The Alpha Course - Session 1: Who is Jesus?

Well imagine my dismay at learning, on my arrival, that there was an "Introductory Session" last week entitled "Is There More To Life Than This?" It turns out, I'm a week late.

Ah fuck it, I'm here for the meat of it, so let's see what it has to offer.

Sitting in my parked car outside the church, I felt very nervous. If I was going to be intellectually honest here, I would be sure to rock the boat and, while it's no secret that I have a... hmm... I don't think 'contempt' would be too strong a word... for religion, I do have a very strong sense of love for people. I empathise very easily and I know that when my turn comes to ask questions, I may offend people or not be true to myself. The latter of those two choices was, to be honest, simply not an option. So in we go.

It almost makes matters worse when you step through the door and are instantly greeted by overwhelming friendliness from the course coordinaters A very enthusiastic man writes "Blake" on a sticky label for me to attach to the front of my shirt, and the next person I meet instantly refers to me by name as though we've been old friends for years. We've never spoken before.

It's kinda nice, but I feel undeniably awkward. I'm then shown into the "dining area" where food will be served shortly, and we're sat at tables amongst a group of people we've never met, though we all have name badges. Conversation flows relatively easily and the food is delicious.
My personal sense of uneasiness comes from my unwillingness to ask the question of others around me "So why are you here for the Alpha Course?" I don't want to find out just yet who is a skeptic like me, and who leans more towards belief. I'm also somewhat unwilling to reveal my own personal motive for taking part. We'll let that reveal itself as the course progresses.

After dinner we move to a room where all the seats are in rows, very much like a church set-up. The first speaker begins with his talk entitled "Who Is Jesus?"
I'm instantly struck by the framing of the question: present tense. Who is Jesus? Is? Don't you mean was?
I have no problem accepting the possibility that Jesus really lived about 2,000 years ago. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But by placing the word "is" in the sentence implies an unquestioned underlying assumption that has yet to be proved: Jesus is still alive.
This course, as far as I understand it, is designed to bring agnostics to faith. You can't, therefore expect the people you are preaching to to begin with the assumption that what you're trying to demonstrate is true.
I let that slide, because the first word that the speaker says that catches my ear is "evidence". OK, now we're getting somewhere... what is this evidence? He reads a quote from Josephus, a Jewish historian from the time, who spoke of Jesus living and being "The Christ".
OK, that's fine. I'm not quite sure what that means, but OK. This doesn't cement it for me, there are too many questions about the reliability of the writings that go unanswered for a start, but even if we accept that Jesus did exist, it goes no way towards evidence for his divinity.

Am I getting tedious?

I certainly wasn't being tedious at the time. As he spoke, I sat and listened with the rest of the people gathered. Occasionally, I was a little bugged by the inanity of the statements he made, drifting off every now and then, but I went along with it. Give the man a chance to speak.

Now, he asks... how reliable are the written accounts of what happened at the time?
One inappropriate method of demonstrating the readiness of historians to believe the accounts of some historical documents and not others was by comparing the written accounts of the life of Jesus with written accounts of other historical events, such as Caesar's Gallic War from around 60-50BCE. The earliest known copy we have of original documents dates to around 900CE - a time lapse of nearly 1,000 years! Yet the earliest copies we have of the New Testament date from around 130CE, less than 100 years after they were originally written. This, he suggests, implies that these accounts are probably more accurate since there has been less time for them to be distorted.

If we ignore the fact that, in the modern world, we see every single day examples of the details of events being drastically distorted by the media within minutes of the events actually happening, there is a more important distinction between the subject matter of the reported events. Wars, as we know, happen. There is a great deal of corroborating physical evidence supporting the theory that Caesar's Gallic War took place. We don't claim to know much detail about it, but it's certainly feasible. What we don't see on a daily basis, around the world, is virgins giving birth, people turning water into wine, people coming back from the dead etc. Are we supposed to just accept it because a book says so? Josephus, as it happens, doesn't speak of Jesus the son of a virgin, or Jesus the miracle healer of the sick, but of Jesus the person. Probably just a person who lived and died like the rest of us.

I'm ranting now. Moving on.

Then came our first "group session". We separated into small groups containing about eight Alpha Course attendees and one coordinater and helper to further discuss the question "Who is Jesus?" (Oh boy!)

