Issue 17.16
Part 3
You may want to revisit the last 2 articles to remember why this approach is important. Today we look at the rest of the 12 steps and how they can apply to our nation’s future.
- Admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
This is the hardest thing of all for our government to do – admit our wrong actions. Whether that is the support of slavery, the decimation of our native population and the efforts to destroy their culture, spying on our own citizens, allowing and participating in the death of innocents, or our willingness to coerce or destroy foreign governments to get what we want, we have much to answer for. Yes we have done good and helped defend the world from tyranny of others, but we have also been guilty of things we would condemn in others and need to own up to and apologize for those things.
- We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it.
These (6-10) must come from the citizens and be required of our representatives. Until we the people desire a rebirth of integrity and character on a national scale, it cannot come to pass.
- Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
The current thinking that our founders were not men of God and that they did not petition him daily for direction and wisdom in their thoughts, writing and actions is not supported by history. If you do not read their diaries, writings and personal letters, you can be deceived by modern textbooks and revisionists into thinking they did not honor and seek to obey their concept of God. Yes they were imperfect men and women as we all are – but they regularly sought inspiration and help from God and reflected that in their actions and their writing. We need to act more as they did and turn our hearts to God.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to other addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
As a nation, we need a spiritual rebirth. We need to turn to our higher power and seek to act in accordance with higher principles. As we do so, we will draw other nations to our example and the light we create. We were an example to the world until we allowed greed and a desire to control others to become too important. I reject the popular notion that we are no longer a Christian nation. We accept and appreciate all religions and beliefs and seek to be tolerant of even those we disagree with. No serious student of history can conclude however, that this nation was not founded on a belief in the Christian notion of God. Under that concept we became a powerful, prosperous and mostly honorable nation. If we do not return to those principles, we will follow the path of all the previous great nations of the earth which would be sad indeed.
As our second president, John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people”. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” We must be again that moral and religious people.
Lynn West is a thinker, a teacher and a patriot. You can reach him through email at forgingthefuture2021@gmail.com or through this newspaper. Liberty is a state of being which must be continually created. These articles can help all of us discover the ways we can contribute to that outcome.