This was prefixed by the realisation that proceedings were galloping to a conclusion now – just 3 more sessions including this week, where the stated topic was “How and Why Should We Tell Others”. It seemed this week was designed with a presumption in mind, that the events of the “day away” had sealed the deal and converted the non-believers into Christians. This hadn’t happened, and Lee conceded that although this operated from this viewpoint, it would still be an interesting investigation into why Christians felt the imperative to share, a question I’ve asked elsewhere in a roundabout way. Severely reduced numbers arrived tonight, and there were no more than around 5/6 people per group in the end. I wondered if the away day had been a final straw for the dilsillusioned Des, and that he had capitulated in the face of his frustrations or whether it was a just a one-off absence and he'd be back next week.
A long chat beforehand once again, and the 7pm start morphed into its usual 7.30pm as people arrived in dribs and drabs.
Lee eventually stood up and delivered a speech, punctuated almost farcically by the Costa staff, who are at times extraordinarily insensitive to events going on around them, faffing about with bins and carrying boxes through the seated people without any apparent realisation that someone was trying to speak. It's hugely frustrating for the listener and must be severely limiting for the orator too. They have a job to do, obviously, but it just highlights why this venue has so many drawbacks. The intention of selecting Costa as a location was to present a neutral, non-threatening, non-churchlike place that would not be intimidating to non-Christians. As it seems I was among the grand-total of about 4 or 5 non-Christians on the entire course (out of a good 20 or so attendees), and I frequently found it a hugely irritating environment. I think there needs to be a rethink here. In any case, I am pretty sure I have bemoaned the surroundings quite enough over the course of this blog, so let's get back to the actual content.
The reasons put forward for telling others - the "Why" - were encapsulated as follows:
A biblical imperative - that it was the command of God/Jesus
This is inarguable. It's a characteristic of Christianity that it is a missionary faith in a way that Judaism certainly isn't. The extension of salvation was extended to gentiles, Paul also went forth on well-documented "missions" westward, and this set the scene for over 1000 years of expansion. I spoke to Lee about the growth of the church beforehand, in response to a very interesting BBC programme currently being shown on the "History of Christianity" . We spoke about how there was an imperative to grow - the Kerith has aims to reach 2000 members, for instance. This imperative is really totally indistinguishable from corporate strategy. The lifeblood of the church is the growth in the amount of people that it embraces in the same way as the lifeblood of a major corporation is expansion in profits.
The gospel of Matthew states that "all authority is given to" Christ, and that believers should go forth and baptise all nations. The word "go" - the idea of being compelled and impelled to action, was important - it was stated that the word was used a multitiude of times by Jesus in the bible, and that it was more proof that a pivotal part of the Christian ethos was to go forth and evangelise.
The example was given of a WWII church in occupied France that was badly damaged by bombing raids. A statue of Jesus in the courtyard had remained entirely intact, except for the fact that the hands had been destroyed. The congregation rebuilt the church and did not replace the hands, drawing the poetic conclusion that in fact they "were the hands of Christ" and therefore simply placed a plaque to this effect.
That it met a "desperate need" for meaning in modern society
The example of Sinead O'Connor was an unlikely one here, but all the same, her quote was used:
"As a race we feel empty. This is because our spirituality has been wiped out and we don't know how to express ourselves. As a result we're encouraged to fill that gap with alcohol, sex and money.'"
I've spoken about this before when reflecting on the away day - that this emptiness might not have anything to do with spirituality. Did people in the Puritan 17th century feel "fuller"? The fact remains you can't eat God. You can't clothe yourself with God in practical terms. As mentioned before, if the ultimate expression of "emptiness" is suicide, Christian countries (or countries with Christianity as their "Official religion") fare far worse than non-Christian ones in terms of "suicides per 100,000 people". This might be disingenuous - not everyone is Christian in any country, and this might be more related to economic factors . But these aren't super-developed rich countries who are overwhelmed by choice and freedom, nor are they the terribly poverty stricken countries with no money or hope. The vast majority of the "top 10" are former Eastern Bloc countries according to the World Health Organisation, and the top 5 exclusively so. I am not sure if this argument really stands up, but it's an interesting comparison if nothing else. I think in the rich countries, the emptiness comes from too much choice. In the poorest, the emptiness comes from not enough, so rather than those countries between these polemics finding some kind of solace, it seems that it exacerbates that "emptiness". At the bottom line, they're different realities and this is operating on massive generalisations from both sides. Contentment can find several avenues of expression, and to put religion, and more specifically Christianity, at the heart of all of them seems bizarre.
