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15 Dec 2007 Alpha Course: Week 7

[Alpha] This week session is entitled “How can I resist evil?”. In a world of evil and corrupting things, Christian faith seems to have a way of helping people defending themselves. But is it easy? How effective is it?

The minister talked about how Christians are in a constant battle against the forces of evil. It's not just a figure of speech, the threats are real. Christians have to resists against:

The ministers shared with us his personal experience in life where one of these three things might have affect the outcome in the situation. He gave an example of a man getting a flat tyre it may have been influenced by one of these three things, the sin of sloth made you lazy enough not to check, the mechanic (aka the world) might have done a bad job on the tyre, the devil would do something that I can't remember what the minister said.

However all is not lost. God is here to help the Christian believer fend off against evil. He give Christians the strength to fend off evil and a Christian is compelled to be righteous and do righteous things, instead of doing unrighteous things.
The minister gave us an analogy of this righteous/unrighteous scenario. He compared the unrighteous path to being like Sainburys (ie supposedly in a negative light) whilst the righteous path was like Tesco (ie supposedly in a positive light). At that point I screamed out “Oh God no! You poor thing”. I could help myself. I felt like it was a poor comparison. It was as if was claiming that God was his huge monopolizing entity that spammed the market with lots of cheap stuff and didn't stock the things you actually wanted but instead force you to buy the mass stuff they have for the masses.

Come to think of it....

No, that joke is far too easy to make.

Let's move on shall we?

The minister spoke of the devil's tactics, ways of destroying the church and corrupting people, including:

However the minister claimed that despite all these tricks and tactics the devil uses he needs to get permission from God to be able to do them. God has complete control of the situation. Now understandably this raises some interesting and difficult questions, like “What the fuck?”

One thing did come up that I thought was quite hypocritical. To act upon a sin is obviously a naughty thing to do. And apparently to think and play out the sin in your mind is just as bad. But simply being tempted is not a sin in itself, so that's alright. My problem is when does it stop being just a simple temptation thought and starts being a sinful thought. Does that mean we have to spend our whole lives thinking only sterile thoughts?

The minister concluded that Christians are at a constant battle against evil until the second coming of Jesus Christ. But this provided an interesting conundrum in the discussion groups. How can we resist fighting and be all soldier like, which can be an evil thing, and yet defends ourselves? The two don't seem to go together. But then again it is more like self defence, which is not an aggressive thing.

The other question that arose was why there was actual evil in the world. Why does God allow evil in the world when a world without evil would be great. A couple people in the group even admitted that they would love to live in a world of pure goodness. I think however that evil is needed for a balance, like ying and yang. After all how can you have a measure of good, appreciate the value of good without the bad to compare it to? Besides, human beings are suckers for conflict.

I didn't enjoy this session that much because, unlike last week, I felt it was a bit too biblical and kinda relied on you having a belief in the religion. It didn't really seem like it could be applied to non-Christian ways of thinking, at least the way it was all phrased didn't seem so. Whilst there are some pretty horrific things that occur in the world, like high school killings in America and dictators like Hitler (was he fully evil?), it's probably due to the fact that these people are just not wired up like the rest of society and not due to some external evil.

Then again isn't it said that the greatest trick that the devil has achieved is convincing the world that he does not exist? After all, none of the people in my group have seen him, and most of them are Christians.

Posted at: 20:24 PM

Your Thoughts

ELYSE said on Friday 21st of December 2007 at 06:35:13 PM

Gravatar If the devil has to ask for God's permission to perform his naughtiness, then I say I'm doing God's will by being naughty. LOL! Ugh. I don't know how you do it. I wouldn't be able to put up with such nonsense. And you're completely right about ying and yang. Without evil, how could good be... good? What a bland world that would be!

Rachel North said on Sunday 23rd of December 2007 at 02:35:00 PM

Gravatar Nonsense is quite strong. As a qualified RE teacher I can study and respect the beliefs of others even if I don't agree with them. I can seek to understand why they believe different things and how it makes a difference in their lives, and whether there may be truth in it. This is what Grax is doing on the Alpha course... seeking to understand what Christians believe and asking questions to assess whether there is any truth in it. You could tell me your theories about the world and the meaning of existence, and I'm sure you would want me to listen and be respectful of the things that 'make you tick'. How would you feel if i was to say, "I can't put up with listening to such nonsense"? Because in the end, none of us can *prove* what we believe to be true, and since, then, all of us are on equal footing, we should listen to each other and honestly respect each others beliefs. I don't mean to give a lecture, it's just I feel those of us who have, on the strength of what we believe to be evidence, accepted Christianity as being true, seem to be expected to take a lot of grief about what we believe. I'm not stupid or brainwashed as some would like to think, I'm of average intelligence with a degree in theology form a secular university that taught us how to assess beliefs and question spirituality, and on that basis I have found Christianity to be true. I'm happy for people not to agree, but if everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, which they are, those beliefs should be respected as the thing you give your life to, whether that be Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or any other religion, or indeed none. *All* our opinions are valid

ELYSE said on Sunday 23rd of December 2007 at 03:33:46 PM

Gravatar In all honesty, I wouldn't care if you called my beliefs nonsense because all beliefs are nonsense. That's why they are beliefs - they aren't facts. Facts have evidence. Beliefs take faith. Faith takes the ability to ignore logic. There are two reasons for my choice of words. The first reason I call the information given in this particular entry "nonsense" is because, from the way my Graxy made it sound, the minister was trying to pass these beliefs off as fact. Perhaps I read it wrong. Perhaps I wasn't given the full information. Or perhaps my past experiences with Christianity created a biased opinion. Whatever the case, scrutinizing my choice of words doesn't change my opinion. The second reason I called it "nonsense" was because I was Christian once, and I studied Christianity. I hope this will allow you to give me a little more credence than you did based on my first comment. Based on what I was taught, what I learned, and what I have learned since, I have formed this opinion. To say I don't respect the opinions of others is quite judgmental itself. I respect the beliefs of Christians, but, being as I was once one myself and know both sides, I still find their beliefs to be nonsense.

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