Eyre Lines

How can we have faith (A3)

(This post is partly based on Faith, not Belief (Alpha week 3) posted earlier, so excuse duplication)

From this point, I’d prefer not to keep harping on about what scripture is, so far as I’m concerned. However, I view most of the New Testament as the product of a faith community which developed after Jesus’ death; this is a point of view which few historians are likely to argue with.

I accept it as acccurate in portraying the understandings of the actual writers at the times when they wrote, granted that much if not all of it has been adjusted at least once by someone with a subsequent understanding, according to significant numbers of experts in textual criticism. I am not at the moment at all confident that Jesus himself would have recognised or approved of all of it. This is perhaps less commonly accepted by historians, but would still be a comfortable majority consensus.

Some of the sayings of Jesus in the gospels are accepted even by very sceptical historical-critical scholars as being authentically Jesus. None of these deal with issues such as “who he was” or “what his purpose with” or “what is going to happen in the future”. It is possible from them, however, to get a picture of an historically viable picture of Jesus the man.

What I am hearing from the Alpha programme is “believe these things”, or in other words “give your intellectual assent to these things”, those principally being that God exists, that Jesus was (and is) God, that scripture is entirely reliable and unambiguous and that the primary purpose of Jesus was to die and so save us from sin.

Aside from possible quibbles that “exists” is not the best terminology, I have no difficulty accepting the first. However, I only manage not to disagree with the second as a result of being a panentheist, which is not the understanding of “was God” which the speaker and other helpers have, or if I take it as an entirely non-literal metaphor. I have (as I mentioned) major problems with saying that scripture is entirely reliable, and have to say that it is seriously ambiguous, as you would expect from the personal faith statements of a lot of different writers. You’d expect that from a set of eyewitnesses, in fact!

Sadly, of many possible texts the Alpha writers could have used, they chose Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me”.

Now, I am not a big fan of Revelation. Neither, I understand, was Martin Luther, but like him, I accept that it’s become part of the canon and I need to deal with it. How I deal with it is mostly to quote early Church fathers, who said that it was highly symbolic and that the key to the symbolism had been lost. I think there are huge dangers in trying to interpret it against that background, to say the least.

I will, therefore, just say that this was how the author saw things. For him, it was no doubt true; if however, it is taken as saying that all one needs to do having got this far is to be open rather than closed minded, to accept intellectually as set of interpretations of scripture and that that is “opening the door”, it seems to me to be just plain wrong. In too many cases I have seen it has seemed to me that people have had all the intellectual acceptance you could wish for and have not received any sign of a transformative experience, and it feels to me like blaming the victim.

An old ex-Jesuit friend of mine would say that if the gospel has not been adequately presented to someone, they cannot be fixed with knowledge, or in other words that the most likely explanation would be that to date, no-one has succeeded in telling them in such a way as to connect with them, and that as a result they have not “heard his voice”. I’m unsure about this. In a few cases, I have tried every permutation of telling and retelling, including stripping down the message well beyond even the point which I was at the time comfortable with, and taking them to hear others with different approaches, and the result has still been no transforming personal experience for them.

I surmise that the response may not be immediate. If so, in at least a couple of cases I have known it would have to have been either deathbed or post-mortem. I have no problem with that, and I don’t know of any scripture which does. But I don’t have any relevant experience or testimony to bring to this.

I’m afraid that to see “The Work of Jesus” at the top of a section based on Jesus’ death and the interpretations placed on it later annoys me. If Jesus is, as John saw him, the Word of God, then his “work” was primarily the transmission of his lifetime statements about how we should be in relationship to God and to each other. In the previous talk I gave my thoughts on atonement theories; to reduce “the work of Jesus” to something which God could have achieved with the burning of a small bag of grain with due formality and in the right place (had he required any sacrifice which, from Ezekiel and Hosea, he didn’t) is, to me, shocking. However, I would invite everyone to consider what they understand of the lifetime Jesus (rather than the cosmic Christ); is this a person you could commit to emotionally, as you might commit emotionally to God?

I think that the statement “we must not only trust our feelings…but instead rely on God’s promises” is at the same time a sensible corrective and deeply dangerous; a sensible corrective because yes, emotions are hard to separate between those emanating from ourselves and those emanating from God working in us (however you conceive that). Scripture taken as the testimony of those who have gone before us and have written of pitfalls which are often encountered is valuable to correct this, but at this stage we are not talking about the later walk of faith, we are talking about an initial emotional commitment.

It is dangerous, however, because it takes us back to intellectual belief in a particular conception of what it is that scripture says. I do not think that emotional commitment at all logically flows from intellectual assent; the most intellectual assent can do is remove a possible obstacle to emotional commitment; this is from my experience of talking with others. I know that emotional commitment leads to some degree of intellectual assent both from my own experience and that of others.

I’ve been confident for quite a while that where the scriptures says “have faith” it doesn’t just (or even primarily) mean intellectual belief, and that where scripture is translated “believe” that actually, “have faith” would often be a better translation. I read Faith as meaning something like “love and trust”, in other words an emotional commitment rather than an intellectual assent. Very many of us, if not all, make such an emotional commitment to another person at some point during their lives; I have such commitment in the case of my wife. I don’t, however, claim to understand her completely or even to believe any particular thing about her in an absolute sense; I love her, and if I were to find out that something about her was not as I had thought, that would not change my love or commitment (it hasn’t in the past, though occasionally I have been taken aback). It might if what I loved was not her but a mental idealisation of her which I had constructed and which proved later to be false, but that is not how I love her.

So, were she Jesus, or God, I would not be depending on “scripture”, i.e. something someone else wrote about her, to provoke me to love. I loved her because I experienced her presence and felt love returned. In fact, I didn’t come to love her like I came to love God, in a peak emotional experience which happened very quickly (this may be what “love at first sight” is), I came to love her by small steps over a period of time, a process of progressive opening of myself to her which, happily, she reciprocated.

So what I’m going to say is this: you need not look for a quick fix coming to faith, solving all problems in a single amazing moment as the only way forward (mine was amazing, but it hardly solved all problems). You do not need to assent to very many intellectual conceptions at all, though it can be easier if you at least retain an open mind about some of them. You merely need, using the language from Revelation earlier on, to open the door a little crack, not to rip it off its hinges. Then you listen, mostly with your feelings, for the response. It may not be immediate. Later, you can try opening the door more and more; my experience is that the more you can open to a loving relationship, the stronger and deeper it gets.

Try for the mustard seed of Matthew 17:20 rather than moving the mountain unaided.

On Patheos, Tony Jones writes about Rob Bell talking on a Christian radio show. This clip is entirely about the Biblical attitude to homosexuality, and pits Rob (looking tired and dishevelled) against a chap identified as a theologian from New Frontiers, Andrew Wilson. That clearly wasn’t what the on air discussion was supposed to be; no doubt it was to promote Rob’s “What we talk about when we talk about God”. Don’t you just love ambushes?

