What does "deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God" say?
In short:
- The line is on page 55 of the Big Book, in Chapter 4, "We Agnostics": "deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God" (p. 55). It goes on: the idea may be hidden "by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there" (p. 55).
- It is a claim about everyone, and the context doesn't soften the wording. What the context adds is how it's offered: as former agnostics admitting something about themselves ("Actually we were fooling ourselves," p. 55), with "in some form or other," and closing on "It was so with us." (p. 55)
- The next lines say where they found God: "We found the Great Reality deep down within us." (p. 55) "In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found." (p. 55) Then they limit their own part: "We can only clear the ground a bit." (p. 55)
- So context complicates any use of the line, quoted alone, as a ruling on what other people secretly believe. In its place it's testimony, and it sends the reader to search within himself rather than to take the writers' word for it.
Before the line
The chapter has been arguing that reason isn't everything (p. 54). The people who proved man could never fly were reasoning too (p. 55). Then the writers turn the flying image around: they had been seeing "another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems" (p. 55). "They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled." (p. 55) "We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn't true." (p. 55)
That's the setup. The line itself opens with a confession: "Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down..." (p. 55). The writers are telling the reader what they found out about themselves.
The line and what follows
In order (p. 55): 1. The fundamental idea of God is deep down in everyone, though calamity, pomp or the worship of other things may hide it. 2. Faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and its "miraculous demonstrations" in human lives, "are facts as old as man himself" (p. 55). 3. "We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend." (p. 55) 4. "Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there." (p. 55) 5. "We found the Great Reality deep down within us." (p. 55) "In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found." (p. 55) "It was so with us." (p. 55) 6. "We can only clear the ground a bit." (p. 55) If their testimony helps the reader drop prejudice and think honestly, and "encourages you to search diligently within yourself" (p. 55), then "if you wish" (p. 55), the reader can join them on the Broad Highway.
Notice the wording that keeps it open: "in some form or other," "some kind of God," "if you wish." And notice where the passage points: inward. It doesn't send the reader to a church, a creed or the writers' own beliefs, but "deep down within us" (p. 55).
After it
The chapter closes with the man who thought he was an atheist. Alone in a hospital room, he asked himself whether all the religious people he'd known could be wrong, and then the thought came: "Who are you to say there is no God?" (p. 56) His change was sudden. The book adds that it isn't so for everyone: "Some of us grow into it more slowly." (p. 57) Appendix II, added after the first printing (p. 567), says most members' experiences are slow, and that they find they have "tapped an unsuspected inner resource" (pp. 567–568), which they come to identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves (p. 568).
Does the context change the reading?
It complicates it. The book does claim that the idea of God is deep down in everyone, and a fair page has to say so. But in its place the claim is the writers' testimony about what they found when they stopped fooling themselves. It's held open ("in some form or other"), it points the reader to look within, and the writers say all they can do is clear the ground. The chapter's own starting requirement, a few pages earlier, is only willingness to believe (p. 47).
Read it yourself
- Chapter 4, "We Agnostics" (pp. 44–57), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt4.pdf
- Appendix II, "Spiritual Experience" (pp. 567–568): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_appendiceii.pdf
- Related: What does "either God is everything or else He is nothing" mean in its place? · Do I have to be religious to work the Steps? · What is the "spiritual awakening" in Step 12?
- The full book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is sold by A.A. World Services at https://onlineliterature.aa.org.
Sources
| Source | Pages | First published |
|---|---|---|
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 4, "We Agnostics" | 47, 54–57 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix II, "Spiritual Experience" | 567–568 | written after the first printing (p. 567); the Preface says the appendices came into the book with the second edition, 1955 (p. xi). After 1950. |
Page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). The Preface says the program chapters have been "left largely untouched" since 1939 (p. xi).
Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.
These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.