On Doubt

In the Alpha Course and weekend retreat, there was quite a bit of discussion on the role of doubt in Christianity (namely, there should be NONE, and any doubt is Satan trying to mess you up). I've tried many times to get Christians (including my wife) to understand the positive power of doubt. I've mainly failed, but it's worth a try.

Along those line, here is an excellent post by Akusai of Action Skeptics explaining exactly how important doubt is to a healthy human mind.

Alpha Retreat Sermon 4: How Can I Make the Most of the Rest of My Life?

This was the last sermon of the Alpha Retreat and it's also the last sermon recap I'll post for my Alpha Course series. Short and sweet.

So, Mr. Gumbel, what should we do with the rest of our lives? Gumbel starts by saying that we should break with the past and make a new start. We do this by no longer conforming to the pattern of the world.

Specifically he says the first thing is to be nice to people and be positive. Strangely, though, the second most important thing he mentions (and the one he spends the greater amount of time on) is to follow biblical sexual morality. Gumbel said that he's never heard of anyone saying "I wish I hadn't waited for my wedding night."

Obviously, he's been talking to the wrong people.

So how do we make the change to being anti real world? According to Gumbel, it's an act of will that requires sacrifice. We need to turn our whole bodies (our eyes, ears, mouths, hands - not to mention our noses, throats, and pancreases) over to God. We have to give him our sexuality ('natch), our time, our ambitions, and our money ('natch).

We do this because God has planned for our future and he loves us and has done a tremendous amount of sacrificing for us and is merciful. Gumbel reiterates that God loves us even more than any parent loves their children. Which is of course why he wants our money. Damn freeloading uberparents.

And that's it. All purpose and meaning in life boils down to believing in God; following a combination of vague, anal, and nitpicky rules given to you by your clergy because you think that means loving God; and letting the Holy Spirit guide your actions and thoughts.

Of course, by this point you know my opinion of all this, as it's getting more and more obvious the more immersed I'm getting into the culture. This is the mental equivalent of putting on a blindfold and running at top speed into a forest full of trees.

The session ended with the church elder (yes, the one I had the fight with) leading a very emotionally draining and heartfelt prayer along the lines of what Gumbel mentioned about giving over control of everything in your life to God. He talked about how he lost much in his life (career, money, etc.) and his trust in God pulled him through. He lead the group in pledging that they would turn over everything to God, going into excruciating detail into the body parts being listing (I can't remember if he turned over his fingernails to God, but it wouldn't have surprised me - it was a detailed list). He also pledged his family, his work, his house, his hopes, etc. There were a lot of tightly closed eyes and lots and lots of tears from the congregation. I just sat and observed.

Alpha Course Day 11: What About the Church?

You know, one of the problems with being crazy busy at work is that you don't get a chance to finish up what you've been writing about on your blog. This leads to over half a year passing since the last post in the Alpha series. This leads to the unfortunate fact that I can't recall all the details anymore, and by this point when I was taking the classes my enthusiasm had dropped-off tremendously so I was taking less detailed notes. Apologies. I'll do my best.

This sermon was the last official session that we held. The last sermon in the course manual is "How Can I Make the Most of the Rest of My Life," which we did at the end of the Alpha Retreat. The final day of this fall's Alpha Course was the Christmas dinner, which had the same generic Christmas sermon that I've mentioned before.

Dinner: You know, I can't remember. Usually, I wrote down what dinner was. This day I neglected to do so.

Part 1: Sermon

I think this sermon wasn't so much a discussion or an argument for a particular point of view. Alpha is in large part a tune-up for Christians and a bootcamp for new Christians, so in that way, this sermon can be viewed as a briefing for leaving the course and joining the active Christian community, which, as Gumbel emphasizes at the beginning of this sermon, is what 'church' in the broader context means. Of course, he just can't come out and say that, he has to drone on for about 20 minutes to do so. (Actually, I might be being harsh on him for this. I went to a Catholic highschool and the point that 'church' was the whole community of people - not the building or the services or the clergy - was drilled into me incessantly, so this is old hat for me but might be new for some people.)

At least Gumbel started off with a good joke. A quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "If all the people who well asleep in church were laid-out end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable."

Gumbel talked a bit about baptism, how it was "a visible mark of being a member of the church," though how a temporary activity can be a 'visible mark' is beyond me. He also said that baptism signifies "cleansing from sin," "incorporation into Christ's death," and "sealing of the Spirit," among other collections of words that don't really make any sense when strung together in sentence form.

He said that there were about 1.9 billion Christians in the world today (I don't know if he includes Mormons, Catholics, etc., and it's hard to tell what to do with people who pay lip-service to being Christian, but as far as I know the number is in the generally accepted ballpark). He mentioned how the church is growing in the developing world while in the civilized west it's shrinking. Told of 3 Ugandan missionaries who came to Gumbel's university (Cambridge) to convert the English heathens. Disappointingly, he did not address why large numbers of people in the civilized world were letting go of God. He just wanted us to be more like the Ugandans.

The middle of sermon just talked of trivial things like how the church provides local communities with small tight groups that provide support of people, or is the center of celebration services, or that the church is a mechanism for bonding the community into a 'family.'

Gumbel does mention in passing that there are a lot of denominations and sects. He calls this disunity 'absurd' as there is only "one spirit." "The church has split for every conceivable reason, and every inconceivable reason, too." Again, when a problem is encountered, he brings it up but just says something to the effect of "we really should be better," says something humourous and proceeds on his way, never caring about it again. Understandable given his goals, but disappointing from my perspective.

By this point, Gumbel was talking about how the church was "a Holy Temple, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus as the cornerstone and indwelt by God's Spirit." Which is another way for me to say that at this point I nodded-off for a while.

Then he said something creepy about the church being "the Bride of Christ" and I woke up. Seriously, what's with all these churchmen wanting to marry Jesus?

Part 2: Small Groups

Discussion time was cut short by a short talk from a "special guest," who had been much hyped before dinner. He turned out to be the church's small groups pastor. Which surprised absolutely no one. Especially since we had noticed him lurking outside in the hallway. He mainly talked about opportunities in the church, what services they provide, etc.

The real discussion just focused on the feelings of each person in our small group regarding what they learned/realized/found important in the course re: Christianity/the church/themselves. Surprisingly shallow actually, again all regarding feelings, or blanket statements about how important it was to love God and let him control your life. When pressed, I said I learned that Christians cry a lot. Seriously, that was the best thing I could say; everything else I learned was more negative than that.

I'm very glad the course is almost done.

Alpha Course Day 10: Does God Heal Today?

Dinner: Really really mild chili, to which I added a lot of crushed chilies. Side salad. Coffee cake. Pretty plain day for food, actually. At least it was edible.

Part 1: Sermon

Gumbel starts with a long story about a powerful session of faith healing at his church in Brompton. An American preacher named John Wimber came in. He was loud and boisterous and un-British; Gumbel claimed to be suspicious of him, as he was too obnoxious for the restrained British types in the church.

Google searching reveals nothing substantial in the way of skeptical criticism of Wimber's healing act. No allegations he's like Peter Popoff. That isn't to say that there isn't any criticism of Wimber, but all of it is from other Christians who disagree with some or all of his hyper-charismatic views (calling him a charlatan and a blasphemer). From their articles, I can't really tell if they think Wimber's manifestations of the gifts of the spirit (ie. healings) are real (but demonic) or phony.

Of course, it can be very hard to debunk the specifics of each claim when the faith healers themselves, who claim to help heal thousands of people, tend to avoid giving out names and dates. The fact is, even many Christians have seen Wimber in action and have not been impressed.

Some (who are also critical of Alpha) attack Wimber for being too influenced by the New Age movement.

