As I wrote earlier this month (though I didn’t say this in so many words), for the church to be healthy, we who make up the church need a lived knowledge of our own sin, and we need to confess that and wrestle with it each week in the context of our worship. Michael Morgan recently offered an excellent reflection on that point, out of his reading of David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest.
At a meeting of the “Advanced Basics” Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group in Boston [Wallace gives us] a crisp—though finally inadequate—picture of what church could be like. The group is so compelling because of three fundamental dispositions of its people: they are profoundly empathetic, they are profoundly gracious, and they are profoundly consistent.
First, their empathy. . . . They all came to be in the same room because their addiction, once invisible, had steadily bubbled to the surface until it had thoroughly enveloped and ruined them. Right there, on the edge of a cliff between death and AA, they admitted their problem and sought help. This same basic story unfolds with variable particulars as the rest of AA listens or, more importantly, as they identify.
This remarkable empathy leads to graciousness. Nobody’s story is too broken, too “Out There.” . . . Nobody can confess their way out of this strange fellowship. This is because there’s absolutely zero pretense and therefore zero capacity for condemnation. Each person in the room has touched the void of their own helplessness, so they can be present with the darkness in others with the humility of one who knows what it’s like to be freed.
Last, the core members of the Advanced Basics group are rigorously consistent. Wallace writes that each member attends the meetings even if they “feel like they’ve got a grip on [their addiction] at last and can now go it alone.” For them, AA isn’t a break-glass-in-case-of-crisis option. They all realize they are never out of crisis since their disease is always prowling around, just waiting for them to misstep. Their need for healing is innate, not circumstantial, so they pursue healing religiously.