OA and Faith
Hi everyone,
I am starting to deal with some serious emotional issues that recently surfaced in my life and part of that is my desire to work on my compulsive eating issues. I've been looking at OA online, though I haven't yet started to do much research. Right now I'm abroad, so online meeting are really my only option. I will be coming back to Texas in January and there are a few meetings in my area, but I'm a little restricted because I won't have a car and the meetings are a bit far.
My biggest concern, though, is one of the main focuses of the OA 12 steps (at least, from what I understand from my research) is the idea of giving up power to a higher power, or God, as we understand the concept of God. I know that the OA literature says that there is no religious affiliation and the idea of a higher power is to be interpreted as each member sees fit.
But I have to admit that I feel very uncomfortable with this idea. My background is that I am Jewish and my father didn't believe in God. So I grew up with a very negative concept of God and I am trying to overcome that. It's not that I don't believe in a higher power because I do. But my concept of a higher power is quite different from the traditional concept of God.
My sister attended an AA meeting with a friend once and she told me that the concept of God at the meeting was very close to a Christian concept of God. I think I'm afraid that this is going to be the case with the OA meetings as well. It's another reason why I am choosing to start with online meetings rather than face-to-face meeting in Texas (as the area I'll be living in is quite Christian-oriented).
So maybe people here can enlighten me a little bit as to what this concept of a higher being is really all about with OA and what my expectations should be.
Thank you for the help!
Tam
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