I don’t view Rob as being a theologian, and I think that comes over well in this clip. What Rob does seem to me to be is a spirit-filled, convicted Christian with a gift for communication. He speaks wonderfully well in scripted situations and, I think, well in this non-scripted one too. Indeed, he sounds to me a lot like an idealised New Frontiers person might be, if neo-conservative theology didn’t get in their way. He speaks from his personal experience of God and from his personal observation of many other people, matters to which he is entirely qualified to testify.

He was being inclusive throughout, entirely in the spirit of the God of Love whom Rob clearly experiences. What I heard from Rob was someone witnessing his faith, which is what I want to hear from a Christian.

On the opposite side of the table, Andrew sounded like a theologian. I worry about the whole concept of a New Frontiers theologian – what can they find to theologise about, given that the whole of scripture has already been explained entirely adequately from their point of view, and there is no new ground to cover? I heard  from him regurgitated argument, and while he was pleasant in his manner, various points sprang out to me.

He starts with asking if Rob considers homosexual sex to be sinful (and chooses a guy with a guy as his example) and pushes the issue. I recognise the technique; it is lawyerly, and is looking to define Rob into a corner. In the process he exaggerates the difference and sets up a contrast between God forbidding homosexual sex and God positively approving it. Tick box 1 for forensic courtroom technique.

He then refers to Jesus saying of Leviticus “all things are clean” but that from the heart comes matters of morals, with clear reference to Matt. 15:18-19. I note the matters of morals mentioned there are adultery and fornication; Rob is not being a theologian and not being a lawyer, and does not therefore come back with any of the obvious rejoinders, most notably that this passage does not mention homosexuality, and that the clear topic (of blessing monogamous homosexual relationships today) is actually implicitly approved by this passage as it prevents adultery and fornication. But no, we are apparently using that passage to say that Jesus was talking about sexual morality and therefore an unmentioned aspect of sexual morality is condemned.

And then we get the sexual abstinence argument, and Andrew claiming that lots of gay men have been baptised in his church and want, in their “new creation” to cease to be sexually active. I do wonder about this, as any gay man would be far better advised to join a church which has a different theological stance from New Frontiers – who are these idiots?

Again, Rob does not come back with the comment that, from Paul’s point of view, it would be better if all of us gave up sexual activity and (probably) married status. Are the rest of us also going to be enjoined by Andrew to be celibate on that basis?

Then we have the host introducing the idea that Rob has “gone liberal”. And Rob asks us to consider what it looks like if it’s “lived out”. Again, we are looking at witness, not argument from him.

Again Andrew stresses that old ways have to be abandoned, and here we get hate introduced. Luke 14:26 is an old favourite of hardline evangelicals, and like a charm, here it comes. How can we best exclude and condemn? Rob here mostly manages to stick to the line of Luke 6:27 and love those who hate him, though he does display a little irritation. We see Andrew claiming, although he concedes it may be a matter of individual interpretation, that he is more orthodox – apparently “nearly every scholar” supports him. Not those I read, and I ask myself if I could have resisted the temptation to jump down Andrew’s throat there. I probably couldn’t have, but Rob largely does.

Here’s a good one from Andrew “Unless the definition of what freedom looks like is clearly established, we’re going to be on very different pages of how to go about it”. Really? You get to DEFINE freedom? How can it be free, in that case? But no, Rob doesn’t really rise to this one either. Despite frustration, he keeps asking for toleration and a “little wider tent” and stressing brotherhood with Andrew (which Andrew is not necessarily delighted with).

In this last section, I think we see Andrew disclosing where he really comes from; he asks Rob to consider his position, and (implicitly) how Andrew feels about being in a Church in which people are talking toleration. Clearly it frightens him. Here is the fountainhead of his aggressive, defining, excluding stance (cloaked in apparent niceness) which pervades the whole interview; he feels personally threatened and has to defend, and the best form of defence is attack and exclusion.

What is he frightened about? Well, the simple answer is “homosexuality”, and that would just be common or garden bigotry, and that’s the cheap gibe. But no, I think a clue is given earlier in the discussion when Andrew starts talking about the whole sweep of the story from Genesis to Revelation. He has his metanarrative, his template of Scriptural interpretation, his locked down definitions of what everything really means. This is why I question whether New Frontiers really has “theologians”.  I suspect very strongly that he feels his basis of Scriptural interpretation is threatened, and that means his faith is threatened because it’s based in intellectual acceptance rather than in a loving relationship with God.

Sadly, Rob does not get the last word.

Now, I am a lawyer (thankfully retired) and I suppose, as people keep introducing me as a theologian, that I should own that label too; this makes me admirably qualified to adopt a position caricatured in the gospels as that of the Pharisees, or, if you will, like that of Andrew. I try hard not to use these facets of my skill-set to be adversarial, more to be able to move within adversarial debate and promote reconciliation, but all my instincts were itching to meet Andrew on his own ground here.

Actually, however, this background allows me to understand this exchange as, on Andrew’s side, a lawyerly, theologically based attack, and on Rob’s a Christian witness which seeks to be loving, tolerant and inclusive.

And love wins, Rob. But you knew that already.

12 Step as a spiritual programme

These are the twelve steps, slightly modified by me from those originally developed by Alcoholics Anonymous (source Wikipedia). Different twelve step programmes insert different words where I have a blank in Step 1:

1. We admitted we were powerless over [   ] – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God to be.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God to be, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to those suffering from [the source of our own powerlessness], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

They represent a development of the spiritual programme of the Oxford Group, splitting their spiritual practices down into elements and adding Steps 1 and 2 and step 12.

Where “God” appears, commonly with the words “as you understand God to be” or some variant added, all that is needed is some “higher power” than yourself; some who have problems with the whole concept of God have considered it to be the group of fellow sufferers to which they belong and on which Twelve Step programmes are based, some substitute “Good” for “God” or consider it an acronym for “Good Orderly Direction”. It is, I think, necessary for it not to be within you yourself, though some have considered it “their higher selves” with success; if possible it should not be another human being, as there are huge pitfalls there.

What you insert in the blank in Step 1 differs from programme to programme; alcohol was the original, drugs are another including specifically narcotics, nicotine, cocaine and prescription pills; obsessive behaviours such as gambling, shopping and overeating all have their own programmes, as do psychological disorders such as co-dependency and other emotional disorders. The whole list is considerable (and my link fails to include one or two I know of).

A lot of people, including myself,  have gained some freedom from these various sources of difficulty in their lives through Twelve Step and have, in the process, embarked on a spiritual programme which to my mind results in improvements far wider than the narrow specific they start with. Many people I know have effectively moved beyond, say, “alcohol” as the source of powerlessness and are mentally using “people, places and things” in its place.

It seems to me that anyone could probably find some item over which they are powerless to slot into that blank, even if they do not fit into one of the many categories for which there are existing Twelve Step groups. Many people in Twelve Step programmes feel somewhat sorry for those who do not have such a source of powerlessness which they can identify, as they feel they have gained so much themselves from following their particular programme.