If you have 30 minutes, here's a video of John Wimber in action. Action starts at around 2:50. Note his use of "words of knowledge," which are what Wimber calls the supernatural epiphanies he receives from God regarding each ailment in the audience: pictures, sympathy pain, words, etc.

Anyway, Wimber was also, in his pre-ministry career, a producer and occasional keyboardist for the Righteous Brothers, who went on to record a few songs that made it to the soundtrack of the movie Ghost. Food for thought.

Importantly, Gumbel's accounts of the healings were like a damned infomercial. First is the disclaimer: man is healed mainly through modern medicine, in fact, nearly all healings are due to medicine. There are very few miracles, he says, and that, when you pray for healing, healing doesn't always - or even usually - happen. Only then does Gumbel go on to talk about his parish's experiences with Wimber, and how in every case, he was able to both identify and heal - Every. Single. Ailment. - in the room. It's almost sickening.

After this long sales pitch, Gumbel goes to explain that healing is in the bible both in the Old Testament and the New.

The New is where most of the focus is. Apparently, 25% of the Gospels focus on Jesus's healing works. There is also mention that much of the time healing is preceded by anointing the sick with olive oil. What is that about? Does God need someone to be greasy in order to heal them? Kind of nonsensical. Anyway, Gumbel also explains that when we pray for healing it is not us that heals the sick, it is God. So this comes right back to the silliness of praying for a specific outcome: either God's a dick who wants you to beg, or your prayer isn't really doing anything since God's going to heal or not heal depending on his wishes, not yours.

Gumbel explained that until the redemption of our bodies after the 2nd coming of Jesus, not everyone will be healed. Right now, God's just teasing us with only occasional healing. This segment of the sermon was full of fanciful descriptions of how wonderful everything will be once Jesus returns.

Even the work of modern faith healers are held to be biblically supported, as the disciples are commanded by Jesus to go out and heal. There are a couple of funny implications to this. First, the bible makes it seem that healing is almost guaranteed if the prayer is righteous enough. So any real pastor of disciple should be able to heal a consistently high percentage of the time, not this rare healing stuff. Secondly, the bible says that the healing of the sick is intended by God to be evidence of his power and the coming of the Kingdom of God. If healing as supposed to be evidence for the skeptical, then why aren't scientific studies into the effectiveness of prayer healing effective?

He also says that if you pray and the victim is not healed it's not due to you having not enough faith, despite what the bible implies. He finishes with an odd call to persevere: “The reason I go on praying is not so much that I've seen masses of people healed, but because Jesus commanded us to do it. And that's why I would go on doing it even if NO ONE was healed”

I guess the theme of today's sermon is 'mixed messages.'

Part 2: NOT Small Groups

There was no small groups time after this sermon. Instead, there was a special healing session. Lights were turned low and some crappy Christian soft pop music was put on in the background. Little enclosures (resourcefully made out of cubicle walls and dividers) were set up. The group leaders each sat behind each one and every person who wanted to be prayed over due to an ailment could go join one of the group leaders within the enclosure and pray about their ailment. Many people, I'd hazard a guess of about 60%, partook in the private healing sessions, including my wife for a minor skin ailment.

The next week, no one came running in proclaiming that they were healed. I know my wife's problems haven't improved at all.

I'm not surprised.

Confession: I LIKED Passion of the Christ

The post I did the other day on Christianity, torture, and crucifixion got me thinking about Mel Gibson's snuff film, The Passion of the Christ.

My wife made me go with her to watch it when it was released a few years back. I wasn't keen, but I wasn't too unhappy. I was curious, and I went in with low expectations (Low expectations are key; with low enough expectations, you can go into the crappy Matthew Broderick Godzilla movie and come out not satisfied).

And it turned out that I quite liked it. Why?

First, there were no trailers or ads. I hate those, there were none, so I was happy. Production values were decent, so that's a plus, too.

But more importantly, by treating it not as a serious spiritual experience¹ but as a dark comedy, I had a great time.

For instance, for those of you who haven't seen The Passion but have seen the Simpsons episode where Ned starts making hyper-realistic biblical films, it's EXACTLY like that. Completely hyperviolent. The devil is covered in hyper-creepy-crawly things. It's great fun.

When Pontius Pilate offered Barabas to the mob to try to get them to pardon Jesus and they all chose to kill Jesus anyway, he had this wonderful "what the hell are you idiots smoking?" look on his face that was comedy gold. Not as good as Biggus Dickus, but still good.

It was funny in a cute way when Jesus was having a flashback to making a tall modern table. His mom was so confused.

When the Roman soldiers where nailing Jesus to the cross, one soldier complained that the other was doing a crappy job, gave him the boot and took over. (Sounds like my mom.) Still funny.

And of course, the torture was fun, too.

I'm messed up. But it was great. I laughed out loud several times. The rest of the audience probably thought I was nuts.

And, because it was mainly a snuff film, despite the subject matter, there was hardly any religious content.

I would not protest too much if I had to see it again.

¹ Some of my Alpha Course group members were discussing it and saying how "spiritually uplifting" it was. I'm messed up for thinking torture is funny, but they're even more messed up than me!

The Big Alpha Fight

Finally, here it is. The event you've been waiting for, that I've been promising for four months: the big fight I had with the church elder at the Alpha Course weekend retreat. Events that follow are from hurredly-scribbled notes I took after we got back from the weekend. Hopefully, not too many of the details have been lost or corrupted in the retelling.

Sorry to say, but I did not behave in a very respectable, high-road manner in this argument with the elder. Fortunately, I did not have an audience other than my wife. In general, I blame the complete lack of sleep. More specifically though, I blame the fact that I had been there for a couple of days already, surrounded by nothing but mind-numbing Christian talk, and told that finally here was the wise man - the one who knew so much more than the regular Alpha group leaders - who would have the very best most convincing answers for me. Then this old, well-spoken, seemingly intelligent person sits down and begins to speak with the mind-blowing wisdom that I've waited two months for with bated-breath:

"What about the eye?"

Fuck.

I just went off the handle. I hope you can forgive me.

-----------------------------------

For some time, my wife had been very, very eager for me to speak to the church elder who'd be present during the Alpha retreat weekend. Both she and our group leader had wanted me to write down all my questions to ask him, if not during the large group discussion, then whenever I could get a moment to speak to him in private (I didn't bother). I had been told several times by the group leader that he was wise, and that he had cleared up a lot of the questions she had when she first started getting serious about her religion. I had my doubts, but when the course started I was curious and somewhat looking forward to the opportunity to match wits with a church elder. But as the course dragged on, my enthusiasm waned. I really had little interest in the discussion anymore. By the Alpha weekend, things had not changed. The large group discussion further reinforced these apathetic feelings, as the elder just gave canned answers to inane theological questions.

While I really didn't feel like talking to him , he did make some comments I wanted him to clarify; it sounded like he was a biblical literalist but he was still essentially making shit up with respect to solving the "what to do about the deaf-dumb-blind guy who can't reasonably be expected to hear of Jesus" problem (see the end of the large group discussion post linked above). That said, I didn't care enough about it to seek him out and sit through a chat with him.

My wife, though, thought my curiosity about this question would be a great excuse to get me to sit down and talk to the elder (and hopefully be converted, I'll bet).

So immediately after games night had ended, she hunted the elder down and told him that I wanted to talk to him. Sigh. So he came to me and the three of us found an empty restaurant-style booth (conveniently located in the main rec room for such occasions) in which to sit (FYI, the table at the booth was covered in apologetics books they were trying to sell), me facing him with my wife beside me. I was on the inside. Trapped.

