Practice, But Don't Preach

Bill W. warned of the spiritual pride that would delude us into thinking we had a direct pipeline with our Higher Power: "In AA's first years, I all but ruined the whole undertaking with this sort of unconscious arrogance. God as I understood him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging--perhaps fatally so--to numbers of nonbelievers." Bill reminded us (and me too) that "we ourselves need to practice what we preach--and forget the 'preaching,' too."