However, Twelve Steppers will generally agree that in order to use a Twelve Step programme, someone must reach an “emotional rock bottom” as a result of their particular problem. Although you may be able to fit anything in to the box, it is therefore necessary for it to have taken you to that sticking point where you can emotionally commit to “this far and no further” with absolute assurance. On the plus side, there are people I have met whose emotional rock bottoms have been far, far less traumatic than my own or those of the majority of Twelve Steppers, such as one lady whose rock bottom was feeling her social standing slipping as she was becoming erratic and undependable. For her, that was “this far and no further”, and I am immensely happy for her that this was, for her, enough (once, I felt envy, but dealt with this through a Step 4- Step 7 procedure).

I leave it to the reader whether they feel this to be an useful tool for them, either individually or as part of a wider spiritual programme (which Step 11 really demands). If there really is no root of powerlessness, it is possible to start with Step 3, but commonly people are unable to give this a complete commitment unless they have Steps 1 and 2 behind them.

Alternatively, you might like to look at the Oxford Group programme. All the elements of that were in my own spiritual programme before I ever learned of Twelve Step. I admit that it was something of a surprise to me to find that I was called to share my sins and temptations with another, but I did find myself doing this on a long railway journey with a priest whose name I never asked, back in 1972. After the event, the best metaphor I can find is that of ringing a friend whose house I had never been to, and asking for directions. The first question, of course, was “Where are you now”, so I looked around and described it; directions then followed.

If you don’t know where you are now, it is more difficult to know which direction to go in to reach your goal.

Letting go of chains

I read in “Living the Questions” (Felten and Procter-Murphy 1998 p.5) a quotation from the author Maya Angelou. “I’m startled or taken aback when people walk up to me and tell me they are Christians. My first response is the question ‘Already?’ “.

I sympathise with that. I also sympathise with Dave Tomlinson’s description of himself as a “Bad Christian” in “How to be a Bad Christian”; he cannot (yet) do all the things he thinks a true, a complete Christian should do, so he is a “Bad Christian”.

Yes, I may well not be yet a Christian, or I may be a Bad Christian, or I may be an incomplete Christian. I have a direction, but I have not reached the destination of my journey, nor do I think I ever will. I see that Jesus encourages me to give away all I possess to the poor (Mat. 19:21), in many passages; by the standards of many in the world, I am a “rich man” and though I can imagine ways in which I could pass a camel through the eye of a needle (Mat. 19:24), the poor beast would be very unlikely still to be a functioning camel on the other side (blenders and extreme gravitational effects sprang to mind).

I have a wife and children and an aged mother, and though I also hear Jesus asking his disciples to leave their families and jobs and follow him (repeatedly, in Mark 1:17 and throughout the early parts of the gospels), I fear that as matters stand I feel my obligations to them outweigh my obligations to myself.

And yet I know from personal experience that the more I let go of ties which bind me to the world, to money, to possessions, to self-image, to status in the eyes of others, to control of my or others’ lives and to individual other people, the more my heart is lightened by letting me pursue the Great Commandments. Thus I talk of my obligation to myself.

In all these, I cannot say that I can yet “Love the Lord my God with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind” (Matt. 22:37). I doubt I will ever achieve that degree of surrender except, perhaps, for very brief periods. I try to imitate Jesus, to imitate Christ, as best I can, but cannot hope to count myself his equal.

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The abrupt ending, on 26^th May of this year, of 17 or more years worth of decline into depression, for the last 8 years severe clinical depression, has given me an opportunity to review my life in a way impossible to me for at least the last 8 years, and with the gift (taken away by the depression) of being able to recall the emotions (or lack of them) which affected me previously. Depression, if severe, removes emotional recall as well as the ability to feel positive emotions and, eventually, all emotion.

Indeed, depression may have been growing well before 17 years ago, because despite emotional recall, I cannot remember a period when I felt so energised, so enthusiastic, so optimistic, so accepting, so grateful and so alive before at any time in my life. I have a better lens through which to view, so I can look back at my self-examination in the past (a regular exercise for 45 years) and see more.

In Acts 28:20 Paul says “since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain”. According to Acts, Paul had been arrested and bound with chains in Jerusalem when in fear of his life from the local population, and via various places, all under Roman guard and, it is supposed, attached to a Roman soldier by a chain, eventually reached Rome, preaching all the way. On his route, Felix, governor at Caesarea, was willing to let him go, but did not in order to placate “the Jews” (24:27).

So, he was bound by chains, and bound because of his preaching, his attachment to Christ – a binding, an attachment, which did not affect his ability to preach to soldiers, governors, a King, sailors and finally people in Rome, as distinct from Romans.  He was a prisoner, but his bond to Christ made him free. In Ephesians 3:1 he says “I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus”, but the translation is sometimes “OF Christ Jesus”, and we can see which of the Romans or Jesus kept him prisoner successfully, and of these which he accepted voluntarily from choice, which of necessity.

There is a talk given by a well known 12 Step speaker called Earl Hightower, entitled “How free do you want to be”.  He focuses on the 12 Step programmes’ Step 3: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him”. Briefly, his argument is that by surrendering completely to God and to the programme, you will become free, and the more you surrender the freer you will be. I wonder whether Earl had been reading about Paul, or, indeed, if his predecessor Bill W. had been. We see there Paul surrendered to his relationship with Christ, effectively free despite actually being in chains; he is doing what he needs to do, he is doing what he wants to do. He seems to have achieved that every time he was imprisoned, in fact.

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Depression is like imprisonment. I’m not unacquainted with real imprisonment; as Paul found, if the spirit is free, the walls and the chains cannot bind. The insidious prison, however, is one you make for yourself; the “Open Prison” tends to have this characteristic – all the inmates could walk out at any time, but they imprison themselves for fear of what would happen if they ventured outside (in that case, generally a significantly more restrictive prison). Often the more restrictive form of open prison stays with people after they leave. Prisons generally can also sap hope and will; it is common for people to become institutionalised, so their situation, however awful, seems better than any alternative could. Life can evolve to live in volcanoes, prisoners can learn to live in Hell.

Depression sets boundaries you contribute to yourself, it cuts you off from yourself, taking away your emotions, your hopes, your mere likes and dislikes, leaching all of the colour and life out of life until the only reason the idle thought that death would probably be better doesn’t get acted on is that it would take some emotion to muster the energy, and that went years ago. Eventually, like the institutionalised prisoner, you become complicit in its continuance.

I feel I’ve just been let out of prison after 17 or more years of depression, and let out of the self-imprisonment as well. More, though – I can now see what I couldn’t see before, that there are ways of looking at my life which just haven’t been available to me for years, ways which involve actual emotions rather than just coldly logical analysis. In 12 Step terms, this is a “Step 4”, making a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself. It is not usually recommended that you share this (in Step 5) with the whole internet community as I seem to be doing, though, just another human being and God.

