Alpha Course - Day Seven

Alpha Week 7 – and the thorny (or perhaps horny?) issue of evil was on the agenda. Perhaps fittingly I’m writing this on Friday the 13th…

This was without doubt the standout week so far, and there was a proper debate that took place which directly tackled the questions head-on. Moreover, the Jesus Team actually provided some coherent and interesting answers, ones that I hadn’t considered, and that didn’t strike me as exercises in simply sidestepping inconveniences. I had a suspicion that this would be an engaging talk from the moment I found out it was to be covered (roughly 20 minutes before the start).

It wasn’t totally clear what the topic would be this week – the “day away” was always loosely directed toward the topic of the Holy Spirit, but I wasn’t sure how this would affect the ordinary weekly schedule as detailed in the book.

So, unarmed to an extent, I walked into the valley of death (well, Costa) being unable to really do much spade work and preparation this week, something which normally would put me on edge. Luckily, however, with something as universal as evil, even a biblical layman can have an opinion. Everyone, from the evolutionary scientist to the archbishop to the small child, knows what evil is, how it is manifested, and that it can (and sometimes will) occur. Everyone is in agreement that it’s “bad”. It’s a concept that resonates with all human beings, and as such, it’s a good place for Christians to start in many ways. In logical terms, you can extrapolate an entire argument for God from the existence of evil. I found myself wondering why this wasn’t a more common approach – perhaps because Christianity would find itself open to accusations of “scaremongering” I suppose, or perhaps the idea of “evil” has a medieval connotation, and in a society where the ammunition being fired at the faith is essentially scientific, there’s not much use chucking up the spectre of the devil which conjures images of hay-chewing farmhands superstitiously cowering behind bibles.

The devil is also pretty cartoonish, almost rendered "lovable". He’s all over the place in his red skinned, horned, fork-wielding form. Despite cropping up in odd places - from cuddly toys to stickers to music videos – however, he retains a power to frighten when presented as per the intention of the bible, and in some odd way is more tangible than God. It’s just a perception I have, but people are less likely to deny the existence of the devil (for superstitious fear of tempting some kind of catastrophe) than they are to deny God (who pretty rarely strikes people with lightning - these days at least).

So, with the stall laid out, the speech began. Lee gave a synopsis of evil, pointing out the literary emphasis on the “battle” between good and evil (CS Lewis and his much quoted “Screwtape Letters” and a comparison with Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings”) and the historical recurrence of the theme. He then broke down the aims of this week into 5 points.

• Why should we believe in the Devil?

We should “accept the battle”, drawing a comparison with the temptation even of Christ himself. Lee went on to say that the biggest rationales for this belief in the devil are church history (agreed, but a flawed argument) and “common sense” (which cause some raised eyebrows).

• What tactics does the devil use?

This was a very well delivered part of the speech. The tactics that the devil apparently employs are doubts, temptation and ‘denying the penalty’. This really is a fascinating tautology. It’s genuinely amusing, a kind of joyfully perverse logic – the idea that doubting the existence of the devil is a sign that he actually exists. It’s these kind of semantic, theological devices that can only come about from the concerted efforts of 2000 years of very clever people pondering them. That in itself, as an argument, is a thing of beauty, but I can’t help allowing myself a smile at the sneakiness of it all.

There was a further investigation into these methods. Doubt was said to be embodied in the story of Adam and Eve, in the way that the serpent, a personification of the devil, introduced doubt into the minds and hearts of Adam and Eve. Notwithstanding the dubious decision to leave a tree in the garden with a cursed apple hanging off it, that introduction of doubt was pivotal to the story. To paraphrase the serpent: “Did God really say that you can’t eat that apple….”!

Temptation was said to leave humans with the suspicion that the negatives were exaggerated, another interesting comment, with the implication that those self-justification of our transgressions - “it’s not that bad”, “doesn’t matter” or “one can’t hurt” – are actually signs of the devil at work.

Denying the penalties – said to be quite similar to the idea of temptation, that we delude ourselves that there are no penalties or that they are not that bad. The penalties themselves are all on a familiar theme – that of the much repeated “relationship with God” being broken (Adam and Eve ‘hiding’ from God), our internal relationship being broken (guilt), our relationship with others being strained or broken and our relationship with “Creation” also being broken in turn (the idea that we are out of sync with the natural harmonies of nature – that the legacy of Adam and Eve is childbirth pain and having to work the fields).

• The Christian position on evil.

Pretty straightforward – that there’s a constant battle between the “dominion of darkness” and the “kingdom of light”.

• What can we use to defend ourselves against evil?

A lot of stuff about the “armour of God” here, which is detailed by Paul in the bible. I won’t repeat it here, but it can be read in this passage which is pretty self-explanatory.

• Confronting evil.

The tool kit for this was predictably prayer, accepting we all have the “darkness within”, honesty (to be honest with God, even though he knows everything anyway), and action (staying away from ‘bad things’). Straightforward enough if you think about it from a Christian viewpoint.

It’s worth mentioning that there was an interesting African dimension to this week’s session. Before things started, I spoke to Lee and he made a very salient point that African perceptions of evil are more spiritual in nature as opposed to those in Northern Europe. The spectre of the “witch doctor” was still very real in African society and culture, and there was an emphasis on the spiritual battle between the devil and God as a result. The British perception was possibly less organic and more functional – ideas of possession, demons and exorcisms are restricted to the parts of the media deemed more “fanciful” rather than being everyday facts of life. Lee, “Thomas” (a recurring presence since week 1), and “Eric” (also a face from week 1) were all of African origin and with Eric’s friend in attendance (who, at the risk of being presumptuous was also African), it made nearly half of the members of the subsequent discussion group from that continent.

