These Vermont natives descended from a culture and tradition
of human effort leading to supernatural holiness, even though Paul castigated
fellow believers in Galatia for thinking that they could be made perfect in the
flesh. The Puritanical ancestors of the region tried to evince lies of holiness
in order to demonstrate that they were the predestined elect, to prove that
they have received the grace of God. Such thinking was as illogical and
antithetical as their conformist stance against dissent, despite their
dissenter origin against the Established Church of England.
A friend of Bill W. visited the distraught and dissipated
former stock broker one evening. When Bill offered to pour him a drink, the
other man politely decline: “I’ve got religion.” In effect, this man had become
a Pharisee, not preaching Christ and Him crucified, but teaching some empty tenets of a faith tradition. The
greater blasphemy, however, followed when the man suggested to the distraught
alcoholic, “Choose your own conception of God!”
Where does anyone get the flimsy notion that we can just
conjure up our own idea of God? This privatized form of faith is nonsense. God
as creator of the Universe cannot be understood; rather, he must be received in
accordance with His revelation according to Scripture.
These men were unfit and fussy people who had no life in
them. The chronic smoking binge that led Bill W. to succumb to cancer, followed
by his final clamoring for alcohol at the end of his life, bear witness to a
man who was not set free from drinking. A philanderer who preached adherence to
a creed instead of Christ, Bill W. and his "spiritual" program has not brought people into the life that Christ
Jesus has promised to all who are willing to believe on Him.
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