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So, what do I now see? Well, at the beginning I talked of Jesus commending the abandonment of money, jobs, family and, of course, security. In Matt. 10:39 we read the culmination of this; “whosoever loses his life will find it”. I see these as chains which bind us, which hold us from pursuing a loving relationship with God without condition.

I see the young Chris, fairly free of chains, entering into a relationship with the lady who is now his wife; I see him taking a job, buying a house and borrowing money to do that, doing a job which was about helping others and taking on obligations towards them; entering politics and taking on obligations to look after the people he represented; starting a family and commencing a lifelong responsibility towards children and becoming an employer and taking responsibility for the welfare of employees.

None of these was a bad thing. An accompanying sense that in order to fulfil all of these commitments, more money needed to be made was not so much bad as dangerous (at least it wasn’t pursuit of money for its own sake). A growing fear of failing in these commitments might have been beneficial in small measure, but was damaging when allowed to grow. A lack of trust that “all would be well, and all manner of things would be well” without Chris’ own endeavours was very damaging. Accepting the obligations as absolutely necessary, as things which could never be let go of, was fatal.

These were all chains, and eventually they became too heavy when there was a shock to Chris’ system. But he tried to pick himself up and push forward, despite the growing knowledge that something had broken, and that he was, after all, too weak for all of these chains. He could not; the weight became steadily more unbearable; Chris started to self-medicate with alcohol in order to cope and eventually one of the chains (a client) pulled hard and Chris allowed himself to be pulled into a stupid and catastrophic action.

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The last ten years have been horrible. I came close to losing wife and family (my wife on several occasions, only once by her leaving), I did lose business, ability to practice my profession and social status; financial security nearly to the point of bankruptcy; nearly my home; my physical health, for a time my mental health, for a time my liberty and very nearly my life. And, for over 6 years, hope, purpose and all positive emotion – and my consciousness of God.

Twelve steppers will recognise that everyone who starts seriously upon a twelve step programme has experienced an emotional rock bottom; without it, you cannot start to rebuild successfully. Mine came on the 30^th of November 2006 when all of the above had either been lost or their loss seemed inescapable. Sadly, it took some time following that, from the prison of depression, to be released.

I’m now free of the chains of business and profession, clients and electors, the desire for financial security, or at least excessive financial security and if the house goes, God will provide somehow. This has been forced on me as of 25^th May 2013; I don’t think I could have let go completely voluntarily. My family, I can attend to without the chains being too heavy now, and I can see that they didn’t just need a bank balance, they needed me, and me without all these other chains. It has been a painful corrective exercise, but I can now see it as a necessary one.

So, Earl Hightower asks me “How free do you want to be”, and I say “exactly as free as I am; and if I need to be more free I can weaken my grip on a chain or two”. The chain I will not willingly drop is that to God; previously, among all the others, I think I had dropped it. It took 6 years to find it again, or for God to press it back into my hand. *

So, with Paul, I will happily be a prisoner OF Christ. Not a perfect one, as Maya Angelou or Dave Tomlinson would agree, with some reservations, but knowing the other chains which bind me and which I elect to hold on to.

* In conscience, I will not willingly drop the chain representing my wife either; I did effectively drop this for a period in 2006-7 and regret that; I hope there is never a stark choice of God or her, because I would probably choose her. We are joined in flesh and spirit, as Paul would put it; I cannot separate us.

Why did Jesus die

(This is a first draft of suggestions for a second-view talk to accompany Alpha talk 2)

Why did Jesus die? Perhaps it would be too simple to say “Because he was fully human, and human beings die”. I could go on to say “Because he was perceived as a danger by the Roman imperialist conquerors, and what they did with revolutionaries in those days was to crucify them, to give them the most ignominious, painful and publically humiliating death they could both to deter others from doing the same and to belittle their importance and dishearten their supporters”.  Both of those are, of course, true.

I do not, in fact, think that he died because the Jewish nation as a whole asked Pilate to do this, nor that even a substantial number of Jews did this, though it may have been that some Jewish collaborators in authority under the Romans also wanted his death and agitated for this with the Romans. He did, after all, threaten their positions as well by being a subversive spiritual leader with some most unpopular views about whether Jewish Law should take precedence over the Great Commandment “Love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mark 12:31, Matt. 22:37, Luke 10:27, Rom. 13:9, Gal. 5:14, Jas. 2:8). Recall that I see the gospel writers as reflecting a changing and developing idea of who Jesus was and why he died, and this is a matter of finding meaning in his life and death, not following his actual words. We may find that meaning, but that does not mean that it is a reality on some supernatural level.

If a crowd did, indeed, ask for Barabbas rather than for him, (and recall that “Bar Abbas” means “son of the Father”), it was probably one seeded by agitators by Pilate, who was known for doing this, and eventually disciplined in Rome for being too harsh in his governorship. We can I think therefore discount Luke’s story of Pilate washing his hands, even if we do not realise that Luke was expressing a pro-Roman view out of keeping with the earlier gospels. John, of course, repeats this, but John is frankly anti-semitic in his tone throughout; one can surmise that not only was he not Jewish himself, but was from a background which made him anti-Jewish – John Dominic Crossan suggests that he was in fact a Samaritan convert, which would also explain the favourable treatment of Samaritans in the Fourth Gospel.

My friend has put forward in a fairly simple form the argument for an understanding of the effect of Jesus’ death which is known as “penal substitutionary atonement” or PSA. This was not in fact the understanding of the early church, much of which believed in the “ransom theory”, that Jesus’ death ransomed humanity from the power of the Devil into which it had fallen due to sin, payment being made to the Devil. Another prominent early concept was “Christus Victor”, drawn largely from the Fourth Gospel, which saw Jesus as having vanquished the power of the Devil through sin by his death and resurrection.  The third early concept, which was better stated around the turn of the twelfth century was the “exemplary atonement” or “moral influence” theory, which said that the example of Christ in leading an exemplary life and being faithful even to death on the cross was an example to humanity to move towards moral change.

Earlier in the 11^th century, however, Anselm had voiced the “satisfaction theory”, which argued, in the words of Wikipedia, that only a human being can make recompense for human sin against God, but this being impossible for any human being, such recompense could only be made by God. This is only possible for Jesus Christ, the Son, who is both God and man. The atonement is brought about by Christ’s death, which is of infinite value. This was then developed in the Reformed tradition (principally by John Calvin) into PSA, adding the element that Christ suffered the punishment for all sins.

It is important to say that all five of these theories have been espoused by very able theologians in the Christian Churches over the years; none is predominant in Catholicism and the Eastern churches (principally the Orthodox) do not espouse PSA at all. However, you may wish to follow where any of them have gone before.

It is also worth mentioning that none of them gives adequate weight to the picture presented by the Epistle to the Hebrews of Jesus ascending to heaven and as high priest offering his own blood spilled as a once-and-forever sacrifice to end the need for the Temple sacrificial system, an attractive concept to Jews who had in 70 AD seen their Temple completely destroyed by the Romans during a revolt lasting some 7 years, and thus felt the lack of that system. However, the writer of Hebrews was somewhat off the mark in that the Temple did not just accept blood sacrifices (there were also grain sacrifices) and though sin offerings were one part of these, there were also sacrifices for praise, thanks, gratitude and to correct ritual impurity.

