dickb

There are two ways of looking at amends - particularly if you are in Alcoholics Anonymous and wish to follow directions.

The first is best understood by reading the excellent discussion of the 9th Step in the Big Book. When you read it, I predict you will see that you go in a helpful and forgiving spirit. You tell the person your fault, and that's it. You don't go there for applause. You go there to clean up your side of the street. It is fairly common for us to want to tell the other person off while we are making "amends." But that defeats the purpose. It is not a campaign to reform the next person. It is a life or death effort to overcome alcoholism by confessing your part and sweeping that stuff out of your life, your thinking, and your conduct. That's tough when your brain is swirling around. But grab hold of your thinking, and put it to someone you can help, or what God has done for you, or where you can improve your own life.

The second is Biblical and comes from the roots of A.A. Those roots can be found in the Bible. Thus if you look at Matthew 7:1-5 - the source of the Step - you will see that you are to pull the log out of your own eye before you try to pull the speck out of your neighbor's eye. There's more, but that is foundational. And both Bob and Bill proclaimed that the Sermon on the Mount contained the underlying philosophy of A.A. Thus also the "golden rule" which follows in Matthew 7, decrees that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It does not say "do them." It says do as you would want them to do for you. Morever, Bill's 12 Steps came largely from the teachings of Rev. Sam Shoemaker as he taught Oxford Group principles. The Oxford Group strongly emphasized "restitution." It cited four different Bible parts (in Numbers, in Luke, and in Matthew) which make clear that restitution is about restoring, not correcting. It is about righting things in your own life and thinking, not about correcting another. It is about looking for, confessing, and correcting "your own part."

God Bless, Dick B.