So I asked him to confirm his views on the deaf-blind-dumb guys, and how he thought God would come to them in some way when we couldn't, thus giving them a chance to accept or deny God. He said he's sure God is good and that he would do this for people Christians couldn't reach. I said "But that's not in the bible." He said that of course the bible is the most important thing in determining what it means to be Christian, but he wouldn't say exactly how his idea fit into this.

I asked him if he was a biblical literalist. He said that he essentially was. I decided that I really didn't care about his answer to the original question that much anymore. As long as I was here, I was going to go with other, more interesting questions, especially since he was just avoiding the problem of his idea not meshing with the bible anyway.

We established that he was a Young Earth Creationist. I didn't have a problem with that, but I wanted to explore the implications of his views, ie. living in a scientific world and the subsequent disagreements between his biblical literalist views and the scientific knowledge re: the age of the earth, evolution, geology, etc. So I asked him that question. He replied with a counter question about my beliefs. "Well I ask you this: How do you think the world came to be?"

I was game, so I explained evolution in a nutshell, from the common descent of humans and apes from an earlier ape ancestor, to a 4.5 billion year old earth with life arising somewhere around the -3.5 billion year mark, right down to the self-replication of chemicals in a nod to the problem of abiogenesis.

He then said, "Well look what you said. You said 'chemicals'. Now, how do you explain the chemicals?"

"No no no no no," I said, finger waggling nay-nay. "I know where you're going with this, some argument about the origins of the universe, cosmological, first mover 'Who made the chemicals?' stuff. I've heard it before. And honestly, I'm willing to accept a little lack of understanding. Scientists are working on it, and we may never know, but I accept not knowing as a possibility. But we weren't talking about that. I wanted to know about you reconciling YEC with modern science."

"Where do you get the 100s of billions of years-"

"About 4.5 billion for the earth, 12-14 for the universe," I interjected.

He continued,"-the billions of years you need for evolution. Scientists thought it was a few thousand, then a million, then a few hundred million, then billions," insinuating that science was untrustworthy. I got annoyed and went on a tirade about the powers and achievements of science in the very short amount of time since the scientific revolution, and how without it, we'd likely all be dead from disease right now.

He said, "But many scientists, you'd probably heard of them, believe in creation." I told him I didn't need to hear his list, but I suspect it was the same one as Nicky Gumbel listed in his Alpha introduction video (mainly pre-Darwin, pre-Hubble, guys like Newton, etc.); if so, it's amazing how they act like the Alpha attendees are so stupid or inattentive that we can't remember the basic course material. Sadly, for many of the attendees, this seems to be true. I hand-waved it away, asking for the actual evidence, not just the fact that there are scientists who are Christian.

He said that scientists have discovered a lot of new evidence that points back toward God. I said that was unlikely. He replied:

"What about the eye? What good is half of one?"

At that, MY eyes rolled so far that I almost ended up with half an eye.

I merely replied, "The eye????" and turned away with a big theatrical sigh.

Realizing that I had to say something instead of just getting up and leaving (remember, sitting in the inside seat of a booth), yet wanting to leave, I continued by saying, "I don't have time to teach you all of biology starting from grade 1 up to the university level."

"Look, you said your piece, now let me say mine." Then he went on regurgitating his beliefs ad nauseum. He followed that by accusing me of dodging questions, especially regarding the origin of chemicals.

I got offended. I told him that he never did answer about how he reconciled science and creationism, other than saying he felt science was wrong just because scientists have changed their conclusions over the centuries. I would like for him to read more science texts to gain a better understanding of the method and the evidence, and maybe a little of Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World. I'd like to think that it would help, but somehow I doubt he'd be that open-minded.

We yelled a lot and talked over each other. Then I got really annoyed and shut it down. We had stopped looking at each other when we spoke. I had my arms crossed and let out a loud, frustrated sigh of exasperation. Eventually, I said we should calm it down and switch to another topic. He agreed.

My wife volunteered that I was really interested in history. Figuring that was as good a place to go as any, I said that one of the main failings of Christianity for me was how poorly supported it was historically. I wanted extra-biblical evidence for the events of the Gospels.

He gave Tacitus and Josephus as examples. I cut him off and said that they were not adequate contemporary evidence for the historicity of Jesus. They weren't written during the events in question and were probably written based on what Christians were saying about Jesus, not on any other historical documents.

He looked angry and frustrated. "I can't be responsible for your preconceptions."

"My preconceptions can't be responsible for your horrible arguments."

His turn to sigh. Slowly, deliberately, he said "Well, I'm probably not as smart as you."

Make no mistake, this was not an admission of being beaten in an argument, rather, I'm pretty sure it was a set-up to an argument to prove my intellectual failings. I countered, saying that I didn't think he was stupid and really couldn't say if I was smarter than him, for he seemed like an eloquent and well put-together person. (This was a little modest, since, while he did appear pretty smart, I'm fairly certain I am much smarter than him - that's the conceit of having a Masters of Applied Science and twice getting the highest average in my highschool without really trying.)

I think he was trying to maneuver into a "my mind is down here" (holds hand about a foot off the table) "and yours is up here" (holds hand about 2 feet off the table) "but God's mind is way up there" (pointing at the ceiling) "so who are you to make decisions as to what God can and can't do" argument (similar argument to the degree of goodness argument), but I think the modesty/counter-modesty battle derailed his point as he got distracted and went onto a different topic.

He told me that I should read the bible, because people read the bible and then they believe. He mentioned CS Lewis, and asked if I had heard of him, because CS Lewis, the great author, started as an atheist, but he read the bible and it made him into a Christian. He spoke as if I either never heard of CS Lewis or never heard the story about him coming to Christianity. It's amazing that someone whose arguments come directly from Alpha doesn't seem to realize that almost every Alpha sermon mentions CS Lewis and his conversion.

I said that it sounds fair, and I'll consider reading the bible once I had some time and energy. I added that he should read some science books and that I'd be happy to recommend some.

The elder ignored that and went back to CS Lewis. "I want you to think about something. CS Lewis said that Christianity, if true, is of utmost importance, and if false, it's of no importance. But if it's of the utmost importance, shouldn't you learn as much as you can about it?"

I asked, "How do you mean? I consider it to be of moderate importance due to the societal and cultural impacts. Are you considering that?" The elder then made it clear that he just meant as a religion, not as a piece of culture.

Anyway, I said, "Well, how is that any different from any other religion? You can say the same thing about Islam, or Hinduism, or Zeus, so how is this an argument for Christianity?" He replied that it's not proof, just something for me to think about. "Why bother saying it then?" I exclaimed angrily. "I'm here at Alpha already, so obviously I'm trying to learn something. We're supposed to be talking about evidence."

At about this time, the energy was sapped from the table. I realized how sore my throat was from an hour of nearly screaming at the supposedly wise ignoramus across from me. I was sweaty. He looked rundown.

I felt like I'd just spent the past hour swinging a baseball bat at a reinforced concrete wall - a big, well-meaning, but dumb reinforced concrete wall. It really went nowhere and made me tired and frustrated.

Angry and mutually given-up, the two of us agreed to end the argument there with a strained handshake. I thanked him for showing patience and taking the time to talk. As we were getting up, he tried to get in the last word, reminding me to read the bible. I told him again to read some science as I turned and left, with my wife quickly following me.

The elder and I each made an effort not to speak to or look at each other for the rest of the weekend.

Conclusions:

I don't think I did a very good job in the argument. In large part, I think it was due to not really expecting the argument and therefore not really having a plan. I didn't know what points I wanted to make, what level of confrontation to employ, how much contempt or respect to show, etc. Hell, at several points, I couldn't decide whether or not to even bother staying in the discussion. Was I supposed to nonjudgmentally pick his brain? Was I supposed to engage in a heated logical debate? Was I supposed to remain calm and try to convert the old bastard? Was I supposed to just yell at him for his ignorance? I could never decide, and as a result, I did a little bit of each, and rather ineffectively at that.

