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12 Oct 2007 Alpha Course: Week 2
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This week I was in a better mood than last, got me some dinner and dessert. So maybe this week I'd be more receptive to the Christian message.
Session 2 was entitled “Why Did Jesus Die?”. Despite my initial thoughts it wasn't just because he was a trouble-maker for the Romans. The point was that he would take on all of mankind's sin and to be sacrificed to God so that everyone would be forgiven. Just like the sacrificial livestock people used to do.
The speaker of the night spoke to us after the meal. He covered various ideas including:
- Everybody has sinful, negative thoughts (like lust, greed, depression, etc)
- People can be addicted to negative and sinful thoughts and action (which I agree with, sometimes it feels good to be bad).
- God is love
- He told the story of a man who was a self-destructive alcoholic. One day he looked in the mirror and said “I hate myself, don't want to be like this anymore”. So he went to the church, accepted Jesus Christ into his life and became a new man.
- People feel good when they confess to God about their sins.
- God offers eternal life. However there are people who don't necessarily want that gift. I know one Christian who finds that idea quite intimidating.
The speaker talked about how people have been brought to their knee screaming to the ceiling, confessing to God and asking for forgiveness. This act would bring them great joy afterwards, even to the sceptics. One answer I can come with about this is because it simply feels good to confess. It removes a great weight off their shoulders. Everyone also has a strong urge and desire to feel forgiven, wanted and loved. My argument in this case is people can get this sensation by confessing to anyone, anything, or even to themselves and still get that feel good feeling. They don't need to confess to God.
One of my other criticism was the story of the guy that used religion. I saw it like he was using it as a crutch when in actual fact he shouldn't need to. It's a sign of weakness. I ranted about this in the discussion group, but towards the end I realised that there's no negative reason to use something for motivation whether it be from a person, a pet, an object, or even a religion. So that was a bad argument on my end. I think that having belief is good. It gives people strength and motivation.
I mentioned the idea of 'Cut and Paste' religion, where people can take parts of various religions that they liked and paste it into one religion that they follow. I got funny looks from the rest of the group members. I also mentioned a theory that a friend of mine had. Jesus Christ might not have been the Son of God but in fact an ordinary man that knew Reiki, hence his abilities to heal. I got funny looks from the rest of the group members.
During the group conversation my mind began to wonder about God's love. God has parental love for all His children, like a parent has love for their children. One could argue that He has a biological drive to love His children, whether if He actually wanted to or not.
I left that night feeling like there has no boundaries when being a Christian, not rules or guidelines. To me that would mean that everyone could be mean and cause chaos and anarchy and still go up to Heaven so long as they believe in Jesus Christ and what he did for all of us. The only thing that would be stopping us from chaos is our own conscious.
Some of us don't even have a conscious. And yet they can get Heavenly goodness at the end.
Where's the justice in that?
Posted at: 13:15 PM
Your Thoughts
Princess said on Monday 22nd of October 2007 at 06:09:18 PM
It's because we love Jesus that we don't do all that stuff that in theory we *could* do. And when we become christians God gives us his Holy Spirit to be our conscience, so not having one is irrelevent.