[We] Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
We made a decision….
Like the Second Step, an idiomatic phrase is employed rather than the simplest verb form: we decided. To the ears of many, “we made a decision” sounds more final and formal than “we decided.” There seems a sense of more protracted consideration about an important matter, rather than something as banal or innocuous as choosing an entrée from a dinner menu.
“We decided to go to the movies.”
“We made a decision to go to the movies.”
The small words of this Step cover big concepts, beginning with the past tense of make. Make carries with it the sense of creating, of bringing something into existence that previously did not exist at all. This is not the only instance of creation in the Steps, but it is the first. We previously admitted something that was already out there, and likewise came to believe something which was placed before us to consider. In this Step, one may say something has been placed before us to consider, also, but not the decision. To decide is to choose between alternatives and, while the alternatives may be placed before us to consider, the decision is a separate entity from consideration and non-existent until it is made.
Although difficult to notice at first glance, a decision is always made regarding an action. You may have spent hours studying paint colors when you finally announce, “I made a decision.” One may properly say, “You made a decision about the color,” or “You made a decision on the color.” What you have made a decision about or on is to do something—to paint with that color, to acquire paint of that color, or even merely to like that particular color.
A koan of sorts is passed around AA: “Three frogs sat on a log; one made a decision to jump off. How many frogs were left on the log?” Answer: three. The frog merely made a decision, not a jump. This brings to consciousness that a decision is always about action—or inaction—and we may deceive ourselves into thinking otherwise, especially when a decision is made for delay, or cancellation of action:
“We made a decision to wait, rather than go to the movies, now.”
“We made a decision not to go to the movies.”
The frog on the log making decisions clearly made another one after making a decision to jump.
What action is a decision made about in Step Three?
[We] Made a decision to turn…over….
To turn over is a fascinating English idiom. Turn is used idiomatically in many ways: turn on, turn in, turn out, turn off, turn into, in turn, at every turn, out of turn, by turns…. Turn comes from Greek (tórnos) and Latin (tornus) words meaning “lathe.” To turn over surely began its etymological journey with the simple meaning of rotating or otherwise moving an object to bring its bottom side to the top, or back side to the front. Along the way, “opposing sides” grew to include more than those of an object, they could be opposing sides in a dispute over ownership or possession of an object, and while the movement was still from one side to the opposite, a much different shade of meaning developed:
“Do you have my Big Book?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, turn it over to me.”
“What happened to the fugitive in your basement?”
“I turned him over to the Feds.”
“Turn over your lunch money, or I’ll beat you up.”
In modern terms, to turn over has the sense of to relinquish, to hand over, to give up or surrender (something).
[We] Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over….
“Our will and our lives,” is the crux of Step Three’s small words with big concepts. Will is not a mere auxiliary verb, here: it is a noun representing a concept with vast repercussions. Will has its etymological root in terms meaning to wish or to desire and is, in this case, equivalent to its synonym, volition: the power or act of choosing, determining, or deciding.
Given the myriad actions our body normally takes without our will—a cough, a breath, heartbeat, digestion—it is difficult, at times, to recall we don’t “lift a finger” without our will to do so. On the other side of the coin, those with the physical incapacity to do so understand very well that their will to “lift a finger” is of no avail. No sane person asks a paraplegic to simply will himself or herself to walk. Thus, unlike wish or desire, will is only operative when a viable choice to do or not do is present.
Life (plural, lives) is another small term for a very large concept. In this case it can be both: a) the state or quality which distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inorganic matter, chiefly characterized by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment or response to stimuli, and b) the period of animate existence of the organism.
As human beings, there isn’t much left of us after you subtract our will and our lives.
[We] Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care….
While care does carry the sense of management or supervision, it also includes the sense of protection, solicitude, and devoted attention. In the succinct words of Merriam-Webster: “effort made to do something correctly, safely, or without causing damage.” This includes the notion of maintenance.
[We] Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step Three now becomes the first of four Steps to refer to Deity, “a Supreme Being, Ultimate Power, Creator,” etc. God with a capital g.
The qualifier immediately follows: “as we understood Him.” Since the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939, this qualifier—in the initial recounting of the Steps in the Fifth Chapter—has been printed in italics: “as we understood Him.” (There are examples of this qualifier being underlined, rather than italicized. Before computerized word-processing, typewriters ruled the day; italics in typewriters were not available, for the most part, so the substitution of underlining became an accepted practice.)
Italics, or italic type, is used throughout this site. The proper use of italic type in English is not haphazard or subjective, but governed by certain generally accepted rules, viz.:
Titles of books, plays, long poems, periodicals, works of art: New York Times, Mona Lisa, Sanford and Son
Names of ships, trains, airplanes: Titanic, Coast Starlight, Air Force One
Foreign words: etapas, kiboko, sattva
Use-mention distinction: What is the definition of definition?
To indicate thought, rather than spoken words (in novels): What’s that mean? he wondered.