All the while, my wife was great. Though she didn't say a word during the discussion, she was solid, sitting there with me, not interrupting or judging. She never got emotional. Afterward, she listened to what I had to say about my anger, frustration, and disappointment with the elder.

I think, those who most Christians regard as "elders" or "those who are much wiser" have exactly the same crap arguments as the religious neophytes who unthinkingly parrot those crap arguments. They have no greater understanding, no better arguments, no more balanced or rational thinking. When it comes to why they believe, they are no better than any other bible thumper; they are just older and more eloquent.

Final thought:

St Augustine said something to the effect that a Christian who knows little about a subject better stay silent about it, lest any unbelievers around won't pay him any mind when he starts proselytizing, as the unbeliever will think he is as full of crap regarding Christianity as he is with whatever other topic he was talking about.

I guess my point here can be best summarized as, "Hey! Old Guy! St. Augustine says you should shut the hell up."

Alpha Retreat Sermon 3: How Can I Be Filled with the Holy Spirit

This sermon started with going over the five types of responses the apostles encountered when preaching to others about the Holy Spirit. Some immediately longed for the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:2-4), others were receptive to the idea but weren't as certain as the first group (Acts 8:14-17), others were hostile towards them (Acts 8:17-19), some were uninformed and had no clue what they were talking about (Acts 19:1-6), and some were skeptical (Acts 10:44-46). Gumbel explained that all those in the audience also fall into these categories. The way he's structured the talk, it's painfully clear that he wants you to be in one of the first two categories, and casts a negative light on the others.

The funny thing is that he gives bible verses as references to these 5 groups, but only the receptive and the uninformed are actually unambiguously represented in the verses. The longing group were the first bunch at Pentecost, who we will see later; however, no real mention is made of longing and the second group didn't seem to be any less longing than the first group. Both groups were generally receptive. The hostile verse is actually the sorcerer who really wants the power to lay on hands and manifest the Holy Spirit but just doesn't understand the real point to it. The the unlikely group is actually not outright skeptics; rather they were Jews who didn't think the Holy Spirit should have been given to the gentiles.

What? Twisting the Bible to push another point? No way!

I'm really interested in the story of the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost:

1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. 5Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!"

That would be some pretty amazing proof. Actual, visible, tangible flame tongues; everyone able to understand everyone else regardless of the language being spoken. Pretty funky indeed. I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty damned impressed by this if it ever happened around me. Yet God doesn't see fit to provide this evidence anymore. Too bad.¹

Also, in a lot of the early cases during the Acts of the Apostles, it was required that an apostle lay-on hands for someone to receive the Holy Spirit. WTF is that about? The rules just keep changing.

The most important thing according to Gumbel here is that the Holy Spirit automatically comes into every person the moment they accept Jesus as their lord and saviour. The problem is that most of the time, the Holy Spirit comes in only a small quantity. ie. you are unfilled. Gumbel used the analogy of a pilot light in a fireplace. The Holy Spirit is the pilot light. It's up to you to turn the gas on 'high' and get filled with fire.

Anyway, the rest of the sermon had to do with explaining what happened when you received the Holy Spirit. First, you "experience the power of the Holy Spirit" - a surprisingly vague statement that seems to encapsulate the general warm, excited feeling you get, but also the other "fruits of the Spirit."

Second, you are "released in praise," which basically means lots of emotional, spontaneous praying and worship.

Third, you "receive a new language" ie. speaking in tongues. Despite the biblical precedent, Gumbel went on to explain, like the good lawyer he was, that your results may very. According to him, not all Christians speak in tongues, it's not necessarily a sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit, you aren't less of a Christian if you can't speak in tongues, and it's not the most important gift.

Despite this, he then went on at length explaining about speaking in tongues. It's an angelic and human language that transcends language barriers (despite not making any sense to us), it's a form of prayer, it strengthens the individual, and it's under the control of the speaker. Apparently you can also sing in tongues.

And apparently we can receive this gift if we eagerly desire it, ask God, be cooperative with the Holy Spirit, believe, and persevere. The three most common hindrances are doubt, fear, and inadequacy. Certainly seems like those who can't speak in tongues are lesser Christians, doesn't it?

The way the sermon was supposed to be done, they were supposed to follow it immediately with a call to receive the Holy Spirit and people were supposed to start dropping to the ground in ecstasy and speaking in tongues, etc. To my great disappointment, the elder and group leader didn't even try. The elder simply lead an group prayer about praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit and that was it.

Damn, I wanted to hear some crazy ravings!

¹ Note that this isn't plain glossolalia, it's more xenoglossy. Though, for what it's worth, there are plenty of "friend of a friend" examples, including one from my wife, who claims her sister apparently once had her pastor tell her to "be quiet, don't interrupt" in her family's obscure Chinese dialect. So make of it what you will.

Alpha Retreat Group Discussion

After the end of weekend sermon #2, the whole group of 60+ people moved over to the big chapel attached to the main building at the bible camp. There, in a big circle of seats, we started into a discussion about what was being shown in the sermons and any holy spirit/salvation questions anybody had. The discussion was lead by the church elder. I didn't contribute to any of the discussions.

One thing I've realized about Alpha is that the group leaders are provided with suggestions for leading questions to ask to get the discussion going. These questions are always the most inane, grade 3-style fluff questions imaginable. For instance, the elder started by asking "is the Holy Spirit available to all?" immediately after a sermon in which Nicky Gumbel said, "the Holy Spirit is available to all; every Christian has the Holy Spirit." This is not helping my opinion of the average Alpha attendee.

After this, we moved into a tangent. Many people didn't like that really bad people such as mass murderers could become Christians and get into heaven. The elder reminded them that repentance is a core belief of Christianity; as long as you truly believe in Christ and say sorry and try, not necessarily succeed, to not continue with your evils ways, then you're good. Still, a couple of guys would have none of it.

This segued nicely back to the topic of the Holy Spirit and how you receive it. Many people in the group, though very strong, emotional Christians, had not felt anything they would describe as "being filled with the Holy Spirit," and this was worrying them to no end. This question would actually be the main concern of the discussion; how do I know if the Holy Spirit is within me?

The overwhelming majority of the group hadn't had these manifestations of the Holy Spirit; no speaking in tongues, no overwhelming burning feelings or falling down in elation, no visions, voices, etc. And they were wondering, "why not?"

Grasping for answers, many of these people fixated on (what they felt were) their sins and if these were holding them back. As one woman said, these people struggle with their sins, but don't feel like they can be forgiven. I feel that many of these people have adequacy issues, failure issues, and concern themselves unhealthily with justice and guilt. However, the elder had a different theory: he said that Satan was placing within them doubts about the ubiquitousness of forgiveness to cause them to doubt God. Oh, goody. That's helpful.

Time for the next leading question from the elder: what is "born again?"According to him, it's when you accept Jesus and and ask for and receive the Holy Spirit. So how can you know if you actually have received the Holy Spirit? Some people experience a lot of change right away while others can't even notice. According to the elder and several group members, this is because God a) only gives you the Holy Spirit when he chooses and b) fills you with the Holy Spirit only so much as you can handle. So, according to them, the group members who haven't felt anything since becoming Christian are just wimps.