So the group formed, but not before a particularly loaded aside from “Thomas”, who said the following:

“Since everyone wants to hear your opinion, why not just take your own group today?”

I took this as a complimentary insult, if there is such a thing. If I’ve moved a Christian to object to me, then I must be presenting difficult questions. I don’t think I overly monopolised things, and it’s still something I am very wary of. So in that sense, I was on some levels surprised and pleased that he said this. On another level it was obviously a trifle irritating as despite my best efforts, that perception of dominating events was coming across, albeit to one person. To be fair, he dressed it as a joke or a quip, it wasn’t said with any real venom, but for a moment, I basked in the moral high ground.

The group kicked off with a rather confusing assertion that the devil caused cancer. The implication was that somehow medical conditions were linked to evil, and that sin created cancer. I dared not extrapolate that only sinners get cancer, as the assertion was made by someone whose father had suffered from it, although I had heard from reliable sources that certain Baptist churches considered depression as a defect of the spirit, and that only prayer could overcome it. I didn’t bring this up either, as there was clearly meant to be a demarcation between these bad things being caused by the devil, and the seemingly random way in which they were distributed.

“Des” seemed particularly confrontational this week, and he went on something of a controlled offensive against Lee as the discussion took a slight digression toward evolution/creationism. I had already ascertained that Lee was a conditional creationist (a believer in “limited evolution), and they embarked on quite a heated exchange where Des tried to nail Lee down as to what he actually believed. They seemed to reach some sort of compromise – I wasn’t moved to interject as this was one area in which I find the rabid evolutionists and the rabid creationists just as boring as one another.

One thing I struggled with was the idea of “doubt” being a tool of the devil. This could only lead to fundamentalism and the kind of inflexibility I find rather galling. I’ve said before that I think doubt is a good thing – it’s a motivator to find out more, to question, to improve, to strive to understand. Certainties in anything, especially where most of the supporting evidence is faith, are really an unattractive proposition.

Something which I found really unsatisfying in retrospect was the idea that the devil and evil was not necessary. I asked who in the room was certain in their faith, and several agreed that they were. I then asked what that certainty would be without doubt. The conclusion was that not all doubt was bad or negative, just in very specific instances relating to God.

I asked whether evil was necessary. Eric went to some lengths to suggest that it wasn’t – he said that children have no perception of evil, and that they generally see everyone as friendly (I’m not sure that this is true, but I went with it), so the suggestion was that we would all be as children without evil.

This took us in a circuitous route as to what sequence of events brought evil about.

This was the key to the entire session as far as I was concerned. Slowly and eloquently, Eric explained the belief is that Lucifer made the decision (as angels also had free will) to reject God, and that this defined his path and started the heralded “war” between heaven and hell. A slightly difficult point to grasp, but the inference is that the devil (or angel as he was then) created disobedience and sin by rejecting God, creating a splinter group (in a political analogy) which then formed the “Opposition”. This was a lightbulb moment for me, but in its way only raised further questions. Surely the “original sin” then was the devil’s, not Adam and Eve’s? Surely God created an imperfect angel here? Did he not know this would happen? It all strikes me as someone playing monopoly on their own, and then being annoyed at the dice rolls, even though they’re going to win inevitably anyway, and that they have a complete list of what all the dice results would be. Moreover, is it not true then that the devil, and not God, created disobedience, if there was no concept of it beforehand? And if so, then God is not the only one with the power of creation, which raises all kinds of questions in turn. If angels can also create things, why not just worship them? What else can create things? Does this mean that the “7 days” of creation might have included a whole lot of sub-contracted work to other agencies with the same powers? As amusing as the idea of an outsourced creation is, from bitter experience, there's no way it would hit the "7 days" deadline.

Then a trademark comedic interjection. Lee, making a point about God, in the midsts of expressing his opinion, deliberately touched me on the shoulder to illustrate something. The way he did it inferred that I was in fact God, which caused much ironic laughter. I proclaimed it was about time they all realised it too….

There was then a comment, much repeated as an example, of the “hot cooker” and how you can tell your children not to touch it many times over, but sooner or later they need to learn that it’s hot. I can’t remember the exact context, but it’s not hard to surmise that it was related to “free will”. I couldn’t help thinking at the time that this was all fine, but that I wouldn’t shut my kids alone in a kitchen with a hot cooker then act surprised when they burnt their hands, no matter how many times I’d told them not to touch it. Your first instinct as a “parent” must surely be your children’s welfare, not to give them curses for eternity to teach them some kind of spurious lesson. This too, from the embodiment of “love”. It just doesn’t sit right on any level.

The session curtailed in usual style – just as it was starting to get going. All in all, the best week so far, with an 8. Lots of questions, but for once a few logical answers, albeit in a theological framework based on faith.

This gives an interesting springboard into Saturday’s “away day”. I am actually looking forward to it, especially as some of the irritants seem to be non-attenders, and Des (a kindred spirit in the sceptic’s corner) has said he’ll attend. Should be fun. It feels like Alpha is finally getting into the meaty bits.