Is This a Meeting or a Revival?

     Now look it here, I understand that your capital H Higher capital P Power is Jesus Christ. I'm glad you found him wherever it was that you found him. I'm glad that you are no longer getting high or drunk. I even will support you when you specify who your Higher Power is at a meeting of recovery. You want to say, "My Higher Power who is Jesus Christ." I'm good with that. No problem. And yes, I will wish you a Merry Christmas during that time of the year even though I celebrate the winter solstice instead.

     When a recovery type meeting turns into testimony time of how much [most of] you really love Jesus, that becomes a problem. You are not at church. A meeting is not your preaching platform. Telling us [non-believers] over and over again how you got saved is not conductive to us wanting to get saved.

     I respect your right to believe as you wish to. I don't make it my personal mission to declare my atheism at meetings. Nor do I want to convert you to my way of thinking. I have never said to you, "Oh keep coming. And one day you will give up your silly superstitions and become like me." I have never told you the process that I went through that brought me to this place of contented atheism. Please respect my right to conduct my life and my recovery as I see fit, without any capital H higher capital P powers in my life. Atheism is the absence of belief. Got that?

sapphoq itching for a coffee says: People from many other cultural backgrounds and even non-christian religious affiliations have had experiences which have changed their lives. You christians do not have the monopoly on that. These emotional and spiritual rearrangements make recovery possible to people all over the world and not just christians. 
     Hey, I had a near death experience once [induced by fear, not because I was near death because I wasn't]. These sorts of events are caused by the firing of multiple neurons in the brain and not by religious [non] realities. Even so, my NDE changed my life.
     I prefer natural explanations to supernatural explanations even when dealing with the recovery process.