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Does the Big Book really say to pray for people you resent ("This is a sick man")?

In short:

  • The words are on page 67 of Chapter 5, in the Fourth Step inventory. When someone offended, "we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man.'" (p. 67) It goes on: "How can I be helpful to him?" (p. 67) "God save me from being angry." (p. 67) "Thy will be done." (p. 67)
  • The main text's prayer is about the person, and it asks for a change in the one praying. We "asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend" (p. 67), and to save us from anger. In place of retaliation it asks how to be helpful to him. It doesn't ask God for things on his behalf.
  • Praying for a resented person's health, prosperity and happiness is in a personal story, "Freedom From Bondage" (p. 552), where the member credits the idea to a magazine article by a clergyman. That's a member's experience in the fourth edition's stories, not the 1939 program text.
  • Calling the other person sick doesn't put us above him: "they, like ourselves, were sick too" (p. 67). And it isn't the end of the inventory. Next we put "out of our minds the wrongs others had done" and look for our own (p. 67).

The passage in order (pp. 66–67)

The reader has listed his resentments and seen that they're fatal for an alcoholic (p. 66). "We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how?" (p. 66) "We could not wish them away any more than alcohol." (p. 66) Then the book gives its course:

  1. "We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick." (p. 66)
  2. We didn't like their symptoms, but "they, like ourselves, were sick too" (p. 67).
  3. We asked God to help us show them the tolerance, pity and patience we would cheerfully grant a sick friend (p. 67).
  4. When a person offended, we said to ourselves: "This is a sick man." (p. 67) "How can I be helpful to him?" (p. 67) "God save me from being angry." (p. 67) "Thy will be done." (p. 67)
  5. "We avoid retaliation or argument." (p. 67) "We wouldn't treat sick people that way." (p. 67) "If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful." (p. 67)
  6. "We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one." (p. 67)
  7. Then back to the list: "Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes." (p. 67)

The summary on p. 70 puts the result this way: we have begun to learn "tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people" (p. 70).

The same words the book uses for the alcoholic

"Sick man" appears in three other places in the main text. Every time, it means the alcoholic: - Chapter 7: any scheme that tries "to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure" (p. 101). A page earlier, the helper is told to urge the family that the man "has been a very sick person and should be treated accordingly" (p. 100). - Chapter 8, "To Wives": looking back, the wives "sensed dimly that we were dealing with sick men" (p. 107): their drinking husbands, in the plural. - Chapter 10: a manager can tell a drinking employee, "If you are an alcoholic, you are a mighty sick man." (p. 147) - Chapter 11: "said the sick man" is the man in the hospital bed (p. 157), whom the book's footnote identifies as A.A. Number Three (p. 156).

On p. 67, the book asks the alcoholic to see the people he resents the way it asks families and employers to see him.

Praying for the person: the personal story

The practice of praying for the resented person is in "Freedom From Bondage," a personal story in Part III of the fourth edition (pp. 544–553). The member read a clergyman's article. In her paraphrase, he said: "Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free." (p. 552) She was to do it every day for two weeks, even without meaning it, until she came to mean it (p. 552). "It worked for me then, and it has worked for me many times since" (p. 552).

That's a member's experience, printed among the stories, which change from edition to edition. The fourth edition is 2001, and our text doesn't say when the story was first printed. It doesn't contradict p. 67, but it isn't what p. 67 says.

Does context change the common reading?

It sharpens it. The main text does tell the reader to pray when resentment comes, and its prayer is about the other person. But what it asks for is tolerance, patience and freedom from anger in the one praying, plus a way to be helpful. Calling the other person "sick" isn't a put-down, because the book says it of ourselves in the same breath, and it's the word the book uses for the alcoholic. Praying for the other person's welfare, in so many words, comes from a member's story. And on p. 67 the prayer clears the way for the next part of the inventory: looking at our own mistakes.

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages First published
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 5, "How It Works" 66–70 1939
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapters 7, 8, 10 and 11 100–101, 107, 147, 157 1939
Alcoholics Anonymous, personal story "Freedom From Bondage" (Part III) 544–553 in the fourth edition, 2001 (after 1950); first printing not shown in our text

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). The Preface says the program text "has been left largely untouched" since 1939 (p. xi); our sources have no first edition to compare page numbers against.

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.