Personally I cannot live with the theological assumptions of PSA though I am very happy with the exemplary atonement theory. I am unhappy with the concept that God requires of us to follow a set of rules which it is patently impossible for us to do (at least, according to Paul in Rom. 3:10) and that He cannot bend from that. Although I acknowledge the concept of sin as a separation from God, and agree that it is a problem, mere matters of conduct are not, to me, what is being talked of.

It is correct that for those who are at a personal rock bottom due to addiction, depression or otherwise and have lost their sense of worth completely, PSA offers an attractive psychological answer. On the other hand, it is perilous to approach someone who is not desperate and does not feel much sense of sin and attempt to convince them that they are wretched and depraved; it is also cruel if you manage to convince them of that but it proves that they can’t take the leap of faith required. In Mark 2:17, after all, Jesus says “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”.

I am also prone to point out that if you read Ezekiel 18:21-23, repeated at 27-28 just in case the message didn’t get through the first time, you find “If a wicked man turns away from all the sins which he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness which he has committed he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live” This is a formula entirely separate from the sacrificial system, and in my view does away with the need for any separate process for dealing with sin.

In Hosea 6:6 we read “For I deserve steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” which is echoed in Matthew 9:13 from the lips of Jesus and again in Matthew 12:7. The word “love” can be as well translated as “mercy” in those passages, and the word “burnt offerings” as “sacrifices”.

I find it odd, therefore, that the satisfaction and PSA pictures consider that a God who enjoins his people in the 8^th century and then the 6^th century BC that repentance, turning to God and living righteously are sufficient to wipe out sin and that he requires mercy, not sacrifice, cannot forgive human sin without the sacrifice of his own son, or, in a way, himself (the picture looks somewhat better if it indeed himself who he sacrifices, but this would be a heresy called “patripassianism”).

We may, however, get a further clue if we look closely at the words of Paul’s theologising in Romans 3. I will concentrate on one phrase in Romans 3:25-26 “whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus”.

Note, it does not make us righteous, it proves to us that God is righteous where humanity might think that he is not. He himself still does not require anything from us other than that we repent and turn to God, but we may require from him a demonstration of his justice and goodness, and that was achieved by sending his son and in a fashion himself to die as badly as it was possible for humans to die; in this way he shared our anguish, our pain, our death.

An exemplary atonement, healing one aspect of our separation from God, our sin.

There is more. I’m a mystic; it was through a mystical peak experience that I first started the journey which has resulted in me writing this (had I not had it, I’d probably still be the evangelical atheist I previously was, and several other less-than-ideal things as well). As a result I have a deep and compelling consciousness of the omnipresence of God, the immanence of God. Yes, I also have a consciousness of his transcendence, but the consciousness of immanence and omnipresence is stronger. As a result, I find the following consideration to be gripping; you may be able to reach the same conclusion otherwise.

In Matthew 25, vv 31-46 there is a long passage including “Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me’. Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ “ (34-40). I remember that his brethren were precisely the outcasts of society, that your neighbour was whoever you came into contact with irrespective of race, colour, gender or, yes, religion (recall the Syrophonecian woman (Mark 7:25-30) or the Samaritans? (Luke 10;33, 17;16, John 8:48). Friend or enemy, all neighbours, all brethren. They are all men, and what we do to them we do to Christ. I take this very seriously indeed.

In the first century, Christ was crucified by men who sinned at the behest of other men who sinned; today he is crucified again every time harm is done to any human being anywhere. We, humanity, crucified him by, not for, our sin, and we are still doing it every minute of every hour of every day.

This too is exemplary.

Who is Jesus (Alpha 1)

What follows is a first draft of what I might add to the first of the Alpha course talks, were we to present a progressive/liberal/radical view alongside the conservative/traditional one. It isn’t yet footnoted.

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My friend and myself differ vastly on a lot of things. He/she is telling you about a narrative, a story, which can be extracted from the great work of world literature we call “The Bible” which makes sense to him/her and which had brought him/her to a personal relationship with God. By “God” I mean something which may or may not be completely different from the picture you’ve formed over the years to date. If you have misgivings about this, I’d encourage you to set them on one side for later.

I am also going to be telling you a story, or a set of stories, which can be extracted from the same book, and which make sense to me. Our story arcs are very different in places and very similar in others.

Both of them end up with the two of us each attesting to our own personal relationship with God and following of Jesus Christ, and we gain a meaning for our lives and a transformation of those lives from this relationship; we are one in Christ, even if some of our thoughts about why that might be differ. We are therefore one in fellowship with each other, and would like to be able to welcome you into fellowship with us, even if you are as different from both of us as we are from each other.

Let me set a scene, and I’ll do this according to the majority view of historical scholarship. Historical scholarship is critical of ancient documents and looks for outside confirmation, particularly where there is likely to be a motive behind writing something. It discounts any mention of supernatural events on the basis that these almost certainly do not happen these days and there is evidence in ancient times that people saw reality in a magical way and told stories involving magic in order to convey meaning, even about historical people who were alive at the time.

There is indeed extremely strong evidence that between about 4 BC and about 30 AD there lived in Palestine a Jewish man called “Yeshua”, or “Joshua” or, in Greek, Iesos, in Latin Jesus.  At this time the Jews were a conquered people living under the then Roman Empire; for a while in the last two centuries BC they had been independent, but before that had been subject to other empires, most recently the Seleucid Empire, which was Greek-speaking, one of the fragments into which the huge Greek empire of Alexander the Great had fallen on his death. Much, much earlier, they had been independent  (as what became two kingdoms, Israel and Judah) after carving out a nation among the Canaanite (read “Palestinian”) people; they had developed their own religion, which unlike those around them worshipped one God only; they were His chosen people, favoured by him.

In the interim, they had been displaced from their homeland almost totally once, by the Babylonian Empire, and spread around neighbouring countries, so there were Jewish communities all over the Eastern Mediterranean and in Mesapotamia. Many had been assimilated into the cultures they lived in, but the remainder had developed an understanding of their relationship with God which set them apart from others and kept them pure, “holy” by a large set of religious rules. There were 613 basic rules, of which we know 10 as the “Ten Commandments”. These were “The Law” for the Jews.

The Jewish historian Josephus gives us information about the preceding years; there had been many small resistance movements led by people many of whom were hailed by their followers as “Messiah”, which for the Jews meant someone who would deliver them from foreign oppression, bring the scattered people back together in Israel and usher in world peace under which Jews would be the favoured nation again and looked up to to lead others in worship of the One God. Several of these had been put down with extreme violence by the Romans, and the followers had dispersed, disappointed that their Messiah had not come.

Then came Jesus. The best reconstruction of him by historians from among the stories told about him is that he was, as Lewis puts it, a great moral teacher; he was a healer, a teacher and a charismatic leader who gathered a following around him of devoted adherents who, naturally, hailed him as “Messiah” and expected him to restore Israel.