That there was a "unique desire" to share
The desire to share was clearly, unequivocally, exhaustingly true, but not unique in my opinion. It suggests that other faiths operate in some kind of masonic shroud of secrecy, or don't bother to "reach out", where this isn't actually borne out by anything resembling a fact at all. There's not such a missionary emphasis, it's true, but that doesn't make Christianity unique in its desire to share.
This comes back to the "testimonies" of Christians, and how they can't keep the "good news" to themselves.
However, there are dangers in telling people, the speech continued.
The danger of insensitivity would point to someone recounting their experiences without heed to environment or audience. There's also a sense of fear - that the listener is immediately put on guard by the onset of anything resembling a Christian "speech" and that at times, the reverse is true - that the Christian might be cowed into not telling people because they haven't yet gauged what kind of reaction it might elicit.
There strikes me as a third strand to this - that it should actually be relevant. So often it hasn't been, when people have just stated the story of their "journeys" over and over again. To all intents and purposes they should have been surrounded by yawning atheists, perhaps even openly hostile to this endless procession of experiences that mean virtually nothing to anyone else. As it was, they only found a warm, agreeable acceptance as the other Christians simply took it as a cue for them to ready their own experiences for public consumption. This all sounds terribly judgemental - it's not meant to be, but I didn't come on this course purely to listen to the testimonies of Christians. There are thousands upon millions of books, websites, churches, videos, TV channels and every other media under the sun that would offer that. Again, in the midsts of proper sensible discussion taking place on tangible or philosophical things - the historicity of Jesus, the evidence for the resurrection, the theological basis of evil, the accuracy of the bible - I was made to feel like an outsider on a course that was ostensibly designed for people exactly like me, because people wheeled out their own testimonies at the drop of a hat. I have no testimony, and if I did, it would be totally meaningless when discussing any of those things.
That sharing represented an "enlightened self-interest"
I think this was glossed over - I am not entirely sure why this should be the case. I think this may have either been missed completely, or that my notes were rather incomplete.
In any case, the discussion moved on to the "How" we should tell people of our faith. The "5 P's" were a simple mnemonic...
Presence... "The Salt of earth and the Light of the world" - to give taste and flavour to certain situations. I am not really sure how this translates into a "how", unless the idea is that they add something purely by their presence, which I've never felt is true. I've never known whether someone was Christian or not until they've actually told me.
Persuasion... "As we know what it is to fear God, we persuade men" - the idea that Christians were ideally placed to persuade people to join them (seems rather obvious).
Proclamation... The compulsion to proclaim, the idea that someone can be "drawn in" to the ethos by the process of proclaiming. Something I find difficult to enjoy or endorse - I think there is a fine line, so often missed between proclaiming, hectoring, preaching and even ranting.
Power... Christians have the power to field questions - that God is "within them".
Prayer... "Speaking out" in the hope that something happens.
And on that note, the groups duly formed. They were tremendously compact this week, there were few people in them - my own group numbered just 6. This worked so much more effectively on so many levels. It was more intimate, we each had more time to talk, there was a freedom and ease of conversation wholly absent in previous weeks.
