7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Humility is the virtue of those with poor self-images. In our cultural context, it's a purely religious, Christian concept: human beings are sinful wretches and should be properly humble before a perfect God who will resolve all of their problems if they properly abase themselves. Nonbelievers often find this concept revolting, and it would be surprising if this step in and of itself didn't drive countless alcoholics away from AA. It's interesting to note that the original version of step 7 included the words "on our knees" after the word "humbly." In light of this step, it seems absurd that AA continues to maintain that its program is "spiritual" rather than "religious."

Step 7 is yet another assertion of individual helplessness and defectiveness, and the desirability of dependency and guilt—things which were at the heart of the Oxford Group program. In the Oxford Groups (after "Confidence" in the "soul surgeon" was established), guilt was considered a desirable and necessary precursor to "Conviction, Confession, Conversion, Continuance." It plays a similarly vital role (though one subservient to the role played by fear) in AA.

Here is another problem. Is this a request, or a demand? It looks a lot like a demand for a miracle. It doesn't matter whether we lunatics "humbly, on our knees" beg God for a miracle (like the original version of Step Seven said), or arrogantly demand the miracle from God while we stand on our feet, Step Seven is still a demand for a miracle. This step sounds a lot like,
"God: if you don’t remove all of my lunacy shortcomings and defects of character, especially my desire to be a lunatic, I'll kill myself on the stuff, and it will all be your fault." Suppose God says, "No. You, lunatic, made your bed, so you lie in it." Then what? Nowhere else in these steps of lunacy is there any alternate plan for self-improvement in case God doesn't feel like obeying us and fulfilling our demands.

On the other hand, if God really will remove all of my "wrongs", "defects of character", and "shortcomings", does that mean that I turn into a lunatic or Superman? This could make for a really neat movie: "Having been bitten by a radioactive God, Peter Parker found himself transformed into a Superman without shortcomings or defects of character, a morally superior being who existed only to serve God whenever the Bat Signal shone in the night sky." "What's that you say? No, I don't turn into Superman? "You say there's this grand cosmic flash of light and God zaps me with a lightning bolt and miraculously turns me into an ordinary stupid lunatic just like I was before?
"Where's the fun in that?" This step also has far too much Santa Claus spirituality for my tastes. It's also a lot like rubbing Aladdin's lamp and getting the genie to grant you three wishes. And the wishes we want granted are: In Step Two, restore us to sanity. In Step Three, take care of our wills and our lives for us, including managing our "unmanageable" lives. In Step Seven, remove all of our "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings", including the desire to drink alcohol.

A basic premise of the L.A. program is that if you confess your sins enough, The Higher Power will be very pleased and will remove the desire for lunacy from you. Now your Higher Power could have done for you that a long time ago, and saved you from many years of lunacy, but He didn't. This means that your Higher Power has been torturing you with lunacy for years, just to get you to finally do what He wants — which is to get on your knees and grovel before Him and confess everything. Which makes your Higher Power a very cruel tyrant. And not only has the lunatic suffered for many years because of your Higher Power's vain, selfish, egotistical desires, but so have the lunatic wife and children and other family members. Dr. Kander Bluff, get out the brass polish!...

Step 7 Satire

You must make yourself entirely ready to have Santa Claus / Tooth Fairy fix your character defects. Be prepared if your bed pan flat out tells you NO, he can’t fix a thing for you. You’re told to sleep in your own bed as you made it. You’re told that He has bigger problems on His mind, things like global warming, wars, 1.6 billion Chinese people trying to poison the world, the new American President, the global economy and other such trivial things. Your firmly told not to bother Him anymore with you little bullshit problems. Or you just ask GOD to remove your defects of character and POOF they are gone. You don’t have to do anything, just ask God and your desire to drink, lie, steal, cheat, deceive, whatever, they are gone POOF, POOF, POOF, POOF, POOOOOF… keep coming back. Prove to yourself that you a lazy, useless sloth.

Removing your shortcomings.