Then disaster struck again, as it had to so many similar Jewish folk leaders previously; the Roman governor Pontius Pilate arrested him and executed him by crucifixion, a barbarous method of punishment used by the Romans for those most despised by them, the lowest criminals and enemies of the state.

But then something truly amazing happened; instead of dispersing and, perhaps, plotting and waiting for the next leader to come along, some of his followers experienced his continuing presence with them in some way (there are many opinions as to what actually happened, and for my purposes it is not important which of them is actually fact). A body of oral stories started circulating. A man we know as Paul, who had never met him, had an experience of his presence, converted and began to spread word of him in what is now modern Syria, Turkey and Greece. And by thirty years after his death (at the most, it could have been somewhat earlier) he had enough followers as far away as Rome itself for Roman writers to write about disturbances caused by “Jews who followed Chrestus”. His followers kept growing, too, and today there are over 2.2 billion people who, in one way or another, follow him.

At this point historians part company with the story my friend tells. The earliest Christian writer was Paul . From internal evidence, scholars believe that the next writing was the gospel of Mark, some of which may have been written down sometime around 70 AD, possibly a little earlier, probably a little later. Then came Matthew (perhaps 10 years later in its original form) and Luke (later yet) and finally John. None of them are thought by mainstream historical-critical scholars to have been written by the apostles with whose names they are connected in Christian tradition, none of them were written early enough to have been written by eyewitnesses, all of them wrote in Greek, not in the Hebrew or Aramaic which you would expect from Jesus’ actual close followers if they were able to write, which is dubious. In fact, there is a quotation by Papias, bishop of Hieraconpolis in Asia Minor, quoted by the later church historian Eusebius, indicating that Papias, who was probably writing within 10 years of 100 CE, knew of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, but those he knew were not what we now see, which is narrative gospels; Mark was a set of notes of sermons said to have been delivered by Peter, Matthew was a set of sayings written in Aramaic, so not a narrative. If a bishop who is thought to have known Polycarp well and to have heard the apostle John preach did not know of the current form of either of these, it is overwhelmingly likely that the current form dates from later than he was writing (it is of course a small chance that it existed but he wasn’t aware of it). The current form may well be significantly later, possibly well into the second century.

While my friend is right in saying there are far more fragments of early copies of the New Testament scriptures than of any other ancient writings, I must point out that the earliest of these we have dates from about 130 AD, 100 years after Jesus’ death, and there is plenty of room there for accounts to have developed. I must also point out that there are more variations in wording throughout those fragments than there are words in the new Testament; granted, the vast majority are insignificant to the overall sense of the books in there, but some are important. I also need to point out that from about 300 AD to about 1500 AD, Christian scripture was considered the most important writing in existence in the Western World and was preserved when other things were not, and that there were periods during that time when differing accounts were rooted out and destroyed based on what was the common understanding of the time – we thus lost many if not most of the Gnostic scriptures criticised by Eusebius and Irenaeus in the early days of the church. Even if scholars had not identified from textual analysis layers of rewriting in almost all of the New Testament, I would have been sceptical that what we now saw had not been substantially modified as Christian understandings developed – in fact, I am grateful that so much of the historical development can still be seen in what has survived for the historical scholars to get their teeth into – there have been at least two attempts, by Marcion and by Tatian, both in the second century, to simplify what we have; Marcion by discarding most of the books, Tatian by harmonising the four gospels into the “Diatesseron”. Had either succeded, we would not now have the wealth of material we actually do have.

Mark’s understanding was of a non-violent social revolutionary who was there to subvert Roman domination and rule. Matthew’s concept was of someone who had come to reform Judaism from the inside and institute a new and higher Law, that of compassion for all people, which took priority to but did not replace the Law of Moses. Luke’s understanding was of someone who had come to spread the word of the God of Judaism beyond the bounds of Judaism to gentiles as well as Jews. And John’s vision was a mystical one, of an all-conquering manifestation of God himself among us.

Much of what they all wrote was fiction from the point of view of the historical-critical scholar. There is previous fiction about, say, Alexander the Great, which ascribes to him a virgin birth and sonship to a god, and about Apollonius of Tyana, a famous healer, to whom many miracles are ascribed. Historians do not think these things actually happened either, but note that they were said because, in that culture, great men could do supernatural things and had supernatural origins.but they worked from an oral tradition and incorporated reports of sayings which we can be fairly confident Jesus actually said; the remainder was, in the way of storytelling in the ancient world, a mixture of fact and fiction designed to put forward their conception of the importance of Jesus Christ, whom they followed and adored. It was their witness. Whether fact or fiction, they believed it to be true, as it was for them.

Most of the quotations my friend has used, you will note, come from John, who had the highest concept of Jesus of any of the five writers (including Paul) I have mentioned. Apart from in John, note that none of the higher claims, such as Messiah or Son of God were actually put in the mouth of Jesus; it was what his followers were reported to have said about him. All of the gospel writers certainly thought that Jesus spoke for God (I would not disagree with that), which explains some of the quotations.

Those from John? Well, from my personal point of view, a mystic who felt completely at one with God and able to speak for Him could have said any of these things (and a very few mystics have) and not be either a liar, a charlatan or a madman. I am personally convinced from the prologue to the Fourth Gospel that the writer was himself a mystic, as was Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenised Jewish philosopher on whose thoughts about “Logos” or “The Word” the Fourth Gospel is to my mind clearly based. The writer could have said them himself, I do not doubt; I could say them. Neither of us WOULD say them, however, because people would not understand, and I think Jesus would have taken the same view – and, if he had not, people would not have understood and his life would have been cut short significantly earlier as a result! I therefore think that John was putting into Jesus’ mouth things which he knew to be true about what Jesus was. I don’t disagree with that.

So, what I am convinced is a fiction about Jesus (in that he didn’t actually say what John ascribes to him) is also a very deep TRUTH about Jesus. Fiction can be true.

I therefore have little time for Lewis’ attempt to bully us into accepting his false trichotomy of God, madman of devil; at the least you have to add “legend” and I would also add “mystic”. But I agree with Lewis that we cannot just dismiss Jesus as a great moral teacher. He was that, and a Jewish peasant of 1^st century Palestine who died an ignominious and painful death and should have been quickly forgotten about.

But he was not. Within a very few years (perhaps not quite as little as three days) he had overcome that death and burst out from literal fact into mythic legend, which can never die, spreading word of him to the corners of the then known world (to the Mediterranean peoples) and to the vast majority of the people in it, and thereafter to the rest of the globe and to many many other peoples. The man became transformed into legend, into God. He lives in his billions of followers, if in no other way.

That, I suggest, is an authentic miracle, and one with which science and history find it very difficult to disagree.

I am extremely indebted to my friend Pastor Tom Sims for giving me a link a little while ago to Rick Warren making suggestions about leading and preaching from weakness.

