Alpha Course - Day Five

Week 5 was a curious thing. There was a sudden shift from the theological to the practical. The topic for this week’s Alpha was “How and Why Should I Read the Bible”. The second part of this question was essentially waved past with a cursory nod while the weight and focus of the rest of the segment was placed purely on the “How”. The “Why” was simply described as a matter of faith – you either have it or you don’t – there was no real attempt to explain or persuade. The speaker, a sonorously voiced Welshman of impeccable Christian credentials (a preacher for over 40 years), simply stated that he was speaking from a position of having faith that the Bible was the word of God. No direct effort was made during the ensuing speech to address the concerns of those who weren’t quite so sure, which I thought was a shame.

As such, the talk this week, amongst a furious backdrop of clattering coffee machines was essentially a long exercise in identifying “starting points” and techniques for reading the bible, from the viewpoint that everyone had already accepted it was both worthwhile and 100% the word of God. Therefore, much of the advice went along the lines of “start with the Gospels”, “read it in the morning”, “ask for assistance and inspiration from the Holy Spirit as you read”. These are all viable and useful techniques for a practising Christian I am sure, but for the agnostic or atheist, the concept of starting a book anywhere other than the beginning, getting up early to read it especially, and asking for help from a ghost are not the practices of a sane and rational person. I sympathised with the aims of the speaker, to inspire people to read the bible in a concerted way, setting aside time and giving it the attention that it deserves (and yes, it does deserve attention – you can’t engage with Christianity even as an opponent or sceptic without knowing where their beliefs lie), but it was operating from a non-Alpha viewpoint in many ways – against the stated aims of the course to offer an “introduction” to Christianity, whereas this operated on the assumption that everyone present was “on board” with the “why” element.

That said, I didn’t want or need to be persuaded to read the bible – I have done in a limited way – but I was interested more in the reasons than the techniques. I wanted Christianity’s representatives to set out exactly why it is a desirable and worthwhile thing. This may have been unrealistic really – or perhaps slightly blinkered – I already know the answer to an extent anyway, but I felt that the reasons aren’t unequivocally true. The postulation that the bible is God’s word is grounds for dubiousness. The best that I could glean from this session in the way of a defence was that it was an inspired handbook to human nature. This was a good point, and well made, but surely not the intended reason for the creation of the bible in the first place. I stated during the group discussion that it was a “series of books describing a worldview”. This is the best I could do. I also had to preface this by pointing out that I wasn’t about to call anyone a liar, so introducing the topic as a matter of faith in some ways kills discussion stone dead. It’s a circular argument. You need faith to believe the bible. You need to believe it to read it in the proscribed manner. If you don’t believe it, you’re only going to examine it from an academic viewpoint (something that was stated as undesirable – there’s the emphasis on “relationship” and the “spiritual” again. I don’t know why; it seems to me that if God can create all the intricacies of the universe, he can surely knock up a collection of books that stand up to scrutiny).

Then there’s another problem – a very interesting interjection from Lee described the phraseology of the bible and how it needed to be contextualised in the language of the time – he used the example of “turning the other cheek”, and how literally being hit by different parts of the hand carried certain connotations to the contemporary Jews. Fantastic and very interesting – but this only displays a limitation. What was brought to mind for me was Marxism, harking back to week 3. Marxism didn’t fail in the West because of shaky economics alone, or purely malevolent intentions. It failed because it was a doctrine aimed at the vast majority of people – the workers – who also by definition are of largely average intelligence. It is also one of the most complex and intricate theories in existence. So, there’s an expectation that the average human being – the worker – will embrace an ideology that is incredibly complicated. It’s the same here, except that the complexities of the bible are not so much ideological as in terms of context. This is a limitation, surely – that future generations are excluded from the intricacies of the book by changing understandings as much as by transcription errors or man’s intervention. The point was put but not really satisfactorily answered – the response was that biblical things have made their way into popular language and were now understood universally. But the “turning the other cheek” example was one where it was frequently misunderstood in context – hence people often make the comparison with “an eye for an eye” as an example of inconsistency.

If the bible message was communicated by God now, and transported 2000 years back in time, who knows what kind of impenetrable slang it would contain that would be totally opaque to those historical Jews, or references to mind-bogglingly advanced technologies or trends. It’s interesting that an all-knowing and ever-lasting God would trust his sacred wishes to people whose words were basically restricted in direct relevance to a miniscule slither of eternity.

This week, we were joined by a Jewish girl, who proclaimed her faith to a collective shrug when I rather think she was expecting some kind of horror or uncomfortable reaction. I think she came along as moral support for someone who is really rather against Christianity but lacks the verbal ammunition to articulate it effectively. Unfortunately, I think if all the Jewish people in the world held an enormous summit to select a representative to take on the massed ranks of Christians in a theological battle, she might well have been close to last. She undermined her own position immediately by proclaiming that Catholics circumcised their children, and was generally very concerned with what she perceived as Christians discarding the “Mosaic Laws” of the Old Testament. These things were really covered more or less convincingly when the “covenant” was discussed previously, but in fairness I can’t recall if I simply read about it, and I don’t know if she was there either. Then oddly, precisely as her point was about to be tackled by the Welsh preacher, she simply got up and went to the toilet.

The point anyway, was that some of the laws and rules of the Old Testament were now considered to be actually rather good ideas for hygiene and health purposes (e.g. circumcision, not eating pork as pigs were known to live in amongst sewage). “Des” made the point that they were generally “captured wisdom” that might well have been preserved if they hadn’t been put into the bible, recalling the chicken and egg argument from previous weeks. Things descended into farce unfortunately as the Welsh preacher – Ben – was hard of hearing, and in the backdrop to the general babble, much time was spent repeating things for his benefit.

The irritating Scotsman who unfortunately found his way into my group was nearly crying with frustration, plaintively whining “Please listen… please listen to me” when he was trying to speak to Ben during a period where he was looking elsewhere or speaking to someone else. My hackles up, I promptly ignored him entirely as virtually everything he said was gratingly inane anyway. When he started speaking as if he were one of the leaders of the group, dispensing his wisdom on what “we should” be doing. I could only sit and rub my eyes, grinding my teeth. And I prayed. For him to shut up. God apparently wasn’t listening.

During this period, the staff at Costa started to put Christmas decorations up around our seats. It was surreal.

All in all, despite the frustrations it was a pretty good week by Alpha standards. I’d give it a solid 6 out of 10. Next week there’s talk of there being a website up and running where we can submit our questions in advance (which feels slightly like cheating). I wonder what prompted this – whether some Christians did feel outgunned, or whether it was a perception that some people were afraid to speak up in a group context. Who knows.

Finally, we were asked to read the bible in the spirit which was described this week. To see what happens. I’ll give it a go. I’m nothing if not intrepid.