12 Reasons Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is A Cult
Celebrate Recovery & 12-Step Programs Included.
A.A. is a lifestyle religion.
A.A. claims to have the truth about overcoming sin.
A.A. has its own sacred text (The Big Book).
The Big Book is intended to be the standard of one’s life.
A.A. creates lifelong disciples of the Program not disciples of Christ.
The Program gets the glory that belongs to Christ.
A.A. identifies sins without calling them sins.
A.A. deems addiction as “a disease” without a proper diagnosis.
The disease model of addiction confuses the effect for the cause.
A.A.’s prognosis is enslaving (one will always be identified by that sin).
A.A. offers the same slavery to a different idol.
Not even God can change the fact you are an alcoholic.
Disclaimer: Our firm position is that the daily life of anyone addicted to drugs and/or alcohol is typically unstable and unhealthy, therefore we do not minimize or deny the importance of medical intervention during the acute stages of addiction or withdrawal. By God’s common grace gifts to mankind, medications and methods exist to help one safely and often comfortably transition to a stable, healthier life where the healing balm of the gospel can be applied and discipleship take place. That said, let’s get into it.
Enslavement
The public face of A.A. presents a kind of nonpartisan, neutral program for overcoming addiction and living a better life. In fact. A.A. is a lifestyle religion founded upon a false spiritual system that it makes disciples for A.A. There is no such thing as “nonpartisan,” and there's no such thing as non-religious. Everyone is serving something. Everyone has a worldview, a religion, and neutrality is a diabolical myth. Often, our critics say,
“You’re out of line. A.A. isn't infringing on the church, it's just helping people to overcome their addictions and to live a better life.”
Any movement that claims to have the truth about overcoming a particular set of sins and its own sacred text that is designed to be the standard of one’s life must be closely examined by the light of Truth.
A.A. addresses sins directly without calling them sins. They identify a behavior as a disease without giving a proper diagnosis. Then they offer a completely enslaving prognosis:
“You will be diseased forever. You will always be an alcoholic, an addict.”
What about the sin of narcissism, or the sin of lying? What about the sin of anger, or basic idolatry? Are those sins addressed in the same way? There's no hope of ever overcoming your condition as a sinner. Within the 12-Step Tradition, you will always be enslaved to that specific sin. Even if you haven't had a drink in 50 years, you are still identified with that sin, by name. Alcoholic. And not even God can change the fact that you're an alcoholic. That, my friends, is an idolatrous false religion and it must be identified as such.
God has been setting addicts free from their sin since the fall of mankind. He hasn't lost his power or forgotten about drunks and addicts. He doesn't need the Big Book to help bring anyone from darkness to the Light. Christ must be honored as Lord of ALL areas of our lives (1 Peter 3:15), including our weaknesses.
When you're in Christ, you are no longer identified as a sinner before God. You have been spiritually reborn, and regenerated with a completely different attitude and understanding about sin. Your sins have been removed from you as far as the East is from the West (infinitely). You have been justified, and forever identified with Christ. You're not an alcoholic forever. You are a Christian. You belong to Jesus. That’s your identity — Forever.
You Are NOT An Alcoholic or An Addict!
Spiritually: A.A.’s doctrine of “higher powers” teaches that any god is good enough as long as that god is bigger than you and is not you. But the same thing could be said for Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witnesses, or even witchcraft. Arbitrary “higher powers” have no power to do anything, much less to comfort, enlighten, or save anyone. Therefore, A.A.‘s first and second steps are logically and spiritually incoherent standing in opposition to one another.
Logically: There is no doubt that there have been alcoholics and addicts who have responded to Mormon or JW evangelism, joined their recovery program, and overcome their addiction. Does it follow from that scenario that The Book of Mormon or the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has the truth?
Consider another analogy. Let's say John Q alcoholic or addict joins the Church of Scientology. The Scientologists do their special brand of spiritual hullabaloo and that man gets sober and stays sober. As defenders of A.A. often say, “John Q was dying, he would have been dead without the intervention and doctrine of Scientology.” Is Scientology therefore the truth? Must we, therefore, begin a crusade to defend the destructive cult of Scientology because John Q stopped drinking, for a while? Who are you to criticize success?
Two qualifying characteristics of cults is that they exist for the sole purpose of furthering their goals, which is to grow the cult, and cult members rarely realize they’re in a cult.
Scientology, like all lifestyle religions and all 12-Step recovery groups, is an obvious cult. John Q might find temporary relief from a particular affliction but continue to languish and lament in his 37 other sins and lose his soul for eternity to an insufficient spiritual red herring that fails to acknowledge the root cause of all pain. Success is no measure of true peace.
Celebrate Recovery and Other Spiritual Recovery Systems
We do not recommend or approve of any pseudo-spiritual treatment or recovery programs based on the 12 step Alcoholics Anonymous, or so-called “gospel-centered” programs, such as Celebrate Recovery.
We do strongly encourage, once a person is emotionally stable, intervention that begins with the gospel, recognition of the person’s true condition, acknowledgement of the need for repentance from ALL sins, and acknowledgement of the Lordship of Christ over addiction and every other sin.
