Sometime in 2004, Joe Ann and I were invited to visit a large psychiatric hospital in Slovakia that treated alcoholics, other drug addicts, and gamblers. After our first meeting with the the head of the hospital, we were invited to come another time for Joe Ann to share her story as a recovering alcoholic.
Of course, Joe Ann shared the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and their importance in her recovery process. After hearing Joe Ann’s story, the hospital administrator said this to us, “Under communism we were not permitted to have anything in our treatment program of a spiritual nature. Would you come here and bring the spiritual dimension to our patients?”
“Yes, we would be happy to do that. We will bring a proposal to you.” It was more than we could have asked for.
Introducing the Twelve Steps
Every treatment program in the U.S. knows the Twelve Steps of AA and about 95 percent of centers include them in some way as part of their treatement. We were being asked to bring the Twelve Steps to a place where they were totally unknown. Scouring our addiction library, we found an old book with a chapter that gave a model for introducing the Twelve Steps to a treatement center for the first time. We used that model to build our eight-week introduction which we ran in cycles. Since treatment was three months, most patients were able to take advantage of our weekly sessions during the course of their treatment.
Meditation on Step Two
Not long after we began the eight-week program, I wrote a workbook for those in our classes that summarized the teaching of each week, gave some additional material, and included daily meditations with space for them to write their thoughts. Most of the meditations were very short, just one or two paragraphs. However, when we introduced Step Two – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, I wrote a long meditation on the story we find in the Bible in Mark 9: 14-27.
The story is about a man who came to Jesus with his deaf and dumb son. The boy had seizures and when he had convulsions he foamed at the mouth and fell on the ground violently and became rigid. Sometimes when he was near water or fire and had a seizure, he fell into the water or fire and nearly died.
As this man came to Jesus, his son had a seizure. Earlier in the chapter we read that Jesus’ disciples had tried to help but they were unable to do so. You can imagine the helpless and hopeless feeling the man had. As he sees his son in a seizure there in front of Jesus, he pleads with Jesus and says, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
Two questions
There are really two questions or doubts in that plea from the father. One had to do with the ability of Jesus to do anything. The other was about the willingness of Jesus to help. The man struggled with both of these. He had tried other things and they had not worked. He had gone to other people and they had not been able to help. Was Jesus able?
Then, even if Jesus could help, why would he want to help? Was he willing to help this man and his son? After all, there was nothing important about the man. He is asking Jesus for mercy. He had nothing to recommend him. There is no reason he deserves this. He is just a suffering human being and so is his son. He asks Jesus to have compassion – to enter into his suffering with him.
Then Jesus looks at the man and says to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” What incredible words for the father to hear. The Bible says that immediately the father of the boy cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”
What he heard from Jesus was that Jesus was willing. What he also heard was that Jesus was not going to do something for the man without the man’s participation. He had to believe.
I went on from telling the Bible story to talking about the curious phrase in the second step, “came to believe”. The phrase implies a process. We don’t see the process before the story begins in Mark. We don’t know if the process in this man involved first hearing about Jesus and others being helped by him. Then, perhaps seeing others who were healed by Jesus, before he came to Jesus himself. But he came. Then he came to believe.
What about these questions and you and me?
I have seen Christians who are not confronting an illness and praying for healing, but instead they are struggling with these questions when it comes to serving the Lord is some way, accepting a challenge or taking a step of faith. They know God is able to do great things and that God uses people to carry his message and minister in many ways. Their question is not about God’s ability but about his willingness to use them.
When we have that question or doubt, I think it is because we are looking at our own inadequacies and forgetting that God is looking at how he gets glory from using us with our weaknesses.