So this brings us back to the main question, "how can you tell?" I recorded several people blurting out "you just know" or "you feel it" while the more articulate members of the group explained that it was a unique feeling full of anxiety and an adrenaline rush. The skeptic in me says that this seems like a very physical, biological response that we should be able to analyse. The skeptic in me also says that it sounds like a perfectly normal biological response to any other highly emotional, new, and exciting occurrence. But I'm utterly materialistic, so what the hell do I know?

Anyway, they conclude that the stereotypical little old lady falling down on the floor, convulsing and speaking in tongues is unnecessary for the reception of the Holy Spirit. You can have your doubts, just "give them to God," and he will remove them and give you the Holy Spirit (What the hell does that mean? If you have doubts, just pretend that they don't exist and everything will be okay?).

Next, the guy in my group obsessed about the question of deep African tribals and other people who honestly never get a chance to hear about Jesus and what happens to them asked the same question again, this time with the twist of a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who does not have the tools to learn about a complicated abstract thing like religion. Here, the elder I think pulls something completely out of the ol' ass, and explains that he's sure God somehow contacts those that Christians fail to evangelize to, be it deaf, dumb, and blind kid or jungle-dwelling tribal, explains the Jesus deal to them, and allows them the same choice as the rest of us. Sounds nice. But why do they get God proselytizing to them while I have to make due with a terribly flawed system of Alpha sermons and discussions. That's not fair. And it's not really biblical, either. I decided I would have to ask the elder about that if I ever got a chance to have an argument with him (hint hint).

There was one line of discussion that I think illustrates the emotionality of the Christian thing, at least for some believers like the elder. He had a rhetorical question and answer with himself Q. Who is God? A. He's the king of kings, the greatest king. Q. What happens when we accept Jesus as our saviour and receive the Holy Spirit? A. We become the children of God. Q. What are the children of kings called? A. Princes and Princesses. So we (meaning Christians) are all princes and princesses. "Doesn't that feel good?" he exclaimed. "When people are getting me down, I can say, "Hey!" as he points confidently at his chest, "I'm a prince!" That makes me feel great." Now, to their credit, most of the group members just thought that this was hokey.

As time was winding down, a bunch of questions were quickly asked but with very little discussion or resolution:

We know suicide is bad, probably lands you in hell. But what of suicide before the age of reason? Consensus was that it's probably treated similar to the non-suicide death of a little kid, whatever that is (heaven? limbo? whatever the thought of the day is).

Someone cheerily explained that God's way of thinking is very anti-"human thinking." Which is not very helpful, eh?

Why did Jesus come to Earth during a credulous age instead of during a more skeptical time?

Becoming children of God also comes with responsibility. "You will be attacked." Man, they really have a persecution complex. I also note that it's the elder who brings this up. The stronger and older the Christian, the fiercer the persecution complex perhaps?

Finally, they returned once again to people who are still worried about not feeling filled with the Holy Spirit. A couple of people said that they've asked for the Holy Spirit but haven't felt changed, and this has led them to be worried and doubtful about the existence of God. The elder reiterated that doubts come from Satan. "Satan attacks you because you've selected God!" He also reiterated that there are less dramatic manifestations of God. One recent convert explained that for him, his change was realizing that he now behaves differently: "Wow, I would never have thought/acted that way before receiving Jesus!"

{snark} Wow, that's so compelling! A few months ago, I never would have bothered keeping plants in my house, but now I've got seven. Must be the Holy Spirit changing me! {snark} Well, no. People change and mature, and develop new priorities and ways of thinking based on their influences and experiences. It's not magic; it's life.

Come on, Holy Spirit, where are the tongues of flame that you exhibited back in the bible?

It's an Alpha Christmas

Merry Christmas, all! I'll be going away for a week (or more if I'm lazy), but before I go, I'd like to let you know that, while I'm a few weeks behind posting the rest of the Alpha Course, in real life Alpha just wrapped up. We finished with the Christmas celebration dinner. This isn't really part of the course, in actuality, it's a recruiting tool: Alpha participants are strongly encouraged to bring family, friends, colleagues, etc, and try to get them to join Alpha next term. There's a video by Nicky Gumbel that is essentially "highlights" (I use the term loosely) of the first 3 sermons but with an added Christmas twist.

I encourage you to read a post I wrote a year ago when I was first brought to this Alpha Christmas dinner by my wife. It was essentially the same thing this time, except the food was much, much better and my wife again brought the two friends she is trying to convert.

Alpha Retreat Sermon 2: What Does the Holy Spirit Do?

We had a very short break between Weekend Sermon 1 and Weekend Sermon 2 on Saturday morning. This was leading to a severe Gumbel overload. Too much too early on a Saturday morning with too little sleep. It was just as long as your typical sermon, yet, in the course manual, it only took up two pages as opposed to the four pages a typical sermon takes. That means that there was a lot of fluff. I barely wrote any notes.

The basic gist is that the Holy Spirit makes us born again, this time into the family of God. Why there needs to be a Holy Spirit to do this doesn't make any sense to me. Anyway, the six points Gumbel emphasised are as follows. The Holy Spirit:

I. Makes us Sons and Daughters of God.

This gives us a relationship that implies forgiveness, privilege, community, etc.

II. Develops our Relationship with God.

The Holy Spirit ("He") helps us to pray. He also enables us to understand God's word. This one was quite baffling; what Gumbel actually said was that we have to believe in order to understand. That seems irrationally backward. He actually used the "leap of faith" in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a reference for this one.

III. Gives us a Family Likeness.

IV. Gives us Unity to the Family

These two seem exactly the same as I., but I found they emphasized the Us vs. Them mentality that can make religion really dangerous, though I'm sure it wasn't Gumbel's intention.

V. Gifts for All God's Children

ie. all the physical supernatural abilities God promises in 1 Corintians 12:4-11. This includes speaking in tongues and prophesy.

VI. Grows the Family of God

Meaning it (sorry, He) empowers us to witness for Christ, do the missionary thing, engage in service to the church, etc.

To conclude, Gumbel said that the most important thing, according to him, here is that the Holy Spirit automatically comes into every person the moment they accept Jesus as their lord and saviour. The problem is that most of the time, the Holy Spirit comes in only a small quantity. ie. you are unfilled. Gumbel used the analogy of a pilot light in a fireplace. The Holy Spirit is the pilot light. It's up to you to turn the gas on 'high' and get filled with fire.

I guess to some people in the course, this was a very important session. In the subsequent group discussion, many people were worried about Gumbel's last point, ie. do they have the Holy Spirit or not, are they filled or not. Personally, I just didn't care.

Alpha Retreat Sermon 1: Who is the Holy Spirit

This was the first real sermon, first thing in the morning on Saturday. I was extremely tired due to excessive heat in the rooms. I think everyone else had similar problems; there was a lot of yawning.

Though it was priefly mentioned in the Intro Sermon, Gumbel's first order of business was complaining about how "the person and work of the Holy Spirit has been ignored and misunderstood," taking a backseat to God the Father and God the Son, and been called the "Holy Ghost" by Catholics in particular, and "It" rather than "He" in general. Also, that Christians even tend to resist the Holy Spirit because they think it will take control over their lives.

It is true that most Christians neglect the Holy Spirit. Just about the only time a Christian concerns himself/herself with the Holy Spirit is when crossing himself/herself, and he/she gets to the cross's horizontal member. Gumbel is very unhappy with this, and, if I were a concerned Christian, I could see why he'd want to rectify this. However, I agree with the Alpha Course's critics that it's madness to focus so much on the Holy Spirit in a supposed introduction to Christianity class. As far as being bothered by "ghost" and "it", that strikes me as Gumbel having a rather large anal retention disorder.

Getting back to the sermon, Gumbel wanted to show that the Holy Spirit was there from the beginning, being involved in the Creation, "the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Gen. 1:2). I dunno. Anyone with more knowledge of ancient hebrew and access to the oldest bible scraps want to tell us if this Spirit of God is actually intended to be the Holy Spirit as understood by Christians?

