Strengthening
the Faith of Christians in A.A., N.A., and Recovery Today
Bill
Wilson’s Call on God for Help
Dick B.
© 2015 Anonymous. All rights reserved.
© 2015 Anonymous. All rights reserved.
Dr. William D. Silkworth advised
Bill Wilson that Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, could cure Bill of his
alcoholism. At the time of Bill Wilson’s third hospitalization in Towns
Hospital, Bill had a discussion with his physician, Dr. William D. Silkworth,
on the subject of the “Great Physician.” And Silkworth’s biographer Dale
Mitchel wrote in Silkworth: The Little Doctor Who Loved Drunks:
“Silkworth has not been given the
appropriate credit for his position on a spiritual conversion, particularly as
it may relate to true Christian benefits. Several sources, including Norman
Vincent Peale in his book The Positive Power of Jesus Christ, agree that
it was Dr. Silkworth who used the term ‘The Great Physician’ to explain the
need in recovery for a relationship with Jesus Christ. . . . In the formation
of AA, Wilson initially insisted on references to God and Jesus, as well as the
Great Physician. . . . Silkworth challenged the alcoholic with an
ultimatum. Once hopeless, the alcoholic would grasp hold of any chance of
sobriety. Silkworth, a medical doctor, challenged the alcoholic with a
spiritual conversion and a relationship with God as part of a program of
recovery. His approach with Bill Wilson was no different. . . Wilson did often
confirm Silkworth as ‘very much a founder of AA.’ . . . . [Bill wrote:] “I was
in black despair. And in the midst of this I remembered about this God
business. . . and I rose up in bed and said, “If there be a God, let him show
himself now! All of a sudden there was a light. . .a blinding white light that
filled the whole room. A tremendous wind seemed to be blowing all around me and
right through me. I felt as if I were standing on a high mountain top. . . I
felt that I stood in the presence of God.” [In Norman Vincent Peale, The Art
of Living] The Silkworth copy of this book inscribed by Peale is available
at the Silkworth Collection Archives. . . . In this book in particular he
describes the need for surrender (p.105), he uses the term ‘The Great
Physician’ (later used by Bill Wilson) as a metaphor for Jesus Christ (pp. 123
-26, and 151), and the details of an act of making amends, the AA Ninth Step,
(pp. 128-31), all of which are cornerstones of spiritual living ripe within the
Alcoholics Anonymous program and that of Dr. Silkworth.”[1]
Ebby Thacher visited his old school
friend and companion Bill Wilson shortly after Bill’s third hospitalization.
Ebby told Bill that he (Ebby) had been lodging at Calvary Rescue Mission,[2]
had “got religion,”[3]
and that “God had done for him what he could not do for himself.”[4]
Ebby had there in Calvary Mission made a decision for Christ.[5]
In a manuscript I found at Stepping Stones, titled, “Bill Wilson’s Original
Story,” every line was numbered. The numbers ran from 1 to 1180; and here is
how Bill there described Ebby’s approach and Bill’s observation that Ebby had
been born again at the Mission:
“Nevertheless here I was sitting
opposite a man who talked about a personal God, who told me how he had found
Him, who described to me how I might do the same thing and who convinced
me utterly that something had come into his life which had accomplished a
miracle. The man was transformed; there was no denying he had been reborn.”
(lines 935-42).[6]
Bill Wilson shortly set out for
Calvary Mission to receive what his friend Ebby had received.[7]
Upon his arrival at Calvary Mission, Bill went to the altar just as Ebby had
done.[8]
And just as Ebby had done, Bill made a decision for Christ.[9]
Rev. Sam Shoemaker’s wife was present. She told me on the telephone from her
home in Burnside very explicitly that she was present at the Mission and that
Bill there “made a decision for Christ.”[10]
In a recorded talk at Dallas, Texas,
Bill Wilson’s wife Lois Wilson described the events that took place at Bill’s
conversion:
“Well, people got up and went to the
altar and gave themselves to Christ. And the leader of the meeting asked
if there was anybody that wanted to come up. And Bill started up. . .
. And he went up to the front and really, in very great sincerity, did
hand over his life to Christ.”[11]
The Rev. W. Irving Harris was Dr.
Shoemaker’s Assistant Minister. Harris and his wife Julia lived in Calvary
House where Shoemaker lived, and knew Bill Wilson quite well. Rev. Harris typed
a memorandum which his wife Julia gave to me, which said of Bill’s Mission
Conversion:
“. . . it was at a meeting at
Calvary Mission that Bill himself was moved to declare that he had decided to
launch out as a follower of Jesus Christ.”[12]
Then, it was Bill Wilson himself who
began to describe his own conversion to Christ at the Calvary Mission altar.
