But no matter how high they'd set the bar with tonight's dinner, it couldn't compare to how delicious the discussion was at the end. This was the first Alpha Course session I've walked away from feeling invigorated and full of energy. Filled with the Holy Spirit, perhaps? Well maybe. I guess we'll never know.
As I'd predicted, we began with another hymn, though I was wrong in my prediction that it would be the Cat Stevens classic "Morning Has Broken". Instead, it was one that I'd never heard. I considered choosing a lesser well-known hymn to be a risky strategy for them, as they may find that nobody knows the tune. Fortunately, the melody is virtually identical to the Village People's classic Go West, so I don my cowboy hat and get my boogie on! Fun times!
When this was done, we headed straight into the talk for this evening about why and how we should pray. Not wanting to find myself in a similar position to that which I found myself in last week when it came to blog writing time, unable to remember what was said, this time I took notes. Again, we began with anecdotes, but now, as I sit here to write, it feels like a betrayal of trust to recount the specific stories she told us. I've taken special care while writing this blog to keep the people involved in the course unidentifiable since, as they're unaware they're being written about, I don't think it's fair (damn my atheistic morals!). Instead, I focus on my own experience, the course content and their arguments, while keeping away from too personal details. In this instance, however, I need to go a little into at least the context of the stories to get the point across.
Stories of a friend's mother dying of cancer, or nights when the speaker worried for the safety of her teenage children who were late coming home served as the introduction to tonight's talk, as a way to give examples of the "opportunities" she had to pray. These were moments described as times where prayer was the "only thing you could do". I won't be pedantic and say that prayer is not the only thing you could do in such situations because that would be unreasonable - nobody would realistically call together a search party at 4am because somebody is a couple of hours later than expected, but I found the stories quite telling in what it really said about the nature of prayer and it's purpose. Whether or not it works or has any effect on the world outside of ourselves is seemingly irrelevant, because the real purpose is that it helps to settle the mind of the person doing the praying. Please don't read this as me being rude or mocking to those who engage in prayer, I think this may actually be a genuine benefit: if prayer can help to ease your mind or calm you down in times of worry, then that can certainly be helpful in that it moves you a little away from anxiety into a state where you can think more rationally. This is surely a good thing. This does, however, seem to be it's only benefit, which she compounds with her next point, which is that God doesn't always answer our prayers in the way we may want him to or expect him to. That's an incredible get-out clause! I struck upon a similar line of thinking just last night when I was considering whether or not to get up early for todays Alpha Course "Away Day" (which I'll talk a little more about in my next blog). Part of me wanted to go while another part of me didn't, and I'd gotten home very late after a gig and decided "I won't set my alarm. If I wake up early enough, I'll take it as a sign from God that I should go, and I will. But if I don't wake up early enough, then I'll take it as a sign from God that I shouldn't go, and I won't." I didn't wake up early enough, so I didn't go. A definite sign from God, that! Unequivocal proof not only of his existence, but also of his omniscience and infinite wisdom. Needless to say, I didn't really believe that, but it was an interesting parallel to the logic employed when assessing the power of prayer. I'm happy to report that the story of her teenage child not coming home ended happily and she eventually returned safely: prayer answered favourably. Sadly, however, her friends mother lost her battle with cancer and passed away. In this case, God answered her prayer in a way which wasn't what she'd hoped for, but that was what he considered best, perhaps as part of his plan.
I understand that I'm hitting a touchy subject here, and I'm using as much respect as I can, but I'm compelled to be honest in the way that I see it. One of my favourite comedians, the late George Carlin, put it slightly more bluntly:
... and I say fine, pray for anything you want, pray for anything, but... What about the divine plan? Remember that, the divine plan? A long time ago God made a divine plan! He gave it a lot of thought, decided it was a good plan, put it into practise, and for billions and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Now suppose the thing you want isn't in God's divine plan. What do you want him to do, change his plan? Just for you? Doesn't that seem a little arrogant? It's a divine plan! What's the use in being God if every run down schmuck with a two-dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan! And here's something else, another problem you might have: suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? "Well it's God's will. Thy will be done." Fine, but if it's God's will and he's gonna do what he wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go straight to his will? It's all very confusing.
After leading us in saying the Lord's Prayer, it's time for coffee.
In the coffee break, I get to meet the vicar, and this was the moment I had been looking forward to. I have to say, though, I ended up feeling a little let down. Not by him, he was a very forthcoming, seemingly very genuine, kindhearted man, but perhaps by my expectations as to what our meeting would be like. The way my group leader spoke to me last week made me think I was going to be taken aside for a private and in-depth discussion: a prospect I had begun to relish! Instead, it was more of a simple introduction and an invitation to ask him any questions we may have. My friend Martin, who had joined me again this week, joined us in conversation and we chatted for five minutes or so. The questions we asked were fairly straightforward and the answers were suitably mundane. Although his answers all used the existence of God as an unstated assumption, the moment didn't seem appropriate to dig too heavily into that since it was obvious we wouldn't be having a lengthy discussion, as such a question would have required, so we listened respectfully, asking topic-appropriate questions based around where the conversation was going. The only thing that I really remember from what he had to say was that he had a very emphatic belief that God loves us all, reguardless of what we believe. This seems a little at odds with many specific passages in the Bible that specifically say how non-Christians should be treated, but again, without the possibility to really discuss things fully, we don't go too deeply into it. I'm more interested in finding out what it is exactly that he believes.
