The Alpha Course - Week 3

I hope they don't mind me stealing the logo ... oops, that's a sin.

This is the second week I've attended the Alpha Course, and this week (actually the third in a sequence of ten sessions) was entitled "Why Did Jesus Die?".

In this post, I'll write more about our discussions, and less about the actual lecture. If you'd like to see the content of the actual lecture, you'll have to borrow the book from me (tried to find the content on line, but no luck). The crux of the lecture is "Jesus died for our sins", and "everyone is a sinner".

The Process
We gathered again at 6:15pm in the auditorium of the Lutheran Church (do they buy extra insurance if they know I'll be there?), and had a buffet style dinner again. Tonight it was chicken with a curry sauce (I think, as I didn't have any) and once again they prepared me a special, vegetarian version of what they were having - it was excellent. John actually went back to the kitchen to find out what it was that I had, and gave me the empty package - I'll be tempted (is that a sin?) to go find it in the grocery store. As a side note, one of the men asked me at the table if I was French, because of the ESL like speech. I was thrilled - explaining what had happened, and if people thought I was simply speaking a language not my own that was progress! Once dinner was done we went into the sanctuary and started the sessions by singing two modern hymns (is this considered worship?). The singing is followed up by the recorded video session of Nicky Gumbel talking today about the death of Jesus. This lasted for forty minutes or so. Once the video was over, and Nicki says a prayer to end it, we all reassembled back in the auditorium where dessert was ready for us. Tonight, again it was excellent - I think some kind of raspberry crumble with whipped cream. My pancreas was working overtime to keep up. After we had  finished up the dessert, the conversation started.

A side note I still can't understand. This is directly from the Alpha website: "Alpha is both an effective evangelistic tool for those who are investigating Christianity for the first time, and a means for churchgoers to deepen their faith." If you're investigating Christianity for the first time, whether you're Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Non-Theist, you'd find the initial "worship/singing" and the final prayer to be somewhat intimidating (to be honest, Nicky does have a disclaimer with his prayer - he says "if you're comfortable saying it, say it out loud or to yourself"). I think if Alpha is hoping to evangelize people like me, they've got to tone down on the assumption that you want to pray, sing, or be sermoned to (at least disclaim the above and acknowledge that not everyone there might not believe).

The Conversation
I had told myself that I would do more listening than talking tonight, and I held fast by that for the first two minutes ... then I couldn't help but interject. The first question John asked (John was the moderator of our table) was "What is your interpretation of sin?". We tossed around several ideas - that it was the list of rules in the Ten Commandments, or that it was much more than that, and pervasive in the bible. My feeling (it's my blog, so I get to write my feelings) is that it is simply "anything that hurts anyone else", and was passed down through time (long, long before the Bible) as the only effective way to have people live in communities. I guess the biblical inverse version of this is "love your neighbor as yourself".  That doesn't really cover it though, as it makes it more than "convenient" to hate your enemy. I like my version better.

A very interesting, difficult situation came up during this conversation. If you were in Afghanistan, and your wife was at home - and you had an affair that she would never know about - is that a sin? I think the answer would still be yes ... because you would be hurting your wife whether she knew or not ... your attitude would change, affecting the relationship.

Harry brought up the current case in front of our secular judicial system - the community of Bountiful. We see polygamy as wrong - but by whose standard? If the person being "hurt" doesn't see themselves as being hurt, then what sin (or crime) is committed. Very tricky. So there were two good observations in this dialog that cause you to think. I would say that the Christian community sees the answers to these questions as black and white. I think them more a massive grey.

We had a couple of more questions involving the word "sin" (being addictive and destructive, and some local examples), and we went round and round the table with discussion. We talked briefly about the degradation of society's rules over the years (rolling stops at stop signs - funny, I've been watching reruns of Adam-12 from the early seventies and half their stops seem to be for rolling through stop signs - so hardly a new phenomena), the ruthlessness of the younger gangs, and others. I submit that some of this (not all) is due to us hearing about everything today. We never hear about good people. Only about bad ones. I don't know any bad ones, and the good ones are better than I ever was. I also learned over the years that people do what works. Period. Oh, and all people are selfish. We're wired that way.

Real-life virtue?
A final example of a tough moral question closed out the night. This was a real world dilemma presented by someone at our table involving someone else (not there). The someone else was the CFO of a small company, and through accounting trickery had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars to feed a gambling addiction. He eventually confessed to the CEO, and the case is moving through the courts as we speak. The police and his lawyers have all confided to him that he would never have been caught if he had not confessed. Even now, without confession, his lawyers feel they could get him off. He has said this is not good enough - he is guilty and will submit to his punishment. This situation was held up as virtuous because of the confession of his sin, and of the refusal to avoid punishment.

I am not so generous. While I would say that it is exemplary for the CFO to take what's coming without compromise, I hardly see this as a Christian virtue. It's plain and simple the right thing to do. Why did this man not confess his transgressions at $100,000? Or at $1000? Or at $1. It's all the same to me. Or perhaps seek help when he knows that this addiction has control over him. It seems to me that you cannot pay for your indiscretions by simply confessing and then held up as virtuous (this gets me to thinking of the reformation of the Catholic Church, where Martin Luther railed against indulgences). Fortunately, in our secular system, you do not pay for transgressions with forgiveness. You pay for them with punishment - I don't think that having an addiction excuses your behavior. It doesn't in any other facet of your life.  I'll admit, this is a tough one, but I hardly see this as an example of virtuousness.

In Closing
With that, the evening ended. They're having a full day session on February 26th at Minnekhada Lodge (not far). They will be showing three videos throughout the day, and will have time to reflect or decompress or whatever. I will pass on the weekend, as a couple of hours of the orthodoxy is about as much as I can take at one time.

I have to ask myself what am I hoping to accomplish with this little endeavor? To learn about Jesus (I think I know quite enough, thank you - although Christians would say I don't know him at all)? To be evangelized into changing my belief system (won't happen)? To understand what makes Christians tick (I'm beginning to understand)?

Here's my current interpretation (subject to change, but I'm pretty sure about this):

• People crave knowledge - it's how we're wired. It's what has gotten us from monkeys in trees to sending probes to Mars. 
• We are afraid of the dark - we want a convincing story about what's happening when we can't see it for ourselves. 
• We like rules - then we know what to do and when to do it - this provides the structure that we crave. 
• We want to know what happens when we die. 

Christianity (actually - every religion or creation myth) answers this. Science does too. Actually, science has answered many more questions in the last ten years than religion has in the last 10,000. And I think you can have morality without the supernatural.

I'll go at least one more time to Alpha, but again I don't know what I really expect to get out of it. I do really like the opportunity to debate this stuff - it's generally not done in polite society, so it's a pleasure to do it with permission! I wish the evenings were longer, actually. I get much more our of the debate, than I ever do out of the lecture.