12 steps series step 4: taking moral inventory by ken wilson

A brief review of the steps we’ve already covered:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

These first steps are all about surrender to God. Which begs the question, “What comes next?” Having surrendered, what do we do? Pat ourselves on back for becoming spiritual? Not exactly Step 4. We made a searching & fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

This a journey toward spiritual transformation. In steps, manageable increments, one after other. We start out lost. Like you find yourself at a shopping mall like Briarwood here in Ann Arbor. You can’t find The Gap, so you go to the map and locate it there (section E-4). But before that information does you any good, you need to locate yourself on the map: You are here! There’s no getting from here to there, until you know where “here” is.

But since this is a spiritual journey, knowing where we are physically doesn’t help. The question is: where am I in relation to God? The significant distance between us and God not physical. God is Spirit, which means He is closer than next breath. The significant distance between us and God is a moral distance. We find out where we are through a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Let’s break this down…

An inventory. The Learning Channel has a great show called Clean Sweep.
It’s dripping with the twelve steps. Hapless homeowners admit that they are powerless over clutter. The come to believe that a Power greater than themselves (the Clean Sweep team) can restore their lives to sanity. They make a decision to turn their home over to the care of this team. What’s the first thing they do, under the care of team? Start pitching stuff? No, first they make an inventory by taking the stuff, piece by piece out to the front lawn.

Powerful things happen during the inventory. They see this stuff with fresh eyes. Not only their own, but the eyes of another. Sentimental blinders come off as they see their old, beat-up stuff as old and beat up, not just familiar and comforting. They see all of it together and realize, “This is too much. I can’t keep all this. This room won’t bear it.”

A moral inventory. The whole morality bit is a little foggy for most of us. Uncool. Retro. In fact, we’d like to remove the category because it’s fraught with traps, like a minefield. But then again, so is love. We have an indelible sense of the good, the less than good; the bad, the un-good. Yes, morality can be murky around the edges, but the words of the prophet ring true:

“But he has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love steadfast love and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

In fact, a moral inventory counts more than any other. The trail we leave behind is a moral trail. Our deeds, good & bad. The footprints we make in sand are moral prints. At your memorial service, your possessions won’t be inventoried. “I loved his Miata & his ipod.” But your character will. She was a faithful friend. I loved his humility, honesty, generosity. We’ve all been at funerals where the moral bag of the deceased is so mixed, little good is said. “He loved his dog, his beer, and his Pistons!” The moral good that’s not inventoried at such services is deafening.

A searching moral inventory. Searching is such a biblical word. It has its roots in the book of beginnings, Genesis, where God comes looking for the first humans in hiding.
“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3: 8-9)
This a parent’s, worst nightmare, losing track of his kids. But God is not searching because he’s lost track. He’s searching because we’re hiding. “Wait a minute! Can we really hide from God?” Apparently! It is a function of our freedom. (Hell is our permanent hiding place from God, if we insist on it.)

More than anything, we hide our moral failings. In the fourth step we finally answer the first question God ever asked: Where are you? It’s almost as if we help God find us. The more we want to be found, the more searching our inventory will be. Yes, “searching” is a biblical word.

“The heart is deceitful above all things…

" I the Lord search the heart” Jeremiah 17: 9-10

“If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves…” 1 John. 1:18

“In your anger do not sin, search you hearts and be silent [quiet]” Ps. 4: 4

Searching takes time. A certain deliberate calm. I once missed a flight to England, because I searched frantically for my passport when it turned up missing the day of the flight. I searched high and low like a mad man. Later that night, when I’d finally calmed down (having missed my flight already), I went into my office one more time, and there, hidden in plain sight was my passport sitting out in the open on my end table. Moral of the story: when you’re searching for something, don’t panic. Search. Calmly, deliberately.

A searching and fearless moral inventory. There’s some fascinating research about how men and women typically respond internally during a “discussion.” Typically, (not always of course—we’re speaking of trends) the woman will be visibly upset, expressing herself to her husband. But when the woman is linked to a blood pressure cuff, and her heart rate is measured, all the stress signs are low. She is relatively calm inside. The husband however, appears to be the paragon of serenity—sitting quietly, calmly listening. But it’s all quite misleading. On the inside, his blood pressure and heart rate are quite elevated. He’s in turmoil! And as a counselor once told me, “Fear makes us dumb.” All the stress reaction chemicals get us ready to fight of flee, but not to think clearly. So to do a searching inventory well, it needs to be fearless.

The springboard for Step 4 is….Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. We can only search fearlessly, knowing God cares. We’re in his care. He’s guiding the process. Whatever it is we find, He can handle.

If you grew up in an alcoholic family this may be a real struggle for you. You may believe that something is wrong with you. Something you can’t put your finger on. This is a symptom of the fact that your emotions were formed around the chaos in your family. No matter how hard you tried to make the chaos go away, it remained. So you grew up believing it was your fault. You may experience a crippling fear that if you find what you’re looking for in a searching moral inventory no one will be there to help you deal with it. So the care of God is all the more important for you. So that you can know that He is with you, and can handle anything you discover in your moral inventory.