Technical terms (especially when introduced): onomasiology, proxemics, synecdoche
For emphasis: Then, there was God as we understood Him.
Lest we begin to think in terms of a given concept of that Ultimate Thing, one developed in the annals of Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, or any other extant religion of the world, this simple participial phrase, “as we understood Him,” gives carte blanche to conceive as one would like (or is able). And, again, to conceive as individuals, not en masse: as you understood, or she understood, or I understood: not ever necessarily as we understood together.
As to the apparently limiting choice of pronoun to refer to this Ultimate Thing—the masculine, singular “Him”—only recently, from perhaps the mid-twentieth-century, has this choice been called into question in American popular discourse. Both the culturally dominant Christian outlook, and its Judaic predecessor, followed an ancient tradition of androcentrism.
The very term androcentrism—dominated by, or centered on males and masculinity—is a twentieth-century invention. In all times prior, Western Civilization didn’t question the validity of male dominance, including in its religious considerations, except in the most recondite or subtle ways.
To this day, one will be viewed askance who refers to a Supreme Being in other than masculine, singular terms. In light of discoveries by physics, one may refer to an Ultimate Creative Force as “It,” but this doesn’t have the same “intelligence,” or human connection in normal conversation, and imparts a mechanistic view. Likewise, the weight of a monotheistic tradition resists any plural reference: They, Them, etc., in spite of Trinitarian language among some Christian sects, is seen as abnormal.
Nevertheless, American vernacular and public discourse about religion and belief has changed since the Great Awakenings, and the cultural shift continues to be palpable.
Not merely androcentrism, but the fundamental dichotomy of human gender is currently undergoing reevaluation. That reevaluation was not in force earlier in the century when these words constituting the Program were first published.
I don’t know that there’s a more loaded word in English. Loaded with cultural bias, generations of use and misuse, individual misgivings, and contemporary uncertainty. God, with a capital g.
Coming out of a strictly (and strict) religious milieu, the annals of AA tell what an anxious and somewhat bitter struggle it was to add the “disclaimer,” to that Name of names: as we understood Him. A compromise, the story goes, between two sides who were both convinced the mention of God meant the difference: one side was convinced it meant certain success, and to the other side it meant complete failure. How could it be otherwise? AA was and is composed of humans, and humans have been bedeviled by religious intolerance since…God-knows-when.
“My God’s better than your God.”
“God is with us and against you!”
“You’re stupid to believe in ANY God!”
And on it goes, right up until today.
By the time I got to the Program, God as a word ceased to have very much sanctity attached to it, as far as I was concerned. For one reason, there was God and god; it rolled off the tongue the same, it sounded the same, and it meant almost the same thing. Growing up, I could see the difference was important, but I thought: if it’s THAT important, why didn’t they find another word?
Is God is merely the head god? Or the real god, while the others are fake—myths, or idols? I wasn’t so sure what kept my God from being a myth or an idol to someone who had “their” God.
Meanwhile, God was most often just one of three-syllables, rarely a word by itself. It went with dammit, when just dammit wasn’t enough, and it went with oh my so often that no one hardly said just oh my, anymore. Now, folks just say o-m-g. W-o-w.
So God, as a word, was no longer a big deal to me, and certainly not big enough to handle my unruly will and completely-personal, belongs-only-to-me life. I needed to cross that word out and put something else there and, amazingly, the folks already deep in the Program didn’t have the slightest problem with that.
“We are not a glum lot.” It’s okay to have a little fun with the Program. Even a lotta fun, if you can stand it!
After we had a few years in, my trudging buddy, Big Pat, and I invented Step 3.5—which we originally called Step Three and a Half—since computers weren’t as pervasive then. Step Three Point Five reads: “Complained bitterly about the care we received.”
One of the reasons we complain bitterly is because we haven’t yet profited from the remaining Steps. I liken it to a complete career change. Suppose I had been a printer, and I had all the necessary machinery to do my job: the paper, the printing press, the ink…. Through Step Three, let’s say I receive new “orders.” (Big Pat was a retired Navy man and remembered well the wait for new orders—how and when he would be shipped, what his new post was to be, that the orders were non-negotiable….) Let’s say, God-as-I-understood-Him has new orders sent to me: I am now to be a farmer.
Suddenly, the printing press, the paper, the ink, and all the various accoutrements are useless. I might move all that stuff into the barn on my farm, but it doesn’t help me plow the field or milk the cow or feed the chickens, or do anything that has to be done now that I am a farmer. My situation breeds nothing but complaint, since I can’t do my new job properly, at all. Until I take inventory. Until I look over what I have that’s useless, now, and get the tools and supplies I need for my new position. Until I trade the printing press for a tractor and the ink for chicken feed, and make all the changes in inventory, my life as a farmer will be horrid—and give me much to complain bitterly about.
It was a long, improbable journey from the fear of becoming “the hole in the doughnut,” through the realization that I was (congenitally?) unable to deal effectively with life, and on to the conviction that Something–other than a chemical–could help me.