“It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself.” (Page 12, Big Book)
Being willing to believe seems a straightforward idea. After all, ‘willingness’ and ‘belief’ are everyday notions. There is a hitch, however.
Willingness is typically associated with action, but belief is not an action.
What is belief?
To believe a proposition means to assent to its truth, because one ‘sees’ it is true. Seeing is involuntary. One cannot will seeing.
Some simple examples:
I believe that a cat lives at number 43 because:
- I have seen the cat there; OR
- Sally tells me so, and she is reliable; OR
- I can see cat paraphernalia, cat footprints, and cat fur, so I infer a cat lives there.
Respectively, these mechanisms are experience, authority, and inference.
To believe any of these things about the cat cannot be an act of the will: I cannot will the experience of seeing the cat; I cannot will someone’s authority; I cannot will an inference. I cannot therefore will my belief.
What does Bill mean?
Bill W’s logic is often shortcut. He omits steps or uses metonymy.
For instance:
- When he says our lives are unmanageable, he later corrects and says that we are unable to manage our lives because we are powerless over alcohol.
- He says we’re powerless over alcohol when we are really powerless over impulses to drink.
And here is the third great example: We cannot will belief but we can be willing to take actions that are promised to bring about belief.
‘Seeing’ that God exists is the last and involuntary step in the sequence of voluntary steps.
To be willing to believe is to be willing to take the steps to bring about belief.