Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
—Step 9 of the Twelve Steps
“Like apples of gold in a silver setting is a word that is aptly spoken. It is a golden ring, an ornament of finest gold, such is a wise apology to an attentive ear.”
—Proverbs 25:11–12
“To listen to the word and not obey it is like looking at your own features in a mirror and then, after a quick look, going off and immediately forgetting what you look like.”
—James 1:23
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son, treat me as one of your paid servants.”
—Luke 15:19
What the Western religions sometimes called “wisdom,” the Eastern religions often called “skillful means.” Wisdom was not a mere aphorism in the head, but a practical, best, and effective way to get the job done! One was either trained in skillful means by a master or parent, or it would be the long laborious school of trial and error, which seems to be the unfortunate pattern today. I am afraid that commonsense wisdom, or skillful means, is no longer common sense. We are a culture with many elderly people but not so many elders passing on wisdom.
Jesus was a master of teaching skillful means, especially in his Sermon on the Mount, and in many of his parables and one-liners. But we got so preoccupied with needing to prove and worship Jesus’ divinity that we failed to let him also be a sage, a wise man, a teacher of commonsense spiritual wisdom. We just waited for another dogmatic declaration to fall from his lips—about how he was God—which he seemingly never made—instead of hearing his daily and constant declarations about how to be human and how we were to imitate him in his humanity.
He proudly and most often called himself a “son of man,” emphasizing what we have been afraid to emphasize. Jesus’ by far most common name for himself, imitating the prophet Ezekiel (who uses it ninety-nine times), was “a son of humanity,” one of you, the archetypal human, everyman.1 It is almost his only name for himself, and never “I am the Son of God.” He even tells the disciples not to tell people that he is the Christ! (See Matthew 16:20.) It seems to be another example of selective memory because it is so amazing that we tried to tie the “Son of Man” title up with one obscure passage in Daniel 7:13, with a capitalization that would not have existed in the original. But that kept the Gospel properly
“otherworldly,” and we could all imagine its possible connotations while ignoring its clear denotation. In fact, its meaning was just what it said, “I am a classic human being” and one of you! We kept Jesus out of the range of actual imitation, when the very goal was to imitate him in his combined humanity and divinity. Remember, Jesus said “follow me” and never once said “worship me.” The sad result is that we have many “spiritual” beings when the much more needed task is to learn how to be true human beings. Full humanness leads to spirituality by the truckload, or as the Scholastic theologians said, “grace builds on nature” and cannot do an end run to heaven.
So you might say that Step 9 is telling us how to use skillful means to both protect our own humanity and to liberate the humanity of others. It also says that our amends to others should be “direct,” that is, specific, personal, and concrete, in other words, probably not an e-mail or a tweet. Jesus invariably physically touched people and met people when he healed them. It is face-to-face encounters, although usually difficult after a hurt, that do the most good in the long run, even if the other party rebuffs you at the first attempt. You opened the door from your side, and it thus remains open, unless you reclose it.
But the most skillful insight is the cleverly added “except when to do so would injure them or others.” Bill W could only have learned such wisdom by doing it wrong, probably many times. It takes seven to ten years, they say, for a married couple to begin to learn how to fight fairly. One often needs time, discernment, and good advice from others before one knows the when, how, who, and where to apologize or make amends. If not done skillfully, an apology can actually make the problem and the hurt worse, and the Twelve Steps were experienced enough to know that. Not everything needs to be told to everybody, all the time, and in full detail. Sometimes it only increases the hurt, the problem, and the person’s inability to forgive. This all takes wise discernment and often sought-out advice from others.
Anonymity and Total Disclosure
We have a myth of “total disclosure” in our culture that is not always fair or even helpful. Just because it is factually true, does not mean everyone can handle it or even needs to handle it, or has a right to the information. You need to pray and discern about what the other needs to hear and also has the right to hear. What people want to hear in salacious and gossipy detail has now been fed by our media-saturated society, and our wanting to know has become our right to know. Gossip is not a right but a major obstacle to human love and spiritual wisdom. Paul lists it equally with the much more grievous “hot sins” (Romans 1:29–31), and yet most of us do it rather easily.
In training us for our work as confessors, a wise Franciscan told us that we should not, and in fact it was wrong of us to, “demand a manifestation of conscience” from another person. Some things are not everybody’s business—not even the confessor’s. Any prying or undue questioning had more to do with our own morbid curiosity than any love for the healing or helping of the other person. We would do well to teach this to our whole society to protect one another from slander, rash judgment, and ill will. Is this not part of why the word “anonymous” is in the very A.A. title?
Finally, something about truth, truth-telling, and deceit: Truth is not just “what happened” but also what you or any party has a right to know—and can handle responsibly. For an addict, a gay person, a person with a preexisting physical ailment, there are people who have a right to that knowledge, and frankly people for whom it is none of their business, and people who will misuse it. Even our government recognized this in what we call the Fifth Amendment, stating that people have the right not to incriminate themselves. To say to an unwelcome guest at the door, “No, Mother is not home,” might be factually a lie, but in fact it might be very true on a level that could deeply matter: “Mother is not home for you”! In confessional work, we called it a “mental reservation,” and it was sometimes not just good but, in fact, the more moral thing to do to protect yourself or others, or even the party seeking the information. “Not everybody has a right to know everything” is a moral principle that our culture would be wise to learn.
Skillful means is not just to make amends but to make amends in ways that “do not injure others.” Truth is not just factual truth (the great mistake of fundamentalists), but a combination of both text and context, style and intent. Our supposed right to know every “truth” about our neighbor too often feeds those with preexisting malice, bias, or mental imbalance, and leads to spin, distortion, and misinterpretation of supposed facts. I have met many falsely accused people in jails and in treatment homes, accused by the court of public opinion, with information that was totally manipulated by angry politicians or tabloid forms of journalism. It has become its own form of pornography and is just as destructive to the soul, to basic justice, and to peoples’ right to their own good name.
The Twelve Steps are about two things: making amends and keeping us from wounding one another further. Too much earnest zeal here, “spilling the beans” on everybody’s lap, will usually create a whole new set of problems. Many people simply do not have the proper “filters” to know how to process ideas or information; they often misuse them without intending to misuse them. Even sincere people can do a lot of damage with information that they are not prepared to handle, and often make rash judgments that are not true or helpful. It is likely what St. Teresa of Avila was referring to when she said, “Lord, protect me from such saints!” Step 9 does just that.