An Essay on Step Four
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
An inventory is a fact-finding exercise. A business takes an inventory of its stock to find out what it has to work with. Our moral inventory tells us what we have to deal with in our own strengths and weaknesses. When a businessman finds damaged or out-of-date goods in his stock, he tries to get rid of them. When our personal inventory shows us our character defects, we should want to dispose of them.
Notice that our inventory must be searching. We need to dig deep. AA’s Big Book says, “Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.” An addict’s drug, a codependent’s control, an overeater’s extra meal—these are all but symptoms of the internal flaws that have led us to failure. We must search out the real cause(s) of our misery.
We can’t BS ourselves. We can’t skate. Our inventory will show us many things we don’t like. We can’t hide from them. We must be fearless.
This is one place where our sponsor can be a special help. He’s been there. He’s done his inventory. He knows the process even if he doesn’t exactly know our particular pain. He can be our guide through the process.
Our inventory will show us our weaknesses. It will also show us our strengths, and as we develop a better understanding of who we are, we will be better able to use those strengths to move closer to the path God has for us.