We also Tackled our Weaknesses and Failures

This piece on Step 5 of GROW’s 12 Step Program, “we also tackled our weaknesses and failures”, was kindly provided by Stan.

To delay or put on the long finger indefinitely the task of tackling our weaknesses and failures we won’t use comparisons like I’m not as bad as Hitler! I’m not as bad as Stalin! That is too exaggerated.

But we will use other more homemade examples to get ourselves off the hook and give ourselves permission to drag our feet. ‘Look at the politicians! Look at the Bankers!’ we say. I don’t push drugs. I don’t rob. And so on. I’m not as bad as that.

Thank God you are not that bad. But don’t flatter yourself. Don’t say ‘I’m not wrong; I’m not at fault because so-and-so gets away with it.’ Using the sins and mistakes of others to excuse yourself from the grind and drill of self-improvement is dishonest. The truth is every evil, big or small, adds to the sum total of badness in the world. Each of us contributes to the size and volume of that darkness and sin. Do you enhance or diminish this mountain of negative rubbish?

Tackling our weaknesses and failures is a responsibility we cannot avoid. Putting off this task is actually failing ourself and failing humanity. Don’t wait another second to get started! Your own efforts are irreplaceable.

The admission of weakness to yourself and/or to the groups is a strength. Owning up to your wrong, especially in the presence of others who cover up fearing to expose their true condition, creates for you and for them a clear, clean atmosphere that heals and bring you close to one another. Instead of telling lies to become false friends you tell the truth and find true friends.

The wonderful result is this. You are respected and loved, not in spite of your wrongs and failures, but rather because of them. Now with this openness the malice and ugliness has gone out of them. What is left is the bond of our common humanity – the raw material out of which the true human being is being fashioned.

LET THE ONE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN, CAST THE FIRST STONE!