Is There a Danger to the 12 Step Program?

The problem with the twelve steps of N.A. and A.A. is largely twofold.  First, the roots of the twelve steps are linked to the occult.  Second, the belief in “God, as you understand Him” is like playing spiritual Russian roulette.

The beginning of the movement started when Bill Wilson, founder of A.A., joined the Oxford Group, founded by Frank Buchman, a Lutheran minister.  Later, it came to be known as Moral Rearmament (MRA).  Members of the Oxford Group practiced divination and received their guidance in the same way that mediums receive messages from demons.  Buchman, for instance, was known to spend “an hour or more in complete silence of soul and body while he gets guidance for the day.”1

The founder, Bill Wilson, was a drunkard when he met one, Dr. Silkworth.  It was Silkworth who convinced Wilson that alcoholism was a disease.  Having accepted that lie, Wilson was relieved that he was not accountable to God for his mistakes.  University of California professor, Herbert Fingarette, has written an entire book that proves alcohol/drug addiction is not a disease.2

The twelve steps give an appearance of godliness, but a closer examination reveals otherwise.  Though the movement capitalizes the “H” in “Him” when referring to God, their god is not the God of the Bible.  One can believe in any god of one’s own making.  Many people have gone from bad to worse in the twelve steps because they became involved in spiritism and occultic practices through a god they conceived in their own mind to help them with their disease.  Although the god will help them, he will never judge them, after all, they are sick and have a disease.  The Bible, however, says that the disease is sin, not addiction.

There is not even the presence of Christianity in A.A./N.A., but the roots of the occult are deep.  Rather than coming to Jesus Christ—the Way, the Truth, and the Life—many choose the way that seems right and instead it leads to destruction (Prov. 14:12).

1 William C. Irvine, Heresies Exposed (New York:  Loizeaux Brothers, 1921), pp. 58-59.

2 Herbert Fingarette, Heavy Drinking:  The Myth of Alcoholism As A Disease (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1988).