’s just astonishing that anyone would go along with a program like that.

Tom: Now, Dave, when you say all of these work, and they seem to work - one group is as well as the next - you’re not just making that up. That is a statistic from organizations that deal with alcoholism and treatment of alcoholics. They will tell you right up front that all of these different treatments work just about the same. 

However, what they’re concerned about is that those who go through issues of habitual - we would say “habitual sin,” but they would say “addictions” - those who go through habitual addictions, they come to sobriety without any of these steps or programs or, you know, AA, or NA, or whatever the organization might be. This is the statistics from the research organization.

Dave: So, Tom, that tells us we need to focus not on improving your behavior, not on being delivered from addiction, we need to bring people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. When they’re born again, the Spirit of God and Christ has come to live in them, and they know Him and love Him, these things fall by the wayside. They become new creatures in Christ Jesus.

I just finished writing our article for November - it’s titled, “Victory in Christ.” I point out…you know, I say, “The Apostle Paul, who was the chief of sinners, so he says, he became the chief apostle!” Wow! He was injurious and hated Christians, and yet he was transformed into a man who loved the Lord and who was willing to die along with the other Christians.

Tom: Not still in recovery from his sin.

Dave: No, and I wonder what recovery program did this for him? Wow! Everybody ought to know about that one! In fact, there was no recovery program. He never said a word about being in recovery, but he was transformed by meeting Christ, trusting Him, loving Him, and of course being born again of the Holy Spirit so that Paul could say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

So, Tom, maybe a bit facetiously, I say, “I wonder what small group he went to where he discussed his problems over and over, they all discussed…”

Tom: His hangups, his…

Dave: Right, with one another, week after week…was that some group like that that he learned that he was crucified with Christ? But did he then have to keep going to this group and continue this recovery process? I don’t think so. And, Tom, when you look back in history and you see the triumphant lives, the victory that Christians had…for example, read Hebrews 11: these people were “sawn asunder; they dwelt in dens and caves of the earth; they were starved, they were hated, persecuted,” and yet they triumphed through faith in Christ. Now, I just ask why isn’t that good enough? It worked better for them than any of these programs work for people today.

Tom: Mm-hmm. For some of our listeners, if they’d like to know more about 12 Steps, the October article, I address that. And according to the official writings of AA, they document how Bill Wilson, one of the founders of AA…

Dave: And Dr. Bob, as well.

Tom: …and Dr. Bob, as well, they were involved in spiritism, and there’s no doubt that…

Dave: Seances. 

Tom: …there was no doubt that he received content related to the 12 Steps from spirit entities.

Dave: Tom, the occult source of this is beyond question, and why, then, any Christian groups would honor the 12 Steps in any way, adapt them, or try to use them, or try to sanctify them with biblical terminology, that is something that I cannot understand at all.