Introductions are made and we go through a short ice-breaker (What would you save from your house if it was on fire?) question session. Next, we're asked about any experiences we may have had that might have led us to look into joining the Alpha Course. One woman describes an experience where a friend of hers described seeing the ghost of her grandfather on the night that her grandmother was dying. Another guy describes an out of body experience he had when he was younger. I can understand why these people are moved by these experiences, but these are all subjects that I've encountered from my layman's study of psychology. I'm unmoved.
Next we hear from a girl who describes a truly horrific childhood, which is upsetting to listen to. She's a very passionate Christian already (so I'm not sure why she's here, but I guess we all have our own reasons and maybe we'll find out as the sessions go on) and says that she feels her faith has helped her move through all that. It's a truly sad moment that makes me consider my own position: I've had a pretty comfortable upbringing, a loving family, good friends and no fear of abuse or living in desolation. How can I identify with somebody who's gone through this. Surely that's gotta affect your perception of things, but who's to say whether it has a distorting effect, or that it forces you to find clarity?

I don't volunteer to talk about why I'm taking part in the course.

The final section addresses a specific passage in the Bible.

Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." - John 6:35

We're asked to discuss what we think Jesus meant when he said this. People offer all kinds of their own interpretations.
"Jesus meant that belief in him is like food for the soul."
"We need bread, or food, every day to survive. We can't just eat bread once, because after that we starve. Jesus is saying that to gain eternal life, we have to have a relationship with him every day."
"Just as bread can satisfy our hunger, Jesus can satisfy our hunger for love."

It's at this point that the course coordinater decides that I've been silent for too long, and directs the question squarely at me. Time for the discussion to take another twist.

"As far as I can see," I say, "it seems that as we sit here discussing what Jesus meant in these words, we can come up with countless 'theories' about what he's getting at. And for some reason, even when the meanings are contrary to each other, we nod in agreement to every statement. I could now say anything about what I think he meant by this. But this would tell you nothing about Jesus, it would only tell you something about me, about the way that I think. The statement is so metaphorical that it becomes meaningless."

"Then what would you say if a friend of yours," she asks me, "came to you one day and said 'I am the bread of life.'"

This seems utterly irrelevant. "Well, that would raise certain issues: firstly, it would plainly demonstrate that it doesn't take a divine being to be able to make statements like this. Secondly, if a friend said this to me, I would be in a position to ask directly 'What do you mean? Explain yourself.' I can't do this with Jesus. His words are so ambiguous that without any further explanation we can get nothing from them about his intended meaning. We can only get our own meaning from them. So why do we need Jesus?"

The coordinator then tries to draw an analogy by asking us all to look at a chair. We can all see it from slightly different angles, some of us see the left of it, some see the right, others see the front. "If we each describe what we can see of the chair, none of us are wrong, we just see things from a different point of view." Everybody nods in agreement.
I spot the logical fallacy instantly. "There's a big problem with that analogy. This chair is passive. It's just there, being a chair. It's not trying to communicate with us, it's not trying to express a point. My point of view of it is just as valid as anybody else's. The way I see it can't be 'wrong', as such. But if Jesus is trying to say something specific in his metaphor - and there's no way for us to discern whether his message was meant to be either specific or vague - then my understanding can very much be wrong. That's not a very useful analogy."

OK, let's step it up a gear...

"Not only that," I continue, "but what we're reading here is John's account of what Jesus said. Words written from John's memory, more than likely written long after Jesus' death. Is it not possible that he may have misremembered the exact words Jesus used? Maybe Jesus did say something about the bread of life, but the wording may be fudged slightly. If we're supposed to infer from this that Jesus was the son of God, then that's a staggering warping of logic."


Now to hit you with an extra little thing to think about... I'm writing about things that I said. But is this exactly, word for word, what I said when we were there? No, of course not. I'm remembering some things but not others. How often can you remember exactly what was said in conversations you've had?

Yet somehow, a written account from a third party is supposed to be undeniable evidence that Jesus did all his miracles and now we're all going to be looked after by God in the sky forever and ever, Amen?

Holy shit! You can take that literally.


Next week: Why Did Jesus Die?