We started with opinions around the speech. Thomas stated that early impressions of Christians could be difficult - that if you met "the wrong sort" you could be forgiven for judging them all equally. This was an opinion supported by Lee who stated that he had been introduced just that way, via an entirely monstrous individual by the sounds of things. Then, a pivotal point; Thomas turned to me and asked if I had ever had my perceptions of Christianity coloured by just such an introduction. I thought for a while and said that I hadn't. I stated that my issues with Christianity were born mainly from the frustrations of what I interpreted as interference. That the concept of the "unequal yoke" had put entirely unfair pressure on relationships I had been a part of. This shrieking insanity is the tip of the iceberg in my experience. I stated that I deeply resented that people were passing judgement on me and my relationships externally. The last time this had presented a problem, the comment was made by quite a senior church member to a Christian girlfriend that things would be difficult but "not impossible". It's hard to properly articulate how much I resented this. No external agency was judging her, I didn't have Richard Dawkins giving me advice on how "possible" things were in my private life. In any case, Lee gave exactly the same comment, much to my chagrin.
I let it go.
I further stated that I couldn't believe the bible. I said that it was too diverse in origin, too unreliable in terms of hard historical fact. I said that much of it was written too long after the supposed life of Jesus to have any great value in that sense. Lee took up the mantle with this, stating some examples of the bible - Matthew - where the earliest examples were said to be from around 70AD. Even this, though, is based on a third text which is altogether absent (the "Q Document"). Lee stated that the documents had been "carbon dated", which immediately made me pause. I asked if this was the same carbon dating decried as unreliable by certain Christians when dating the age of dinosaurs or the earth itself. I said further that the bible didn't mention dinosaurs at all, which seemed an astonishing oversight. Lee pointed to the fact that the bible didn't need to, and anyway "alluded" to other creatures such as the dinosaur. This didn't change the fact that he was ignoring that creatures like "cattle" were not dated until long after the dinosaurs had disappeared, using the same carbon dating technology he had used to support his point on the gospel of Matthew. In any case, I again let this pass; I feel sometimes I back off too much - I don't push things through as much as I should. However, I have undertaken to write my thoughts here, which helps me to order them in retrospect. It may also present a slightly imbalanced view - it's difficult for the dramatis personae to really respond in kind as this is entirely a monologue at the moment.
I then asked why God, who was eternal, had entrusted his entire "word" to that tiny slither of eternity I mentioned before. I stated that too many of the words depended on context or a knowledge of the contemporary Jewish or middle-eastern culture to really understand. I also stated that if God had chosen the year 2000 to place his only son on earth, he would have had access to the entire world (let's bear in mind that the entire continent of the Americas was denied the "truth" of Christ for 1500 years). The bible would have been digitised and sent around within seconds. There would have been no opportunity to plead ignorance. There would have been technology - video evidence to support the claims.
The best that the assembled Christians could come up with was twofold...
Firstly, things would lose their mystery and their beauty. This is an accepted point - cold hard evidence might have impinged on that "free will" that is apparently so inalienable a right (unless God decides to intervene of course). There would be no "decision" to make when the facts were laid bare quite so starkly.
Secondly, it was stated that the return of Christ to earth was in response to God's continual displeasure at the way things were going at the time. Well, I can only wonder at this decision - there are conservatively 6 billion people in the world today. At 1AD there were 200 million by most educated reckonings. That means there are ten times more Muslims in the world today than there were people in the entire world in 1AD. If people's disobedience caused an eternal God to lose patience 2000 years ago, he must be in a state of constant fury now, surely at this mass disobedience?
I then stated that I found it very difficult to have any interest in people's testimonies in the environment of the Alpha course. I drew the comparison with me sending a postcard from Narnia. Each of them could believe that I really was "having a nice time", but as no-one would be prepared to believe that Narnia exists, my "testimony" would be entirely useless. To my surprise, there was general agreement, followed.... inevitably... by a load of testimonies.
It didn't frustrate me quite as much today. I had maybe become attuned to it, or perhaps had just found the whole experience slightly less disheartening. In any case, an enjoyable evening wrapped up with a good 9 out of 10. This was, on most levels, the best so far. A proper exchange of ideas, a small, intimate group, and some interesting areas touched on.
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