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Where is "love and tolerance of others is our code"?

In short:

  • The line is on page 84 of the Big Book, in Chapter 6, "Into Action." It ends the book's paragraph on Step Ten: "Love and tolerance of others is our code." (p. 84)
  • Just before it, that paragraph gives Step Ten's daily practice: watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear, ask God to remove them, talk them over with someone, make amends quickly, and "Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help." (p. 84)
  • Read in place, the line means what it is usually taken to mean, a code for how we treat other people. The context adds where it sits: it's the way of living that the Step Ten work leads into, not a slogan standing on its own.
  • The book's other uses of "tolerance" show what it has in mind: treating people who wrong us as sick (pp. 67, 70), keeping talk about each other kind (p. 125), and showing no hatred of drinking as an institution (p. 103).

The line in its paragraph

Page 84 opens with the end of the Promises, then turns to Step Ten, which suggests we keep taking personal inventory and set right new mistakes as we go (p. 84). The paragraph says the reader has begun a new way of living by cleaning up the past: "We have entered the world of the Spirit." (p. 84) Growth from here "should continue for our lifetime" (p. 84).

Then come the instructions, in order (p. 84): 1. Watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. 2. When they show up, ask God at once to remove them. 3. Talk them over with someone immediately. 4. Make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. 5. Turn our thoughts to someone we can help.

The paragraph closes on the code. The next paragraph begins "And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol." (p. 84), and goes on to the problem of drink being removed, which holds "so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition" (p. 85).

So the code sits between the daily inventory and the book's description of a sober life without the fight. It's the last of a run of actions, all pointing away from self: catch the defect, hand it to God, tell someone, repair the harm, help another person, and treat others with love and tolerance.

What "tolerance" means in the Big Book

The word comes up often, and nearly always about people: - People who have wronged us. In the resentment inventory, the writers saw that the people who hurt them were sick too, and asked God to help them show those people "the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend" (p. 67). Finishing the inventory, "We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies" (p. 70). - The family. In the amends at home, the recovering man asks each morning that "our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love" (p. 83). Chapter 9 says the whole family should meet "upon the common ground of tolerance, understanding and love" (p. 122). - Each other. The book's only other "love and tolerance" is in Chapter 9. In A.A. everyone knows everyone else's troubles, which elsewhere might bring gossip, but "we almost invariably temper such talk by a spirit of love and tolerance" (p. 125). The next lines add a rule of thumb: don't tell another person's intimate experiences unless you're sure he'd approve (p. 125). - Drinking and drinkers. "We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution." (p. 103) A spirit of intolerance, the same page says, might drive away alcoholics whose lives could have been saved (p. 103). - Other people's opinions. "Real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and viewpoints" makes members more useful to others (p. 19), and newcomers at the early meetings Chapter 11 describes were won over partly by "the absence of intolerance of any kind" (p. 160).

Tolerance here isn't servility. On the page before the code, in the amends work, the book says: "As God's people we stand on our feet; we don't crawl before anyone." (p. 83)

A code, after the Steps

Chapter 4 says a code alone didn't work for these men: "If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago." (p. 44) The code on page 84 comes after the inventory, the admission and the amends, inside a paragraph that asks God to remove the defects. The book doesn't link the two passages itself. But read in order, love and tolerance aren't offered as a way to get sober by effort alone. They're how the writers describe living once the work of Steps Four to Nine is under way.

Does the context change the reading?

It confirms it. The line means what it says, and the chapter around it shows it as part of a daily practice that ends by turning to someone we can help.

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages First published
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 6, "Into Action" 83–85 1939
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward" 122, 125 1939
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapters 2, 4, 5, 7, 11 19, 44, 67, 70, 103, 160 1939

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.