“You need to develop your own concept of God” my first sponsor said to me. That was quite a 180 for me. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian community. You didn’t define what God was, you were told what God was. If you didn’t agree, that was your problem. Developing my own concept of God seemed awfully close to heresy.
Besides, I already had a concept of God, the one I grew up with. The only trouble was that God did not seem to help me as I was killing myself overeating. The God I grew up with was kind of schizophrenic. I was told God loved me dearly, but if I didn’t toe the line morally, he would send me to burn in hell for eternity. Needless to say, it seemed like a good idea to not get too close to this God. I mean if you were one of his chosen, maybe he would send you away to be a missionary. Yes, it was best not to get too close.
Before finding OA, I felt like I was the only person in the world that did the things with food that I did. As a teen I imagined that I was some alien space baby that had been marooned on this planet and there was no one else like me here. Maybe someday my people would come and take me home.
Then one day it happened! I found OA and learned I wasn’t alone. There were so many of us that they could print books for us! Not only wasn’t I alone anymore, they said they had a way to recover from the overeating! At that point, I decided that there must be a loving God, because he brought me to OA when I was so alone and so desperate. OA taught me about a loving God that cared about me and wanted good things for me.
I couldn’t decide how to reconcile my two God concepts. Finally, I decided to hold the two mutually exclusive God concepts for the time being. I wouldn’t worry about which one was right or how they would be combined.
However, the more I was in OA, the more I had little spiritual experiences that showed me that God loved me and was bringing good into my life. Then one day it hit me! I could choose to believe in the schizophrenic God I had been told stories about growing up, the one that was defined by interpretations of writings from 2000 years ago. Or I could choose to believe in the loving God that had brought me to OA and that was continuing to bring good things in my life. Given a choice between believing in stories about God and my own personal experiences with God, I decided it only made sense to rely on my firsthand experience with God.
My relationship with God is definitely a work in progress. Habits learned over decades are not instantly removed. But I am learning to trust HP and the people he brings into my life more every day. Thankfully, God doesn’t show me everything I need to know at once. That would probably burn me out and leave me hopeless and demoralized. God seems to know I need to go one step at a time, one layer of the onion at a time. Maybe sometimes I would want more but in reality, one bite at a time is all I can handle.
— K.G.