Don’t Try To Get Too Damned Good By Thursday!
May 26, 2008 by Mark
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
An old AA saying coined by early AA’s because some began to grow spiritually prideful.
From Bill W.’s writing published in The Language of the Heart
Humility for Today
“There can be no absolute humility for us humans. At best we can only glimpse the meaning and splendor of such a perfect ideal. As the book Alcoholics Anonymous says: ‘We are not saints… we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.’ Only God himself can manifest in the absolute; we human beings must live and grow in the domain of the relative. We seek humility for today.”
Have you heard someone in a meeting mention that “when I think I have humility, I don’t?”
Bill asks what we mean by ‘humility for today’ and how do we know when we’ve found it?
“We scarcely need to be reminded that excessive guilt or rebellion leads to spiritual poverty. But it was a very long time before we knew we could go even more broke on spiritual pride. When we AAs got our first glimmer of how spiritually prideful we could be, we coined this expression: ‘Don’t try to get too damned good by Thursday!’ That old-time admonition may look like another of those handy alibis that can excuse us from trying for our best. Yet a closer view reveals just the contrary. This is our AA way of warning against pride-blindness, and the imaginary perfections that we do not possess.”
Sort of like what MiseryMarketing seems to be referring to in the comments here. Referencing this…
