Tuesday Re-mix –
Step 8: We made a list of all persons we have harmed and we are willing to make amends to them all.
[I am using these Tuesday Re-mixes for a few weeks to think (again) about addiction to self-reliance and how that addiction is one of the biggest challenges to genuine community which we face in the American church culture.]
I’ve been working on Step 8 this week. I am suddenly feeling a little bit like the guy who casually tossed a cigarette butt onto the ground and burned down an entire forest and didn’t find out about it until long afterwards. A friend of mine who knows these 12 steps much better than I do once told me that an addict can spend a lifetime on step 8 alone. Once you start making a list of the people who have been harmed by your addiction, the floodgates open up and it can actually become pretty overwhelming. That has been my experience as I have considered the ramifications, both known and suspected, of my obsessive self-reliance and its impact on others.
So, in order to avoid feeling completely overwhelmed, I am starting with categories rather than with names. It doesn’t diminish the scope of the damage, but it helps me at least begin to get my brain wrapped around the depth and the breadth of the damage. This list is only a start. But it does get me a few steps further down the long process of considering all those I have hurt. So, here we go…
1. My family – How much spiritual damage have I caused each time my wife or daughters came to me needing Godly wisdom and I gave them my own wisdom instead? Rather than prayerfully discerning the wisdom God had waiting …
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