When Bill Wilson wrote the now famous 12 Steps, he put into an orderly fashion the program of personal change that both he and Dr. Bob had experienced through their own four-year participation in the Oxford Group. Dr. Frank Buchman, the founder of that Group, had always avoided codifying the transformational process he had pioneered; but in order to understand the origins of Step Ten, exploring two incidents from Buchman’s life and work may be helpful.
First, was Buchman’s insistence that any person seeking a spiritual transformation should take full responsibility for his own wrongs in any situation before focusing on the perceived wrongs of another. This principle evolved from a seminal incident in Buchman’s own life. In 1907, Buchman was in charge of a home for unemployed, young men in Philadelphia and it was there that he had a serious disagreement with the six men serving on his volunteer board of directors. The board criticized Buchman for spending too much money on the men’s groceries and they asked him to cut back. Frank’s ego was hurt and in a huff of self-righteous indignation, he resigned his position. He then left on a tour of Europe harboring deep and growing resentments toward the six men who had wronged him.
The revolutionary, spiritual discovery that Buchman made as he traveled abroad was this: To the degree that his resentment separated him from those six men, to the same degree was he separated and shut off from a direct relationship with God. His depression deepened as he traveled and it helped trigger a life-changing conversion experience in the young, Lutheran minister. Buchman’s inflated ego finally came crashing down on him while in Keswick, England where he was attending a church conference and, more immediately, listening to a woman’s sermon about the cross of Christ. Buchman said the woman said nothing new – nothing he hadn’t heard before; but he finally “took his own inventory” and realized the depth of his own estrangement from God. He now saw clearly that while the other six men may well have been wrong, he himself was “the seventh wrong man!” Here were the origins of what were to become Bill Wilson’s Steps Four and Ten – taking a personal, moral inventory of ourselves instead of the inventory of the other man. Wilson’s Steps Eight and Nine were born next as Frank wrote letters of amends to each of those six men. Buchman wrote to each man, taking full responsibility for his own pride and asking each man for his forgiveness. At the top of each letter, Buchman penned a line from a popular Christian hymn:
When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died;
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
A second incident in Buchman’s life may have also contributed to the wording Bill Wilson’s chose to convey Step Ten. Buchman was still piecing together the components of his “life-changing” program while sailing across the Pacific on a missionary trip bound for China. That’s when a woman passenger asked him to describe for her his methods for affecting the radical change in people for which he was becoming so widely known. The woman, however, asked him to please, “keep it simple.” Buchman thought about his evolving program and soon reduced it to five key words. The next day, he described his program to the woman as the Five C’s: Confidence, Confession, Conviction, Conversion and Continuance.
First, Buchman said one had to gain the full Confidence of a new man or women because no permanent “life-changing” would happen if the new person didn’t look to you as someone who had what he wanted and saw you as a person that could be trusted. Confession came next. Not the new person’s confession, but first your own. Buchman allowed others to see him as personally flawed, a man who had dealt with some of the same human problems, defects or sins that were presently defeating the person he was trying to change. The confession of the newcomer followed soon after. Conviction then led the new person to a deep experience of the seriousness of his own moral failings and consequent estrangement from God - just as Buchman had experienced it through his hatred of those six men on his board. Then came Conversion. Buchman described this as an act of the will and not of the emotions. Step Three had its origins here as the new person verbalized his or her willingness to change and to seek and do God’s will.
And, of course, all of that is a very long way of finally getting us to Buchman’s Fifth C: Continuance. Frank Buchman was a serious student of human nature and he knew full well that nothing short of life long vigilance was needed to keep the newly surrendered ego in check. Bill would later write in the Big Book, “What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. ‘How can I best serve Thee - Thy will (not mine) be done.’ These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.” – Big Book, page 85.