The Fallacy of Defiance

Most of us don’t realize to what extent we are defiant.

I first published this two years ago and I’d like to refer to it again. It feels very appropriate considering some of the folks who’ve displayed their own recently…

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It surprised me when I discovered how defiant I had been toward God in my drinking days and for quite some time after He helped me sober up.

Small, simple things like, “no, I’ll do it my way, thank you.” Do you have any idea how often and to what degree we do this?

There’s an old “story” I wish I could relate about someone demanding a sign from God while they’re standing in the middle of a field. They dismiss a soft breeze, a butterfly and a couple of other signs because they misperceive them and leave discouraged.

I really like what it says on page 31 in the 12&12 – “When we encountered A.A., the fallacy of our defiance was revealed.” I like it today, I didn’t quite like it when I was a green pea. I didn’t want to be considered defiant. I’d been told that throughout my life – “You’re so defiant Mark.” I can hear my mom now. It was my ego and pride – I really didn’t want to be wrong in yet another way.

Our book goes on to say – “At no time had we asked what God’s will was for us: instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be.” I thought “how had I been telling Him what it ought to be? Consider that all, ALL my prayers, revolved around getting something I wanted or not losing something I had. “Please, please God, do this for me.”

God had other ideas… I wasn’t very accepting of God’s other ideas. When He didn’t deliver I became angry and hurt. I developed a manner of thinking that God didn’t love me because he never gave me what I wanted. Ever…

Then A.A. tells me “No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not defiance.”

Oh heck, I’m done… but wait!

“In A.A. we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol’s final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate.”

There’s hope in those words! Maybe I’m not done after all?

“This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay.”

All Conditions!

From the previous page – “Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing, so far as faith was concerned.”

Self-righteousness undid me and was phony!

Humility!