Gumbel also wanted to show the the Holy Spirit came upon certain people in the Old Testament when God needed them to perform particular tasks, giving examples of Bezalel, Gideon, Samson, and Isaiah.

But rather than focusing on these Old Testament examples, he told a few quick anecdotes about one of his introductory points: that people resist the Holy Spirit because they don't want to give up control. To do this, instead of giving examples of reluctant Christians who let the Holy Spirit direct them in their lives and have their lives improved, he bashes atheists. His typical story involves some atheistic person whose life is full of failures and addictions and is generally unfulfilled, with unhappy relationships to boot. Then they suddenly accept the Holy Spirit and have their lives go down crazy, but good and joyful, holy paths.

Gumbel then made a point that the Holy Spirit was promised to all people by God, not just important people like in the Old Testament.

Also said that John the Baptist linked the Holy Spirit with Jesus. Weirdly, he made mention of Jesus receiving power through the annointing of the Holy Spirit at his baptism. This is odd because it's a strongly adoptionist verse. I was surprised any modern Christian would emphasise this.

Finally, Gumbel said that Jesus predicted the Holy Spirit's presence and coming for all of his followers, culminating in the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples at Pentecost.

During Acts, this receiving of the Holy Spirit was said to look like tongues of fire (Acts 2:3). WTF? Must be extra special Holy Spirit mentioned here, for I've never heard of a visible Holy Spirit coming at any other time. This is crazy stuff.

Alpha Course Day 9: How and Why Should We Tell Others?

Dinner: They finally unleashed the Indian guy, and we had curry. Again, not enough meat and kind of tame - they were really worried about burning the taste buds of the old boring white people in the group - but good flavour. Also shrimp chips, salad, green beans actually cooked properly. Dessert was mini cheesecakes with syrup, powdered sugar, and fruit slices, so also pretty good. Hooray.

Part 1: Sermon

A lot of sermon time was taken up with people from the group giving testimony about their experiences at the weekend retreat. One woman said she had a big experience. She had prayed to give her life to God on Monday, but felt ill at ease the whole week and through the weekend up until one discussion when she realized her problem was that she didn't like accepting gifts. Once she understood this, she felt emotional, became physically shaky, and felt flushed.

Another girl said she had prayed the same prayer. Two months ago, she lost her job, so she wanted to feel like God had chosen to take her job away and that there was a reason God wanted her to be unemployed. There was lots of crying.

I tuned-out some more emotional testimonies and crying and waited until the video started.

Gumbel explained that the reason why Christians should tell others was that people are looking for meaning, Christianity has the answers, and it would be irresponsible not to tell them. I understand this point of view, even if I don't think it does have the answers.

According to Gumbel, there are 5 P-words that detail how Christians are supposed to tell others: Presence, Persuasion, Proclamation, Power, and Prayer.

Presence means that you have to act well and be a good example for others while letting them know you are a Christian. He gave the example of William Wilberforce (19th century abolitionist leader) and Millard Fuller (started Habitat for Humanity).

Persuasion means reasoning and arguing with people, knowing the bible, knowing the answers to common skeptical questions - like the problem of evil, what about other religions, etc. Gumbel maintains that Christianity does not require a "blind leap of faith" but only a reasonable faith. Of course, I disagree with that too, and feel sorry for wannabe evangelists who encounter a knowledgeable skeptic. Based on the answers provided by Alpha, these guys would get torn up.

However, Gumbel doesn't seem to want to go up against real skeptics. He told a story of a seminar he was at where he and another pastor were challenged by a hardcore skeptic who went on for 20 minutes of questions attacking Christianity - history, biology, physics, ethics, theology. Gumbel was overwhelmed, but the other pastor just asked "if I could answer all your questions would you become a Christian?" "No," the skeptic replied. Looking around at everyone else in attendance, the pastor said, "Are there any other questions?"

Proclamation is about telling your story. Gumbel wants everyone in Alpha to write down and memorize their testimonies about their journeys into faith. As he said, there is no answer to that; "they can't say, 'no, that didn't happen to you.'"

Power means doing and telling and performing miracles. Not much advice was given to as to accomplishing the miracles part.

And Prayer, which is pretty self-explanatory. You pray for your potential converts to see the Truth. You pray to make yourself feel better.

Hmm. Pray for potential converts? That sounds strangely familiar. Like what my wife prays for every single night (in my presence, too). But not only that...

Part 2: Small Groups

...It turns out that a bunch of other people in my group are praying for my conversion, too. One even had a dream about me in that regard. It was really creepy.

Basically, most of the small groups time was about me. One guy started by asking if I'd changed my mind and started accepting Christianity at all. I said no and explained why not. Then everyone started piling on with how they were praying for me. The main tactic was them telling their testimonies and then trying to compare and contrast with what happens in my life.

I realized that they think I live, and have always lived, some sort of worry-free blessed life with youth, wealth, health, good looks, a beautiful wife, house, and a rewarding job. And the fact that I've never been down and desperate is why I don't feel the need for God. It's funny to me since I've never considered myself to have such a blessed life, though I do recognize that my life has been pretty good the last few years since I finished undergrad. But I still see myself as the nerdy socially outcast guy I was in my younger days, and to a certain extent still am now. And I'm not rich or privileged. "I drive a 2002 Nissan Altima," I exclaimed in exasperation. I still work 9-5^* every day in a cubicle, ie. there is CERTAINLY more to life than this, to borrow Alpha's catch phrase.

The difference, I think, is that I'm comfortable with my place in the universe due to my knowledge of science and history, but more than that, I don't have the anger, depression, and forgiveness issues that the rest of my group seem to have. Sure, I have had my problems in the past and have been faced with crappy situations, and I've let them eat me up for months or even years before. But I've learned to not get down, not hold grudges, and ride-out rough patches without the need for a watchful father-god because, for the most part, bad situations don't stay bad forever. And if they don't improve, well, human beings are very adaptable and can either make the best of a bad situation or even do something to make the situation better.

Most of them, though, had become Christians in response to some form of extreme trouble in their lives. To me, though, entering a faith when under duress is like grocery shopping when starving. You buy crazy things that you have to live with even after you're no longer hungry, like ten Salisbury steaks that will reside in your freezer forever.

The session ended with the lawyer guy magnanimously assuring everyone that I'd become Christian sometime...

^* It really should be 8-5, but I've been an hour late for work a lot recently due to exhaustion and poor sleep habits.

Alpha Retreat: Intro Sermon

The first of Nicky Gumbel's video we watched was on Firday night and served as an introduction to the weekend series of videos about the Holy Spirit.

First, I'd just like to say that Gumbel's focus on the Holy Spirit is a little weird and intense. For instance, the Alpha Course has three sermons on the Holy Spirit and only two on Jesus. The self-proclaimed "highlight" of the course is the last day of the retreat when participants are encouraged to invite the Holy Spirit into their lives (sometimes resulting in manifestations such as speaking in tongues, seizures, etc). In fact, if you search for "Alpha Course and criticism" on Google, the bulk will actually be from other Christians criticizing Gumbel's Holy Spirit-oriented, aka "charismatic", views.

For reasons that escape me, because it didn't have anything to do with the Holy Spirit, Gumbel started off with an amusing story about a criminal in a church. A suspect on the run from police is seen entering a church during a service. The police discretely flag down the pastor and tell him that a criminal is sitting with his congregation, and that they're going to have to storm the place looking for him. The pastor doesn't like this idea, and gets the police to agree to another scheme. The pastor asks all members of the congregation and all their guests to come to the front to witness a baptism. This leaves just one guy sitting down, who the police pounce upon and take away. It is later discovered that he wasn't the criminal, instead, he was just a poor guy coming to church for the first time.