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We’ve been speaking as if making a searching and fearless moral inventory was a difficult thing to do. A real mountain to climb! But, in fact, making a searching and fearless moral inventory is easy! We do them all time! Not on ourselves, of course, but we do inventory others with reckless abandon! When it comes to moral inventories, we’re like accountants who break in to other people’s businesses uninvited, and walk around taking inventory.

But the only heart we are authorized to inventory is our own! Jesus said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Mt. 7: 3 He makes a good point.

How to Make a Moral Inventory

First of all, if you find this intimidating, let me make a suggestion that is only partly tongue in cheek. Watch 30 episodes of Clean Sweep in 30 days.

1. One Step at a Time! The end result of Step 4 is an inventory. Nothing more. Nothing less. An inventory. Remember, in Step 4, you don’t have to decide what to do with what you find. Just inventory what you find.

2. Get a notebook. If you invited an accounting firm to inventory your business and they showed up without any recording device, you’d object: “Where’s your recording device?” If they replied, “Don’t worry, it’s all up here,” pointing to their heads, you’d reply, “Yes, and it’s all out here in the warehouse, too. But I’m paying you to make an inventory!”

3. Take your time. Unless you are very young and have been a very good boy or girl, you will need some time. Making an inventory can easily take a month, say, setting aside a time to reflect and write things down for thirty minutes a week.

4. Begin by rehearsing Step 3. As you sit down to reflect and write, begin by turning over your will and your life to the care of God. A simple prayer works well: “Lord, shine your light and shed your love into my mind and my heart”

5. Start writing things down.

What Should I Write Down?

Start with the obvious things troubling your conscience. Stealing. Cheating. Lying. Acts of violence. Crimes you got away with. Mean things said & done to hurt others. If you need to prime the pump, review the 10 Commands--murder, adultery, honor parents, false witness, etc.

Review key relationships: parents, siblings, spouse, children. Old girlfriends-boyfriends. Broken relationships. Most sins are relational.

Review your habits. Pornography. Drinking, to excess. Gambling to excess. Harming yourself thru smoking, overeating.

Keep a page for the good things and note them down as they occurs to you. Remember, you’re not accusing yourself. Not condemning yourself. No need to defend yourself. This is just an inventory.

Be gentle with yourself. He is. Isaiah the prophet wrote concerning the Suffering Servant: “He does not raise his voice in the street. The bruised reed he does not crush; the smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” Jesus said, “Bend your necks to my yoke, for I am gentle and humble of heart.”

Once you’ve got the big items out, inventory the attitudes of your heart. Read the Sermon on Mount…Judging others, contempt, revenge.

Then, do a final walk through. Life review from early childhood. Pre-school. Elementary. Junior High. High School. Don’t forget your fraternity days.
If you’re older, include your mid-life crisis.

For all these, as things come to your mind, just write them down and move on. The point is not to dwell on each item, or to stew in guilt and shame. The point is to make an inventory. As something occurs to you, jot it down and move on.

Finally, some closing words to a few different groups of people.

First, to those eager to begin this process now: let God know of your intention and ask for his leadership and blessing on the process. Then get started.

Others may not be ready to begin a Step 4 until you’ve learned what is to come of all this in Steps 5-9. That’s fine. I’ll make a point to remind you after we’ve completed Step 9 that there’s no moving forward until you actually get around to doing a Step 4.

Second, there may be those who have begun a 12 Step program and who have achieved an initial sobriety. But you haven’t done a Step 4. You may be hoping it won’t be necessary. Let just gently warn you that that thought is as dangerous to you as an open bottle of Scotch with easy reach. Perhaps this is your nudge from heaven to get started with Step 4.

Third, there may be those who have done a Step 4, but only relying on your own conscience. And you’ve subsequently invited Christ into your life as you Higher Power. Let me suggest that you go through a Step 4 again with Jesus guiding your thoughts.

Fourth, there may be some Twelve Step veterans who have achieved sobriety, diligently worked the program, yet still feel exiled from God. By this I mean, you feel distant from God. In your heart of hearts, you may believe that there’s something wrong with you that can’t be made right.

This is not an uncommon experience for the child of an alcoholic. There are three different sources of guilt feelings: false guilt, true guilt, and something one might call undifferentiated shame. It’s this latter category, undifferentiated shame, that may be plaguing you.

Undifferentiated shame can set in when as a young child, you realize that something is very wrong in your environment. You may do all that you can to make it right and find that you cannot. (As indeed, you can’t.) This may leave you with the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you. It isn’t true of course, but it feels true. This is undifferentiated shame. Jesus frees us from false guilt. He forgives our true guilt. And he carries and offers to heal our shame.

Remember, Jesus suffered public exposure, nakedness, humiliation in his time of suffering and crucifixion. He did nothing wrong, yet he felt shame. That’s Him, carrying our shame for us. So we can let it go. This is a healing process that occurs as we open our hearts to his love. We soak in his love and learn to be more compassionate with ourselves, as well as with others.