First, while drunk, Bill wrote a letter to his brother-in-law Dr. Leonard
Strong, using the same description that Ebby had used regarding his own
conversion. Bill said, “I’ve got religion.”[13]
Of far greater importance are the
remarks that I found twice in Bill’s manuscripts at Stepping Stones and which
are now recorded in his own autobiography published by Hazelden. Bill wrote:
“For sure I’d been born again.”[14]
Even Bill’s wife Lois, having
seemingly become resentful of Bill’s victory, wrote: “Although my joy and faith
in his rebirth continued, I missed our companionship. We were seldom alone
now.”[15]
But the decision at the altar did
not, at first, produce sobriety. Bill had not yet had quite enough to drink.
After his conversion, he wandered drunk in despair and dark depression to Towns
Hospital one more time. He was, he said, still pondering “that mission
experience.”[16]
Concluding he could no longer defeat
alcoholism on his own and still remembering Dr. Silkworth’s assurance that
Jesus Christ the Great Physician could cure him, Bill thought:
“Yes, if there was any great
physician that could cure the alcohol sickness, I’d better seek him now, at
once. I’d better find what my friend [Ebby] had found.”[17]
Bill arrived at Towns Hospital for
his last visit as a patient. For Bill, “The terrifying darkness had become
complete.” Then he thought, “But what of the Great Physician? For a brief
moment, I suppose, the last trace of my obstinacy was crushed out as the abyss
yawned. I remember saying to myself,
I’ll do anything, anything at all.
If there be a Great Physician, I’ll call on him.’”[18]
And here are a few of Bill’s comments
about what happened when he made that “call” and had his hospital room blaze
with an extraordinary “white light experience”—a vital religious experience
that changed his life forever, an experience that dominated the early A.A.
thinking about the importance of Jesus Christ, and an experience that may give
strength to the faith of Christians in A.A. today: Bill described this vital
religious experience in the chapter of
the Big Book which he called “There is a Solution.”
“Then, with neither faith, nor hope,
I cried out, ‘If there be a God, let him show himself.’ The effect was instant,
electric. Suddenly my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was
seized with an ecstasy beyond description. I have no words for this. Every joy
I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy, I was conscious of
nothing else. Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon
its summit where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In
great, clean strength it blew right through me.”[19]
“And then the great thought burst
upon me: ‘Bill, you are a free man! This is the God of the Scriptures.’ And
then I was filled with a consciousness of a presence. A great peace fell over
me, and I was with this I don’t know how long. But then the dark side put in an
appearance, and it said to me, ‘Perhaps, Bill, you are hallucinating. You
better call in the doctor.’ So the doctor came, and haltingly I told him of the
experience. Then came great words for Alcoholics Anonymous. The little man had
listened, looking at me so benignly with those blue eyes of his, and at length
he said to me, ‘Bill you are not crazy. I have read about this sort of thing in
books but I have never seen it first hand. . . .’ So I hung on, and then I knew
there was a God and I knew there was grace. And through it all I have continued
to feel, and if I may presume to say it, that I do know these things.”[20]
A.A.’s official biography of Bill
Wilson summarized the results of Bill’s white light experience:
“Bill Wilson had just had his 39th
birthday, and he still had half his life ahead of him. He always said that
after that experience, he never again doubted the existence of God. He never
took another drink.”[21]
Not only had he quit drinking for
good, but he set about feverishly witnessing to anyone who would listen. Dr.
Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., to whose church the Calvary Mission belonged,
encouraged Bill to spread the message of change and spiritual recovery to
others like himself. William G. Borchert reports the events as follows:
“Bill took the preacher at his word.
With Lois’s full support, he was soon walking through the gutters of the
Bowery, into the nut ward at Bellevue Hospital, down the slimy corridors of
fleabag hotels, and into the detox unit at Towns with a Bible under his
arm. He was promising sobriety to every drunk he could corner if they,
like he, would only turn their lives over to God.”[22]
Yet, as Dr. Bob put it, “Time went
by, and he [Bill Wilson] had not created a single convert, not one. As we
express it, no one had jelled. He worked tirelessly with no thought of saving
his own strength or time, but nothing seemed to register.”[23]
But the message was carried to Dr. Bob and simmered to its essence by three
months of Bible study and discussion by Bill and Bob in the summer of 1935.[24]
The simple Original program, founded in Akron on June 10, 1935, developed by
the Akron Christian Fellowship, and incorporating the basic ideas taken from
the study of the Good Book, achieved astonishing success by November of 1937.
They are printed in page 131 of DR. BOB
and the Good Oldtimers.