Finally getting into the meat of the sermon, Gumbel started to explain what the Holy Spirit was. He explained that the Holy Spirit, not "Holy Ghost", was a "he" not an "it" and he thinks, grieves, etc. From this perspective, the Holy Spirit is typically neglected.

The Holy Spirit was "sent by Jesus from the Father." Huh? That's one thing I really, really hate about Christianity the more I have to listen to it - how they have to get all three parts of the trinity involved in everything. It's meaningless. Hell, most of the time Gumbel uses "Jesus" and "Holy Spirit" seemingly interchangibly.

He said he thinks that everyone has a "cosmic loneliness, a homesickness for God." This has been hammered home many times, and I'm sick of this one too.

Finally, Gumbel got around to explain a little more about what the Holy Spirit is all about. It (sorry, not a He) is described by the Greek word paraklatos, which means "one who comes alongside." He told the story of a guy in a little airplane. The pilot suddenly died of a massive heartattack. The man was able to steady the plane and radio for help. Fortunately, a flying instructor was listening and scrambled up to help. Conversing on the radio with the troubled man, they established that he didn't have a clue how to land a plane. So the instructor flew alongside him and told him to just do what he (the instructor) did. This way, the instructor was able to guide the man down to a safe landing. "Thank God," said the man. "You're welcome," the instructor replied. Totally missing in this story was the irony that it really was a skilled, human good-guy who saved the man, not God at all. Don't expect your average Alpha attendee to notice.

Alpha Course Day 8: How Can We Resist Evil?

Dinner: A little better this week. The salad was wilted, but the beef stirfry with onions and mushrooms was nice and tender; a little watery but with good flavour. Non-asians almost always overcook bok-choy, turning it to mush. Dessert was little store-bought ice cream cups with the little wooden scoops again, but also a few mini cupcakes.

Part 1: Sermon

It’s about THE DEVIL!!! Scary!

Wow, most of this sermon uses the Garden of Eden snake and the apple as its basis. I just can’t take this at all seriously.

It started with warning us of the "reality of spiritual warfare" with the forces of Satan, who is in active rebellion against God and leads a multitude of demons who will attempt to turn us away from God.

Gumbel explained that the existence of Satan is reasonable because it makes sense of the evil in the world. And it's also supported by Christian tradition and scripture. And we shouldn't underestimate his power. And that many of us have mistaken views about Satan, either an unhealthy interest like the occult, horoscopes, palm reading, etc, or total disbelief. Wooo. I'm so impressed. (yawn)

His tactics are to blind people to God, tempt people to do wrong, and, most importantly, to cause people to doubt God.

As for doubt, Gumbel claims it's always the starting point, and that Satan's favourite thing to do is to undermine faith in either God's existence or God's power and benevolence.

As for temptation, Gumbel talked about Adam and Eve in the garden. Seriously, what the fuck is that forbidden tree doing there in the first place? And why allow a rebellious angel who wants to ruin your creation into the garden to tempt humans in the first place? Is God a retard?

One more thing: Gumbel pointed out here that temptation is not sin. But what of what Jesus said, ie. whoever is angry with his brother commits murder, and whoever lusts after another woman has committed adultery? I have no strong opinion here, not being a theologian or biblical scholar, but it seems odd to me.

Gumbel then explains that our position is that Christians are on God's side, that Jesus has defeated Satan via the resurrection, and that Christ's disciples have authority over demons. Likewise, Christians are called to fight on God's side against Satan, to "wear the armor of God."

Part 2: Small Groups

I have a confession: I’m starting to have a really hard time participating in the small group discussions, to the point where I haven’t actually asked anything during the past two weeks. The first few weeks I dominated the discussions, introducing topics, challenging the group members, and complaining about the failures in their thought processes. Recently, I really don’t want to talk anymore. Over the past few weeks, I’ve come to appreciate just how “out there” the rest of the group members are wrt religion. There is nothing I can say that can get them to change their minds, or even engage in meaningful discussion. That one non-Christian person in the group, who I was promised existed, has yet to make an appearance (I have a hunch who it is, but he has yet to say anything substantial to substantiate that hunch). It’s gotten to the point where I just don’t care about these people; sure, they’re nice, and I’d be happy to call most of them friends, but in this environment, they are lost causes.

Then again, maybe I still DO care, but I’m worried that if I start to talk, my sense of overwhelming frustration with them will manifest itself in a never-ending barrage of screaming insults related to their incredible mental denseness.

“DON’T YOU KNOW IT’S THE 21ST CENTURY?!! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? FRICKIN’ IDIOTS!”

This is especially likely given that I’ve already flown off the handle at one of these halfwits before (retreat fight with elder link).

Anyway, back to the discussion. You know, for a discussion about a sermon focused mainly on Satan, nobody really mentioned Satan during the discussion. When they felt they must refer to supernatural evil, they said “evil forces,” but usually, they talked about human failings as evil. This implies to me that most of them really don’t view the devil as theologically necessary; they view evil as a problem of humanity’s failings, not of necessarily an external, supernatural tempter. The exception is that, while they view most evil as purely human, they were all convinced that the occult, evil, satanic powers, existed. Oooooh, fortune tellers are bad, horoscopes are bad, voodoo is bad. And they’re all true, powered by the Devil! Scary.

Bunch of retards. (See the all-caps rant above, which I almost blurted out in the session save for an effort of superhuman will.)

We’ve got space telescopes and Mars rovers and they’re still worried about the demonic forces involved in freakin’ horoscopes. Hell, I even heard one priest count Magic 8-Balls among the tools of demonic evil. I see at least one tool, but it sure as hell ain’t the 8-Ball.

I have become convinced that a comprehensive course about understanding science and how it impacts modern life must be taught in our highschools. Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World should be required reading for everybody, lest we get stuck with a large percentage of our population still living in the dark ages.

Alpha Retreat : Wha' Happened?

An integral part of the Alpha Course is the weekend retreat. During this, everyone participating in the course spends a weekend together at a bible camp, watching sermons by Alpha headman Nicky Gumbel - all having to do with the Holy Spirit, having large group discussions, eating, playing games, etc. In this post, I'll write about what exactly went on over the weekend. I'll write about the contents of each video and the discussions (plus my fight with the church elder) in other posts.

It should be noted that not all Alpha programs actually go away for their weekend. Some are lame - well, lamer than others - and don't actually go anywhere, instead spending the whole weekend at the church where their Alpha is normally held. Also, not everyone in our group was able to go. I almost didn't, just because the thought of spending a whole weekend with all the god-bots disturbed me.

(As an aside, have you ever noticed that, once you take them out of regular, secular society, these god-bot people cease to speak of "thinking" about a problem, and instead "pray" about their problems. Ie. they are perfectly normal most of the time, but surround them with other church people and they turn all religiousy.)

The bible camp where the Alpha Course retreat was held was located near Bancroft, Ontario, so we headed out after work (actually I skipped out half an hour early). I had never driven out that way before, and it was dark and rainy, but we still made it there in good time, in about 2:55.

The camp was located about 8 km outside town in some backwoods area at the end of some really narrow, windy roads. The were pretty big, having come into possession of over 400 acres in the area around town, and in the summer time have canoes, a beach, hiking trails, etc. We were given our room assignment, my wife and I together in a room that turned out to be quite nice, like a new but low-end hotel. Unfortunately, like the old Christian houses that I noted before, the decor was decidedly grannyish. One interesting feature was that the doors could only be locked while you were in your room; when not in your room, the door would be left unlocked. This left us susceptible to lame pranks from our group leader who thinks she is funnier than she actually is. We got a very fake-looking rat in our bathroom, another person for earthworms in the shower, another person got a plastic snake in her bed, except she wasn't the one who found it; her boyfriend discovered it and he's terrified of snakes. That at least went well.