We affirm fully that the gospel is the power that delivers all lost sinners from darkness to the light of life in Christ. The Word of God is infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient for knowledge of God, salvation, and all elements of life as a Christian in the world. The Celebrate Recovery program available at many churches is no better than A.A. Pulling Bible verses from their context and attaching them to a foreign spiritual system like the 12-Step model of A.A. is no answer at all.
Many addiction recovery systems, especially those frequently found presented in the context of the church or offered online by social media influencers, present spirituality as a purely subjective experience that can mean many different things to different people.
The vast majority of these programs and systems acknowledge that spirituality is a journey of self-discovery that leads one to inner peace, and through this process one can find the meaning and purpose for their life. Seekers are often promised higher levels of awareness or consciousness, a more authentic life, a better understanding of oneself, a deeper relationship with “the Universe,” and the ability to live according to their true inner desires, and all of this is possible even without a relationship with a higher power.
Gobbledygook. Anyone who offers or promotes such a system is either in the midst of a self-delusion or is a deceiver. It doesn't matter which because the result will always be the same, more self-delusion, more spiritual blindness.
Nobody is saved from a life of sin by anything other than the atoning work Jesus Christ completed on the cross where the Savior proclaimed “It is finished.” Meaning the penalty for sin has been paid. If you are in Christ, your debt is clear. All your past and future sins have been covered when you are in Christ. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Read Romans chapter 8 if you need more assurance of this.
So whenever a lifestyle religion or self-help program determines for you that it is unsafe for you to communicate with and express love directly to your own child, you are firmly in the clutches of a cult and nothing else. A cult that can save you from alcoholism about 5 to 10% of the time, but can not save you from yourself. Eventually, at some point after the meetings are over, after you've denied everyone who's not “working the program,” when your sponsor is not available, after your husband or wife has died, and you're lying in your bed at night all alone. You're going to realize that all you really had was a lifeless idol that was insufficient to save you from your worst enemy. You might be sober, you might not be sober, but you will realize that the program wasn't worth it. Winning the battle against addiction was not worth forsaking the great love of Jesus Christ.
Your idol can't talk to you. The Big Book has no real answers. You will eventually realize that you don’t have the peace of Christ because you have forsaken Christ as Lord of ALL of your life and now you find yourself alone, sober, perhaps, but all alone in a mountain of other sins that A.A. cannot wash away.
The Good News!
God knows who you are. You're not hiding from Him and no one who has ever been born will receive an unfair judgment. Only by God’s grace through faith will anyone be saved. Not because of anything you have done or could ever do. Salvation is the gift of a holy, wrathful, and merciful God, so that no one may boast about his sobriety or victory over any sin that came apart from the gospel. There is one way to the Father.
Our lord and God came into the world as a man, Jesus of Nazareth, He lived a perfect life according to the Law of God, taught and prepared men to carry the message of the New Covenant to all the world. He gave his life willingly to perhaps the most brutal and humiliating form of capital punishment available in the Roman Empire. But death could not hold Him, and on the third day, He rose from the dead and left that tomb empty! In doing so, He fulfilled the Law, making all sacrifices and the keeping of the Law obsolete.
In Matthew 28, Jesus, in his resurrected body, gives His followers their command, which is our command today. Jesus said to them, “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.” Then, Jesus gives them comfort saying, “Behold! (meaning ‘pay attention’) I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
You were dead in your sins just like the rest of the world. It is appointed for all of us to die and then comes the judgment. What's it going to be for you? Will you receive mercy or justice? If these words make sense to you, then you already realize that you need mercy and that no man wants to face God’s judgment. You need Christ.
The only question is, are you prepared for that moment?
There's only one way.
There is not God's way and A.A.
If you're lost in addiction right now and these words are getting through to you, if you know that your Creator is calling, give it all to Him. If this message is piercing your heart, then give it all to Christ right now. Give Him your addictions. Give Him your lying. Give Him your coveting. Give Him your inability to overcome lust and desire for more and more of what the world offers and all alternate false systems of salvation.
You have no power. You. Have. No. Power. What you are powerless to do, Jesus has already done. What a miracle! The gospel is the power (Romans 1:16-17). Not any other program. Nothing can come alongside the gospel and make it more complete.
Sin is the cause, and addiction is the effect. What about all the other sins that are killing you slowly? Will the man-made religions of self-help and recovery programs be there when you finally arrive at the end of yourself? What happens when the meetings are not enough or stop working? What will be there to help you when you’re clean and sober but still lost, dead in your sins before a holy God? Ask yourself, in all honesty, what is spiritual health, self-awareness, and true authenticity if you don’t recognize that your first problem is your helplessness to the true spiritual wages of sin, which is death? We will all be there one day. What will it be for you?
If you know something has just changed in your heart, or you need more information, please reach out to us at hello@armoroftruth.net and let us know how we can help you in your walk with Christ. It is always a great blessing to hear from readers and viewers.
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