The “Apostle” Bill W. and the Apostle Paul

Whether you attend a church service upstairs or a step meeting downstairs; whether you are most comfortable with the language of religion or the language of recovery; whether your basic text is the Big Book or the Bible; the 10 Commandments or the 12 Steps; whether you have a God or a Higher Power; and whether you seek sobriety or salvation; if you are diligent in your spiritual journey and thorough in seeking spiritual growth ~ whether through the church or Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or a hybrid combination of both ~ the result of your spiritual quest, of which this series is a part, is your transformation into a closer resemblance of the person God wants you to be.

We have two guides on this part of this spiritual journey: the Apostle Paul, author of the letters or “epistles” in the Bible that were written to various churches; and the “Apostle” Bill W., also known as Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA. Both Paul and Bill, as you shall soon see, were rather unlikely choices to be spiritual leaders whose divine mission was guiding people to healing, transformation, and wholeness.

God intervened upon the lives of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Bill and put them to use for the betterment of humanity. The reason I refer to them both as “apostles” is that one definition of “apostle” is, “the earliest or foremost advocate of a cause.”

The Apostle Paul was an earliest or foremost advocate of the cause of Christianity. He has been called the person most responsible for the spread of Christianity, even more so than Jesus. Paul took Christianity to the world and reached people and places that even Jesus might not have imagined it would reach.

The Apostle Bill was an earliest or foremost advocate of the cause known as Alcoholics Anonymous. Author Aldous Huxley called Bill Wilson the greatest social architect of the twentieth century.” Bill took recovery to the world and reached people and places that even Bill himself would not have imagined possible.

The lives of the Apostle Bill and the Apostle Paul, though two thousand years apart, span the separate disciplines of theology, psychology, and philosophy. But one key principle that they have in common is the belief that the transformation of self and society was not possible without a spiritual awakening, a spiritual re-birth.

Bill Wilson did not start a church, and the Apostle Paul did not start a 12 Step group, but that does not mean that you need to choose between the church and AA. Whether you like the church more than AA, or AA more than the church ~ there are things that AA can learn from the church, just as there are many things that the church can learn from A.A.

Next week, we will take a brief look at the lives of the Apostle Bill W. and the Apostle Paul. Their lives were telescopes we can peer through to see our own lives closely and clearly. Their lives reveal what happens to people who experience spiritual transformation on a journey from disease to health; from emptiness to fullness; from curses to blessings, from supposed defeat to absolute success ~ regardless of whether they see themselves in “recovery” or not. Addiction may indeed be a disease; but recovery from it is a blessing that can be duplicated if we follow a spiritual path.

Please ask your friends and colleagues to subscribe to this blog by entering their email address in the upper right corner of this page. Your comments may be incorporation into future posts.