Defective Characters
Here's one that folks go round and round about.
It can easily start with the question "why doe the Sixth Step say "shortcomings" and the Seventh Step say "defects of character"?" -- there are whole meetings dedicated to this topic, and there is even one Twelve Step fellowship that included a discussion of the differences in their basic text.
All the while, there's material out there that quotes Bill W as saying that he didn't want to end two sentences that close together with the same words : ) What he meant was the same thing, as far as we can tell.
But that begs the question that doesn't often get asked - what in the heck ARE these "defects of character"?
The Big Book never lists them, explicitly. Like the "principles", it references them as being understood, but - unlike those "principles" - no listing is ever provided (we'll talk about the "principles" later : )
I've heard folks say that "Selfishness, Dishonest, Resentment and Fear" are "the character defects", and that they are described as such, and listed, in the Big Book - but nowhere does it ever say that these are the "defects of character", and at least one place, there's a slightly different list (selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened) so things aren't very black-and-white.
To muddy the waters further, the Big Book says that it's the selfishness that is the root of our troubles - which, if that's the intention of the phrasing, then there's only one "defect of character"' it then goes on to say that fear is at the heart of the problem, and even shows the fears being the cause of our resentments. And most of my dishonesty is aimed at avoiding the consequences that my fear and my selfishness have brought about. So those four things seem to be interrelated to some extent.
And Bill - writing as Bill, not with the first 100 checking his text - seems to me to have confused things even more with the 12 & 12.
After some years of parroting what I heard in meetings, I decided that I didn't like doing that any more; I wanted to know what the "defects of character" actually WERE. For one thing, the Big Book has a Seventh Step that mentions asking God to "remove" them, but everybody would sit in meetings and say - of course - that God never actually "removes" these things, but that He relieves them a little bit. And there often seems, to me, to be some sort of smirkiness attached to the idea of God "removing" them.
I don't like smirkiness attached to the Steps, and I don't like the idea that the Steps aren't intended to do what they say that they will do.
So I went back to the only place that I know to go back to - the actual black words on the white pages - to see if I could find out, in the text itself, what in the heck they were talking about.
I can start with that quote from Bill saying that "defects of character" and "shortcomings" are the same things - okay, cool. I can hang with that.
So I go to the Big Book to find out what, exactly, it says that I am "becoming willing" to have God remove, and there in the directions it says "all the things which we have admitted are objectionable". Hmmm....if there were just four things, it seems to me that they would be listed here. But instead it is saying that there's another list that are the things that I have admitted are objectionable, and that THE LIST IS NOT IN THE BIG BOOK, BUT IS IN MY FOURTH STEP - which would mean that it would be my list, and my list alone; an individual list, not a common set of attributes.
Okay, got that. And, if I've "admitted" that they are objectionable, then it turns out that Step Six happens to be preceded by a Step where I "admit" stuff - the "exact nature of my wrongs". So the "exact nature of my wrongs" and "the things which I have admitted are objectionable" and "defects of character" and "shortcomings" are now seen as four phrases with the same meaning.
It also says that my admitting is not just being selfish or dishonest or resentful or afraid - it says that I'm "illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past". That doesn't sound like a four-item list.
So let's link those phrases going backwards through the Steps:
DEFECTS = SHORTCOMINGS = ADMITTED OBJECTIONABLES = EXACT NATURE OF OUR WRONGS
Having said that, then, are any of these phrases in the Big Book?
Hmmm...well, since Step Four precedes Step Five, that might be a good place to look. And any Big Book student would be able to tell you where the quickest place to find such an item might be - that would be in the paragraph for the (never named) Fourth Column - the "Our Part" column, as many of us call it.
Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened....The inventory was ours, not the other man's. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight.Wow - there; it says "our wrongs", in black words and white pages. Okay, cool It also says "we saw our faults", and if there's a more likely synonym for "defects of character" than "faults", I don't know what it might be.
So it combines those phrases with that listing of "selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened" - but it doesn't list them as individual attributes, but instead it asks "WHERE HAD WE BEEN selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened?" - not HAVE we been, but WHERE have we been, those things.
My actions. The things I did, and said, or didn't do - my MISTAKES, as it says. "Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened" are not mistakes; they are attributes, or potentials, or motives, but it is the ACTIONS THAT I TAKE or THE ATTITUDES THAT I ASSUME base on those things that are my actual mistakes.
That would imply that my MISTAKES == MY WRONGS == SHORTCOMINGS == DEFECTS OF CHARACTER.
Here's a whole new way of looking at things that was right there in the Big Book the whole time. It's not a matter of BEING "selfish, dishonest, self-seeking of frightened" that we're talking about, but it's the ACTIONS AND MISTAKES AND WORDS AND THOUGHTS that I DID that are the real problems, and that have to be addressed.
This seems to follow up as well in the questions in the sexual paragraph, as well. It keeps asking me what I actually DID, and the motives for my ACTIONS. Huh.
And finally it made sense, and fits together, for me. It's not that I am dishonest, but it's that lied to Joe and stole from John. It's not that I was resentful, but that I was angry at Mark and Mary. It's not that I was frightened, but it's that I ran away from those situations that I was scared of. It 's not that I was selfish, but that I acted selfishly.
The Big Book and the Twelve Steps are, of course, not religiously based, but they do tell us in the text that the Steps are based on principles "common to most denominations". The folks who wrote this Book were, after all, Oxford Groupers, and thus they were attempting to practice First Century Christianity - and they were, indeed, CHRISTIANS, most of them.
And Christians believed that, if somebody confessed, was contrite, and made restitution for a sin, then that sin DISAPPEARED. It went away completely - it was, to quote, "cast as far as the East is from the West".
So if I go through these Steps with a situation, then when I get past Step Nine, that situation, from a spiritual perspective, NEVER HAPPENED. It's gone. It's not on my karmic wheel anymore.
So I've chosen, since reading the words on the pages, and taking the phrase from Step Four and finding it in Step Five, and taking the phrase from Step Five and finding it in Step Six, and reading that the phrase in Step Six is synonymous with the phrase in Step Seven, to believe that it says what it means.
My defects of character ARE removed. They are GONE.
They are - forgiven.
From page 50 in the Big Book:
>>Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people, and sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation.<<
This sentence seems to confirm the theory that "shortcomings" and "defects" mean the same thIng.
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