When I saw that, I had already started to write from a degree of weakness, but my immediate impression was “Wow, I have SUCH a lot of weaknesses I can use”. And so it is proving, as I take the gift of the cessation of depression and try to wring every possible moment of understanding and inspiration and use and service out of it which my poor abused body can cope with (yes, body, I am taking slightly better care of you now, OK?).

There will be more, but the most major part of it is not likely to be seeing the light of day, or rather the internet, for a while yet. I have a lot of years of increasing paralysis of my ability to feel God and to communicate this, culminating in near total inability for the last eight years. That’s a lot of weakness to investigate. I am going to be taking some time to arrive at a narrative for all that.

Particularly as about four days worth of writing disappeared in a recent hard drive failure. No matter, I can write it again, and the result will probably be better for a little maturing.

Rick Warren is not a pastor whose blogging I would normally read (due to a slight contrast in – well – almost everything), so Tom’s part in this was crucial.

What I think Alpha wants is to establish a personal relationship with God. OK, it actually wants to establish a personal relationship with Jesus, but as for most Alpha organisers the terms are effectively synonymous, that may not matter.

I wouldn’t be so keen on Alpha if I hadn’t seen it producing such personal relationships, not always but reasonably frequently (incidentally, I think it’s a mistake saying that “if you do this and believe that, then you WILL receive the Holy Spirit” whatever scripture says, because I’ve seen too many cases where it appears that the steps have been assiduously followed and nothing has been felt. Explanations that there is some barrier which could be sin are unhelpful to say the least).

I wouldn’t be so keen on Alpha if I had any “if you do this and believe that then you WILL receive the Holy Spirit” myself either, or even “you are fairly likely to receive the Holy Spirit”, but I haven’t.

I’m working on trust here, though, because I’m well aware of two ways a paradigm change can be produced which do not in my humble opinion produce what is wanted, and the transition in each of these from what is produced to what is wanted is never easy and frequently seems impossible.

The first of these relies on a form of deindividuation; it is common in smallish groups and can produce something remarkably similar in some respects to my own experience (which was determinedly solitary). It can feel for other group members like a movement of the Holy Spirit, and may be such. The trouble is, it makes the person experiencing the paradigm change dependent on the group which initiated it rather than on God/Jesus. This is very fragile should there be any possibility of not feeling accepted by the group in the future, which in my experience usually comes from some disagreement on doctrine which makes them suddenly an “outsider”, though there can be many others including just personal relationships.

The second of these relies on charismatic personal suasion (not persuasion). Again, this can produce something similar. I know this, I’ve (per)suaded people this way myself in the past. It can feel like the Holy Spirit working through you, and that may very well be the case. The trouble with this is that it makes the person experiencing the paradigm change dependent on the (per)suader individually, which is even more dangerous than the first for the reason given and is also dangerous for the (per)suader, as it plays to several base instincts we all share.

I am not ruling out the possibility that the success of Alpha is actually due to one or both of these factors. If that is the case, I just make a note that progress thereafter absolutely must include non-communal spiritual practice and the forswearing of any future “non-inclusion” of the new believer until at least they have detached themselves from dependence on group or individual.

Alpha finished, officially, on Wednesday evening, and it remains to work out what I’ve learned from this. What I’ve actually GOT out of it is a whole set of new friends who share the same geekish interest as me (namely religion, spirituality, biblical history, studying scripture and all the stuff which surrounds that) and who are equally excited by exchanging ideas; they’re missional and full of fire, and that’s exactly what I was looking for. It may also have contributed (and probably did) to the abrupt ending of my marathon and severe depression 13 days ago.

It probably actually did that through the expected channel, which is that eventually the love and fellowship of the helpers combines with other factors to produce a moment of spiritual uplift and movement within the guests. Not, for me, when it’s expected, which is on the Spirit weekend (last weekend) as by the time I got to that I’d already been flying for a week. I went on two Alphas before this recognising that Alpha could sometimes do this, and hoping for a boost to my own conscious contact with God as a result (I was already well on the downward slope into depression when I went to the first, and hoped for a lifeline).

But that isn’t why I went this time; I went to help, and judging by the amount of extra input various people are wanting from me at the moment, I seem to have “done exactly what it said on the tin” and a bit more besides (looking back at my “Alpha, Beta test” post), and so did it. Unfortunately, for me this was despite the content for the most part rather than because of it.

I’ve resurrected this comment from someone attending a previous Alpha I went on; I didn’t get anything quite this pointed this time, but this sums a lot of it up:-

“Their whole attitude was ‘Why don’t you believe, you poor sick deluded person’ and ‘If you don’t believe by the end of this you’re going to hell and we can’t help you. This is your last chance’ “. She said she felt welcomed and well-fed but terminally embarrassed.

Other comments I’ve got from Alpha attenders (and I’m not going to say which comes from which Alpha course; some of these are from people attending courses in other towns and cities):-

“They all seem ‘holier than thou’ and ‘we’ve got it, you haven’t’. They’re all in on this joke, and I can’t seem to get it. Smug bastards. You’re a smug bastard too!”

“I’ve been a Christian for 40 years. I know all this stuff, and it doesn’t work for me any more – I want new answers, not the old stuff. And they say they’re Christians but used to be like me. So I’m not a Christian? I’m out of here!”

“They’re praying for me. That’s intrusive”.

“I hate the music. They’re trying to get me to join in and sing things I don’t believe in. Oh, it’s heartfelt and some of it’s actually not bad, but I feel excluded”

“I believe there’s a God, or at least something huge and difficult to understand, which I want to get closer to, and I believe that Jesus was a great inspirational leader and I try to follow what he told us to do. But they’re telling me I can’t believe that, I have to believe he was God squeezed into a human package or that he was a madman or a liar. And I can’t do that.”

“The first four talks were a load of complete rubbish. Most of their facts were wrong and I could drive a lorry through the holes in their reasoning. I didn’t go to any more. They’re obviously basing the whole thing on lies”

Of the set, the first and the last two are possibly the most damning for Alpha as it stands.

I don’t think this can be solved by praying harder for the Holy Spirit to come and transform people; this is good, indeed this should always happen, but if by that time someone is so thoroughly alienated by the process, they are far less likely to be able to receive the Spirit even if it comes knocking. Most people’s first experience is actually a small, fairly fragile thing and needs nurturing gently before it can burst into flame; mine was nothing remotely like small or fragile, but the vast majority of people I’ve shared experience with (and there have been a lot) do not have such an experience at any time during their lives.

Jesus did not allow his sheep to be snatched from the Father’s hand (Joh. 10:27-29); we might at least aspire to the same.

My first and most urgent suggestion is that we ditch Penal Substitutionary Atonement and it’s nice, simple, “convict of sin, believe Jesus was God, believe he died for our sins, pray to follow him, receive the Spirit, bang, it’s done” formula. Unfortunately, that wrecks the whole thesis of Alpha and the trajectory of the talks. What we want is acknowledgement of God, in some conception which works for people at the moment, following Jesus, in some conception which works for people at the moment and a radical act of reorientation toward God-through-Jesus, accompanied by a personal experience of God-through-Jesus. Me, I’m not even bothered if it’s God-through-Jesus, God-through-the-Holy-Spirit or just “wow, dad, you’re really there/here!”. I suggest that if you have that, you have at least a beginning Christian and we can present a few more developed theologies later for inspection.