As an aside, it's always been a curiosity to me to find out exactly what each individual believer actually believes. With different Christian denominations numbering in the tens of thousands, each following their own specific interpretation of the Bible, hearing somebody tell you that they believe in God really tells you very, very little about what they actually do believe. Some believe in evolution, some don't; some believe in a young earth, some don't; some believe that homosexuals should be stoned to death, some don't*. It's little wonder since, with so many internal contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible, the number of different permutations with which people can choose to agree with one side of a contradiction on one issue and another side for another, renders the "good book" practically meaningless and positively unhelpful as a guide for life. But that's just me thinking out loud.
Things finally got interesting when we headed for our group discussion, which was, of course, intended to be based around the course theme for the evening about prayer, but which soon flew off on a tangent of it's own. We began by talking about why we might pray, what different reasons we may have for doing so. A list was quickly rattled off: as a plea for help; as a way of giving thanks; to repent of any sins we may have, etc. And then somebody mentioned 'as a way of giving praise'. An interesting suggestion, which prompted our group leader to point out a "good example" of this within the Bible, directing us to look up Psalm 139 and inviting us to read aloud a few lines each.
Big mistake!!
Read it here, and imagine, if you will, a dividing line between verses 18 and 19. See what you think.
OK, read it? Good.
Did the change of tone strike you as a little strange? What had begun as a reasonably pleasant talk about the wonder of God suddenly seemed to take a rather vitriolic twist. I was rather taken aback by this talk of killing and hatred and, when the group began commenting on how the Psalm was a wonderful example of reflecting on the majesty and greatness of the Lord's infinite knowledge, I had to speak up and comment on this. What was all that about at the end? Martin seemed equally struck by this and we felt almost embarressed to point out that these don't seem like the actions of an all-loving being - to hate and to kill, particularly after what the vicar had said to us just a few minutes previously. I didn't want to be the one to bring these things up, but I was shocked at the the way that these words were so easily brushed aside and ignored in favour of the earlier lines, particularly in the last of last week's session where we were informed that the Bible was the word of God. Don't the final verses carry just as much weight as the earlier ones?
The Psalms, we are told, were mostly written by David. I ask "is this David, as in King David?" She answers, yes. "As in King David, who's blood line is said to run down to Joseph...?" She cuts me off at this point, "Down to Jesus, yes.**"
This is a man held in very high esteem in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and yet he says such hateful things? I lay off a little, because I really know very little about King David, and such words are a forgivable human weakness. We all have occasional bad thoughts. What matters is how we act upon them, and so long as he acted as a good man, then I won't be too hard on him. Besides, seeing the Bible as I do in that it's not the word of God but actually written by people, these kinds of things are to be expected.
But the the group leader offers to tell us a little more about King David and, keen to fill the gaps in my knowledge, I gladly ask to learn more.
It seems that he certainly did do some good things, so that's fine, good for him. She then told the story of David and Goliath. Here, David kills Goliath, breaking God's sixth commandment, but no reasonable person would condemn David for taking the life of a man who was a very real threat to not only him but to all of his people. The killing of Goliath was an unavoidable act of self-defense which, though still sad in the way that it came about, I feel is justifiable.
But then we're told of the story where David was lounging on the roof of his palace one day (as you do) when he saw a woman, Bathsheba, taking a bath and desired her. Bathsheba, however, was married to Uriah, though this didn't seem a problem to David, who made her pregnant anyway. As a way of concealing this from her husband (who was serving under David in the army at the time), he summoned him home in the hope that he and Bathsheba would have sex so that he would assume the child was really his. Uriah, however, would not do this since it was against the rules about soldiers in active service. So instead, David arranged to have him killed. Once he was dead, the then married Bathsheba himself.
I have to ask, what do you expect us to think of this? So the great King David was a coveting, adulterous murderer? At no point did either Martin or myself become rude or pointed in our questions, but... are you serious?? The discussion became very much more animated from here on in as we were told more and more appalling things about this man, who one of the attendees described as "quite a colourful character" which I took to mean "he killed a lot more people than this."
None of us are perfect, sure, but if I had to list my own crimes, I'd struggle to find anything more severe than perhaps making the occasional illegal copy of a friend's CD. And yet these are the great men of the Bible.
Mark Twain once said "Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and that man can sleep till noon." His point? We tend to judge people's actions by their reputations rather than their reputations by their actions. And that's exactly what's happening here. Don't fall for it!!
Yet despite such a confrontational end, I left feeling exhilirated! I'd finally found my voice, and when it got to issues of morality, I just couldn't hold it in any longer. I'll definitely be back next week.
* Most, thankfully, at least in the western world.
** Actually, Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38 both give different genealogies of Jesus that go back through Joseph, all the way back to King David. The problem here should be obvious: Mary was supposed to be a virgin. Therefore, Jesus wasn't a descendant of King David at all, since he wasn't Joseph's biological son. According to prophecy, the Messiah would be a descendant of David. Unless Mary was also a descendant of David (and nowhere is this recorded) then that part of the prophecy is unfulfilled, meaning that Jesus cannot be the prophesised Messiah. Though without Mary's bloodline available, we will never know.
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