We know from early Church history that one of the first heresies Christianity had to deal with was the idea that we have to "get good" before we are acceptable to God. A subtle variation of this idea is that we have to "stay good" in order to remain in fellowship with God. These "merit-based" views strike at the very heart of the Christian message, which is that men and women can't "get good," and that fellowship with God is based on the acceptance by God of fallible human beings -- in the case of Christianity, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The persistence of this "got to get good" thinking, not only in Christianity but in virtually every religion in the world, is surprising, and can only be a reflection of our universal self-loathing. It crops up in the most impossible places -- it even occurs, with supreme lack of logic, in Buddhism. And it keeps on rearing its head in our 12-Step programs.

It's for this reason that the Big Book treatment of Step 10 is so much worth reading. If our practice of this Step is just a dreary examination on a daily basis of where we have gone wrong yet again, with the obligatory request, of course, that God forgive us, we are simply continuing to live over and over in the supposed reality of our own inadequacy. Nothing ever changes -- we merely continue to reap the consequences of our character defects.

But Step 10, practiced as the Big Book suggests, and combined with a sincere practice of Steps 11 and 12, offers a way out of this grim routine. As we learn to watch ourselves moment by moment, we see how our feelings, our fears and our hopes are preparing to make us take the same old actions once more; and that can enable us, with the help of God as we understand God, to act differently. This isn't about "getting good." It's about living as spiritual beings.