The Alpha course I'm doing is having a two week break right now but in the last session I found myself writing notes to my wife, kind of like two naughty kids in high school. Although not particularly respectful it is just a video and the video does take up a huge chunk of time in the Alpha format and I was bored. While alpha is not my cup of tea many people in the group seem to love it. None the less I have recently heard of someone who struggled with the underlying "your a really horrible sinner who needs to ask for forgiveness" message that she got from the course. As much as I know that advocates of the course would say there is more than just that. I think this is still the basic starting point of the Alpha message.
My guess is that for many people who just don't feel like they are horrible sinners, it's not that they are arrogant and would not claim to be perfect. If they were to be put on a scale with Mother Teresa at one end and Hitler at the other even if they put themselves in the middle they would definitely want to be more like Mother Teressa than Hitler. Further more to the best of their ability they are trying to do that. Sometimes Xns have responded by saying things like perfection is like jumping off the Sydney harbor bridge to reach New Zealand no matter how hard you try your always going to fail. Leaving many people feeling like God makes us failures and then damns us for being so and expects us to come crawling back to him grovelling for forgiveness. And, they find it hard to square that with a loving God.
Perhaps it's time to start reframing things. I feel like I'm sounding like a broken record having posted about this a lot before (It's time to Substitute Substitution,A New Analogy for Atonement?, Why did Jesus die? Part 1, Why did Jesus die? Part 2, Relooking at Sin and God is just like the Gestapo?) I feel there is something about the way that Xns often communicate the brokenness of our world and our broken relationship with God that stops people from becoming Xns and it is far more than people's ability to realise their own imperfections and brokenness (sinfulness). Maybe it's as simple as we are asking people to consider themselves as "filthy rags" when they see themselves merely as "flawed creations of God".
Perhaps it's time to start reframing things. I feel like I'm sounding like a broken record having posted about this a lot before (It's time to Substitute Substitution,A New Analogy for Atonement?, Why did Jesus die? Part 1, Why did Jesus die? Part 2, Relooking at Sin and God is just like the Gestapo?) I feel there is something about the way that Xns often communicate the brokenness of our world and our broken relationship with God that stops people from becoming Xns and it is far more than people's ability to realise their own imperfections and brokenness (sinfulness). Maybe it's as simple as we are asking people to consider themselves as "filthy rags" when they see themselves merely as "flawed creations of God".
8 comments:
I can understand why Alpha is popular: dinner together and close-knit groups exploring questions of faith has almost become the most popular way to do evangelism, avoiding the confrontation that has commonly gone along with the 'e' word. However, after a couple of sessions I began to feel like this was simply another 'modern' approach, as it revolved around proving Xty to be true. Is it about bringing people to faith in Christ, or to a certain type of belief? I actually left a church largely due to its heavy emphasis on Alpha, which I could no longer support due to my theological shift (funnily enough, influenced by the kind of thoughts found on this blog!) I fear that Alpha does not support an inclusive approach to Xty.
Thanks for the comment Gary. At the moment I feel there is something about that kinds of slims down Xy to an easily digestible modernistic package. Which is not too bad if you are that way inclined but does tend to leave out huge chunks of what, to me, makes Xy so rich and vibrant.
I agree that the food and small group atmosphere of Alpha creates an attractional setting. My feeling though is that it does little to prove Xty to be true to the mind and instead into the practice of faith. (I find that Alpha moves way to fast and that the Y Course is a better presentation for unchurched post moderns)
Only the first session of Alpha looks at the historicity of the Bible and Jesus and the rest focuses on the "practice" of Christianity - bible reading, prayer, etc. My feeling is that it gives an inside look at what it means to follow Jesus (from a churchianity perspective) and then invites people to be assimilated in. The effect is it takes the mystique out of the church and invites people to check it out.
Personally I think it probably works best in churched cultures or with churched people at least. Also for people who are new Christians it makes a basic discipleship course. A friend who is currently doing it is finding it really helpful, so all I can do is thank God that the fruit of this course is people becoming followers of Jesus. :-)
As for emphasising that we are horrible sinners, I don't feel such condemnation from the course!?!??
Hello Mark, Thanks for commenting! As I said in the original post "many people in the group seem to love it" which probably says more about me than the course itself! The "don't think you’re a horrible sinner" idea came from the experience of a couple of people I know of who have done the course, and what they got from the course rather quotes from the course. I think that it's perhaps one of those underlying themes where those people who see themselves as sinner s needing salvation tend to gloss over this where as those who don't tend to get stuck on it. Does that make sense? So one of my worries is that (for these people at least) they needed to be convinced about there own sinfulness first rather than God's love first.
Does that make sense?
Actually the Bible does say some people are blameless.
Luke 1
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly.
I have a load of fun watching Christians say that Elizabeth and Zechariah should still be blamed for something , even though the Bible claims that they obeyed *all* the Lord's commandments *blamelessly*.
Presumably they should be blamed for disobeying commandments they had not heard about.
What should I feel guilty about?
Because I sometimes am tempted to call some religious leaders 'hypocrite', 'brood of vipers', 'blind fools'?
Is there anything wrong with that?
Most people are pretty decent. Why should they go to Hell, just because they do not obey all of Jesus's commands, such as Jesus command to put oil on your head while fasting?
Hi Steven,
Errrm... I don't think I was talking about no one being blameless. None the less Job too is described as blameless and he makes sacrifices for his sins. So maybe there is a difference between blameless and sinless? I think some of your examples show how meaningless and petty things can get when we put everything in a legalistic framwork of sin and payment for sin rather than a relationship frame work.
Blameless and sinless are pretty much the same in the Bible.
I don't understand your last comment. Does it mean people without a relationship ith God are , by definition, sinless?
Hey Steve, I'd say you're right I'm not sure why I said that about blameless and sinless. None the less I wonder if there is a difference between being blameless in the eyes of humanity (including religous law watching type people) and God, who can be in the habbit of putting our transgressions as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12) and remembering our sin no more (Jer 31:34)
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