Some members of Program get puzzled when we say that our concept of God is inadequate. After all, they argue, Step 2 and Step 11 talk about God as we understand God. If we understand God as early as Step 2, how can anyone say that there is something missing about that understanding?

Well, let's look at our experience of our understanding of God in Step 2 and in Step 11. Would we say that the understanding of God we reached in Step 11 was different in any way from the understanding we had in the early days of Program when we first practiced Step 2?

Of course it was. By the time we began seriously to practice Step 11, we had experienced God working in our lives in the Third Step and in Steps 4 through 9. Step 2 was never telling us that our understanding of God was comprehensive. It was telling us that -- however modest our understanding of God -- it was enough to get us through the business of recovery.

So we agree that our Step 11 understanding of God is very different -- broader and deeper -- from what it was in Step 2. And now Step 11 invites us to go further. It asks us to improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. It is not saying that this new, broader, deeper understanding we have of God is now definitive. In fact, it's saying something very different. It's saying that our understanding is -- once more -- merely a place to begin. To get beyond that point comes through experience, not through understanding.

Our understanding of God can only ever be a starting point. Whatever our concept of God may be, it's insufficient. In fact, we will never truly understand God. As an Eastern master said, "The only important thing for the human intellect to understand is that we cannot understand truth by intellect."