The seven points of the original
program—the basic ideas taken, as Dr. Bob said, from the Bible. were summarized
for the Rockefeller family and are printed in full in Stick with the Winners! How to Conduct More Effective 12-Step Recovery
Meetings Using Conference-Approved Literature: A Dick B. Guide for Christian
Leaders and Workers in the Recovery Arena, by Dick B. and Ken B. (Kihei,
HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2012), pp. 25-26. And authors Dick B.
and Ken B. have itemized the 16 principles and practices that the Christian
pioneers used to implement the summarized points of their program. The full
text of the itemization is set forth in Stick
with the Winners! at pages 27-37.
Bill Wilson’s message, incorporating
his view of the importance of Jesus Christ, is recorded in two places in A.A.’s
subsequent literature.
On page 191 of the Fourth edition of
A.A.’s Big Book, Bill is quoted as saying:
“The Lord has been so wonderful to
me, curing me of this terrible disease that I just want to keep talking about
it and telling people.”[25]
And, in earlier A.A. years Bill’s
message repeatedlycontinued to express this basic idea to others still in need
of help. One account begins with a visit by Dr. Bob’s sponsee, Clarence H.
Snyder, with a Cleveland man:
[Said this Cleveland man:] “One
evening I had gone out after dinner to take on a couple of double-headers and
stayed a little later than usual, and when I came home Clarence [Snyder] was
sitting on the davenport with Bill W. [Bill Wilson]. I do not recollect the
specific conversation that went on but I believe I did challenge Bill to tell
me something about A.A., and I do recall one another thing: I wanted to know what
it was that worked so many wonders, and hanging over the mantel was a picture
of Gethsemane and Bill pointed to it and said, “There it is,” which didn’t make
much sense to me.”[26]
And this was it. For those in
early A.A. who thoroughly followed the path that began with belief in God and
surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the path was a path to success—to
finding God, to A.A.’s solution—the vital religious experience.. And Bill’s
message for those who wanted to hear it was that the Lord had cured him. Dr.
Bob confirmed Bill’s message with the last line of Bob’s own personal story
when he said, “Your Heavenly Father will never let you down!”[27]
Gloria
Deo
[1] Dale Mitchel, Silkworth The Little Doctor Who Loved
Drunks: The Biography of William Duncan Silkworth, M.D. (Center City, MN:
Hazelden, 2002), 33-34, 44-52, 63, 65, 78, 96, 100=01, 106-09, 121-22,
151, 159-61, 193-99, 225.
[2] Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of
A.A. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1957),
58-9; Bill Wilson: Bill W. My First 40 Years: An Autobiography By the
CoFounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2000),
132.
[5] T. Willard Hunter, “It Started Right There”: Behind the
Twelve Steps and the Self-help Movement, Rev. ed. (Claremont, California:
Ives Community Office, 2006), 6.
[6] Dick B., Turning Point: A History of Early A.A.’s
Spiritual Roots and Successes (San Rafael, CA: Paradise Research
Publications, 1997). Note: This and other such manuscripts will shortly be
published in Dick B.’s latest book with the working title, The Early
Manuscripts and Papers I Was Allowed to See and Copy at Stepping Stones
Archives in 1991.
[9] Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W.: More on the
Creator’s Role in Early A.A. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications,
Inc., 2006), 92-94.
[11] This quote was discovered by A.A. historian Richard K., who
listened to the Lois Wilson recording, wrote down the “Christ” remark, and
provided the information to me. See Dick B., When Early AAs Were Cured and
Why, 3rd ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc.,
2006), 11.
[12] Dick B., New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker,
and A.A., Pittsburgh ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc.,
1999), 533.
[14] Bill W. My First 40 Years, 147; See Dick B., The
Conversion of Bill W., 110, reporting the two places (pp. 130 and 103) of
the manuscript titled “Wilson, W. G. Wilson Recollections,” dated
September 1, 1954, that I personally inspected and was permitted to copy of
Stepping Stones Archives in 1991.
[20] The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings
(New York: The AA Grapevine, Inc., 1988), 284.
[22] William G. Borchert, The Lois Wilson Story When Love is
Not Enough: A Biography of the Cofounder of Al-Anon (Center City, MN:
Hazelden, 2005), 170.
[23] The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical
Sketches Their Last Major Talks [Pamphlet P-53] (New York: Alcoholics
Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1976), 10.
[26] This account was included in the third edition of Alcoholics
Anonymous (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1976), 216-17. It
has now been removed from the subsequent edition. The picture to which Bill W.
pointed was a well-known depiction of “a place called Gethsemane” where Jesus
had gone to prayer and “saith unto his disciples, sit ye here, while I go and
pray yonder. . . . And he went a little further, and fell on his face,
and prayed, saying, ‘O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me:
nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt,’”