In the course of this, we need to ditch Lewis’ trilemma. It turns off too many people who might otherwise stick there to the end – I’ve even heard people say that as Jesus was plainly not God, because that’s impossible, the message they got was that the man they’d been following was obviously a madman, therefore all the people saying these things were madmen. And “I’m out of here” followed… Incarnation is a very subtle and advanced piece of theology, and in my eyes entirely unsuitable for presentation to a beginner. After all, the early church spent the first three hundred years or more arguing about how this could be the case and having schisms, anathmatisations, riots and even wars about the idea. Let’s avoid having any of these within the Alpha rooms, no?

Alternative Alpha

Let’s avoid claiming that the gospels are eyewitness accounts. Some of us may think so, but there’s such strong modern biblical scholarship to indicate a large redactive, non-eyewitness content and a date later than most of the apostles had already died for even the earliest written form that we have any access to that we are going to get bogged down in another long and subtle argument.

Let’s not use leaps of inference from the early documents at all, in fact. What we can demonstrate clearly enough to satisfy all but the most sceptical modern scholarship is that Jesus lived, taught, inspired and gained a respectable following, died by crucifixion at the hands of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and that within 10-30 years had a following large enough to be thought by the Romans to be a source of civil unrest as far afield as Rome itself. In the process we can set up the historical context of 1st century Palestine with some both politically and in terms of religion. We can end by pointing out that this apparently insignificant Galilean itinerant preacher produced a movement which is alive and well 2000 years later and is worldwide. (talk 1)

We can then look at the evidence and show what his followers thought about Jesus, and for this we can use Paul and the gospel writers without even having to look at historical-critical scholarship. We can show why they found him inspirational; maybe then we can start looking at some pictures they had of what the reason for the crucifixion actually was (and, no, we don’t mention PSA even then; it took over 1000 years to develop even something vaguely like that atonement theory and another 300 to articulate it in something like modern form). I think it would be good to admit that there were actually several different kerygmas used in the gospels and in Paul, in fact. (talks 2&3)

We can then look at what Jesus actually taught, using historical-critical scholarship to extract the undisputed teachings, i.e. those which liberal and conservative alike ascribe to Jesus. My very strong suggestion is that we hang this round the Kingdom statements. (talk 4)

Then we can look at the mystical/spiritual elements in Paul, John and Acts (and I’d like us to link back to the Kingdom statements here, which are to me clearly mystical). We will end up with the Spirit and the formulae used (no, not just the PSA one!). This is probably a good time for several personal testimonies, making sure they are “this is my experience” rather than “this is what you must believe”. Variation would be good here. (talks 5,6&7)

Then we can look at how churches can be organised, introducing small-group churches, home churches, internet communities and lay networks as alternatives to the institutional church, presenting a lot of possibilities for getting involved. This should definitely point out social programmes which can be included as part of a developing spirituality (talk 8)

Finally, we can get together and decide what groups want to do next, individually and collectively. This could be an add-on to talk 8, or be talk 9.

Adjusted Alpha

I don’t think this is as promising a possibility, but it would also be possible to take the existing material, improve the way we react to people, making sure all helpers are well trained not to do any of the things mentioned above which alienate people and to include in at least the early talks two viewpoints, one of which should be a stripped down “liberal” one.

It would probably then be best to split each course into two streams, giving guests the option of going “conservative” or “liberal/radical/progressive”. Maybe these could even be on split nights, so someone could actually attend both.

They might well come together again at some point, probably the Spirit weekend.

I propose this rather cautiously, as I think I know who is going to be asked to do the liberal/radical/progressive side if this course is followed.

Living the Questions

It would be worth exploring Living the Questions as a Progressive Christian alternative to Alpha which, from what I’ve seen, does not have many of the drawbacks I’ve identified above. However, I know too little about it at the moment to be able to assess whether it would be a viable alternative, an add-on or a follow-up (it would certainly do the last of those).

Journey

Journey is a Radical Christian programme of spiritual development originated by Rev. Dr. John Vincent. I have not actually been through a Journey experience (albeit I have been on a journey of my own for 45 years now) but have talked at length with John Vincent about it and read the literature, and I think it has great promise as a follow-up to Alpha. However, I am sceptical that it could be an alternative.

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The question is always “What do we do next”, and we’re going to be meeting elsewhere on Wednesday evenings for a bit to talk more informally; out of this I hope something will arise. What I’d like to see from a future Alpha is the ability to move more or less straight on to a Living the Questions or a Journey.

 

 

Dear XXXX,

I received a private communication from you yesterday in which you said that you were bothered about the last line of my “Direction finding with Jesus” post in the light of what I said in “A Letter to my Reader”. You were worried that despite me addressing myself to you as if you were of any religion or none, because I said in “Direction finding” that I pointed to Jesus, you thought the whole idea was to convert you to Christianity by stealth.

Don’t worry, that isn’t the case. Remember that I said at the top that that was a recycled sermon? Well, everyone I was talking to there was a Christian, so I wasn’t bothered about (say) the odd Jew among that audience.

I happen to think that you have to be a really tough nut if you can’t be comfortable with the extremely stripped down concepts I have as to what you actually need in order to be a Christian – these are Faith in God (or at least the desire to get there) and acceptance of a similarly stripped-down Jesus as exemplar. You also need to want to develop your spiritual experience so that you can feel more connection with whatever it is that I call God, but you can call what you like – it’s only a label on a box.

However, as you say you really can’t do that, don’t worry. I’m better at Jesus stuff than I am at anything else, but I can also point you at quite a few other faith systems which might fit you better – Buddhism and Taoism are the most stripped down I know of, for instance. I know quite a lot about some other faiths as well, and either by joining for a while or by close discussion with those who practice them, I can relate my experience to them as well. If you want to write back, I suggest you take the SelectSmart Belief System Selector test, and let me know your results. If you score high for something, chances are that it’s worth looking at. Though I only score 68% for liberal-to-mainline Christianity (though 100% for Liberal Quaker) on my most recent test, so you can get by with something in the mid range fairly OK.

If none of these fit, I will be very surprised. However, it may be that you either need to be a solitary practicioner of spiritual practices (which I can help with as I’ve spent most of my life being one) or that you need to found your own faith. OK, I once nearly did that at the request of a group of people, but the only person in my head who thought that was a good idea was bighead SR (scientific rationalist Chris) and he got outvoted. I don’t recommend it, therefore, but I can probably still give tips.

Keep reading! You never know, you might find something in here even if you disagree with 99% of what I say. This is about my experience and my way of getting my internal GF functioning well; you’re a different person, and different things will probably work for you.

Happy seeking!