If we follow the suggestions of the AA Big Book, particularly the first sentence on page 47, then in our early days we actually create, or make up, God. "When, therefore, we speak to you of God," it says, "we mean your own conception of God." It tells us that other people's conception of God can't help us. We must come up with our own, and "at the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth." Our own definition of our own Higher Power will suffice.

But things change as we reach Step 11. "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God ...." If our conscious contact with God is imperfect, that can only be because our understanding of God is inadequate in some way. Now we let our Higher Power guide our understanding of that very Higher Power.

Intially we may have come to the issue of God in Steps 2 and 3 with all manner of preconceptions. We hate God, we don't believe in God, we're fervent Christians or Jews or Moslems. And all these preconceptions we are tempted to impose on the God of Program. Yet that God of Program can only finally become real for us if we're willing to let those preconceptions go in their entirety and -- in Step 11 -- to allow God to show us what God really is.