There were a handful of different "motels" as they called them, each built at a different time. Ours was the nice new one. The married couples and the single women were housed there. Another one housed the single guys. Later on we heard from a guy in our group that their building was horrible and he gave us a tour. It was really old and rundown, with a bathroom coated in mildew, small, flat, musty beds, and it smelled like my grandfather's old cottage. Pretty gross. Glad I was married.

The place had other facilities in addition to the lodgings: a lounge/presentation room, a dining hall, a large chapel, and a gym.

After settling in on Friday night, we headed back to the group area for the introductory video. They were very disorganized and technologically impaired, and we ended up watching 20 minutes of the wrong video before my wife noticed the error.

After the video, we were introduced to the church elder who would be helping out with the weekend by leading discussions and prayers and by introducing each video. He was actually not officially a church elder, as the church has a term limit that he has already far exceeded, so I guess he's an elder emeritus or something. He was a friendly old bearded guy and I had been told by both my wife and the group leader that he'd be a good guy to talk to about all my theological questions that I'd stumped them on, as he was much older, knowledgable, and wiser. Little did I know I'd be having a big fight with him, and that the Christian version of "wise" just means spouting the same old crap as every other Christian but more eloquently.

After meeting the elder, we were all called to introduce ourselves by giving our stories of why we were here. I said that I was only here because my wife had "strongly encouraged" me to be here. That drew a hearty laugh from everyone else.

Around 10:00 pm, the official part of the night ended. A large group of this went to play floor hockey in the gym. My wife and I play in a league, and we completely dominated all the other chumps there, who weren't as athletic or skilled. After each scoring 5 goals in the first 10 minutes (no one else scored any), we stopped counting goals or trying so hard, at least until players on our team started to leave due to fatigue, putting us down by 3 players. We played for over 3 hours and I ended up losing a lot of skin from my hands due to the old, frayed wooden sticks, and needed to bandage them up the rest of the weekend. I would have slept well due to fatigue except the thermostats in the rooms seemed to be nonfunctional and the heater was on full-blast the whole night.

Waking up late after a night of little sleep, we made it late to breakfast. Mmmm, bacon.

After breakfast, we had the first of the weekend sermons about the Holy Spirit, called "Who is the Holy Spirit?" I noticed that it wasn't just me who slept through large portions of it. We had a brief break, then head right into weekend sermon #2, called "What does the Holy Spirit Do?"

We then broke for a big group discussion in the chapel involving all the Alpha participants, about 40 people. The discussion was lead by the elder. Man, it was an unpleasantly long hour discussing nothing of much importance. I believe it was supposed to be discussing the sermons, but it only did that barely.

We then had lunch, which was a nice roast chicken breast with sweet potato fries with greek salad. Food was looking good. Dessert was just cookies.

We had a couple of free hours after lunch before the afternoon sermon. We just walked around the grounds a little and played ping pong. The afternoon sermon, weekend sermon #3, was called "How Can I Be Filled with the Spirit?" I think this is where there was supposed speaking in tongues or other bodily manifestations of the Holy Spirit, but nothing ever happened.

After the sermon was dinner, which was a rather poor roast beef with a bun meant to simulate yorkshire pudding and a salad that was very wilted and unpleastant. Dessert was just mint-chocolate chip ice cream. Food quality took a nose-dive with this meal.

After dinner, we took a nap due to excruciating fatigue. We ended up being half an hour late for Fun Night, which was an evening of games lead by the group leader, and including pictionary, cherades, a few other things I can't remember. It was fun, but not great.

After fun night was a free evening of snacks and just hanging out. It was during this time that my wife volunteered me to go speak with the elder, which I will discuss later. Right now, I'll just say that I got very pissed-off at his intellectual dishonesty and frustrated at his self-assured ignorance.

After I had cooled-off a bit and hung out a bit, we played more ping pong and went to bed, ensuring that we opened the window first so we wouldn't roast overnight.

The last morning, we were again late to breakfast, which was disappointing. The only thing worth eating were freshly made cinnamon buns, which they took away entirely too early so they could package them up and try to sell them to us. Way to stay classy.

We had a brief group discussion, which was essentially a way for the elder to recap his points of view from the previous day's discussion. Then we had one more video sermon, actually the last sermon from the Alpha Course, "How Can I Make the Most of the Rest of My Life." Aka, more fluff.

We had lunch, which were sandwich wraps in the style of fajitas. Also known as a way for them to use up the leftover chicken and beef from the previous meals. Again, way to stay classy. Then it was time to leave.

Damn, it snowed. About 10 cm. And I forgot my snow brush.

Some nice guy cleaned the snow off our car for us and I was out of there as fast as I could go.

Alpha Course Day 7: How Does God Guide Us?

Dinner: I think they’ve just stopped trying. Dinner today was a completely insufficient quantity of store-bought egg rolls (they ran out before everybody got one), a watery stirfry, and rice. Dessert was little store-bought ice cream cups with the little wooden scoops.

Part 1: Sermon

This talked all about how God guides his followers. Relevant information includes:
1) That God promised to guide his followers in scripture.
2) God has a plan for our lives, and he’ll guide us as soon as we’re ready to be lead (humble and all that jazz).
3) That we need to consult God – by praying, of course - before making major decisions.

As for the actual methods God uses to guide people are:
1) Commands found in the bible. Note that these are more general instructions
2) Compelling spirit. Ie. You suddenly feel like you should do a particular thing that you may not have felt like you should do before, especially if you’ve been praying about it. However, Gumbel also allows for other, more obvious and supernatural compellings, such as prophesy, dreams and visions, angelic visitations, and the audible voice of God. Spooky.
3) Common sense. I fail to see how this is God guiding.
4) Counsel of saints. Ie. Gumbel thinks it’s very important to listen to the advice of Christians who have gone before.
5) Circumstantial signs. This is explained as God nudging probability to show you something, or to open new doors and close old ones. Gumbel also warns that sometimes God wants us to persevere despite circumstances, which in my view seriously compromised circumstantial signs as a form of communication. However, it remains that this is the big guiding method that everyone in the group talked about and that Gumbel focuses on in all of his stories. I’ll discuss a bunch of his circumstantial stories now.

Gumbel lead off the sermon with a story about the founding of the British suicide counseling hotline, the Samaritans. So goes the story, a busy country vicar had the idea for the Samaritans but was unable to pursue it because he was too busy. So he prayed that God would make available to him the services of a less busy urban vicar to institute this program. A little while later HE suddenly got offered a transfer to a less busy city vicar job. So he took this as a sign and accepted the job, thus enabling him to start the Samaritans. He then wanted to get an easy to remember, somewhat meaningful phone number, so he thought of one and set about trying to acquire it from its current owner. So he called the phone company from his near derelict new church and asked if he could get it. The phone operator then asked him what his current phone number was, so he scraped the dust off the old phone and saw that the old city church already had the number that he wanted. He took this as a big deal, that God had this plan for him long before he himself had thought of it.

Gumbel told another story of a Christian friend of his who was getting serious with his non-believing girlfriend but wanted strongly for her to turn Christian before they could get married. He prayed that she’d become Christian before the end of the school term. The day came and she was still undecided, so they set off on a drive together with her giving out random directions until they suddenly found themselves at a church graveyard with row upon row of crosses. She took it as a sign and became Christian just before midnight.

Gumbel also spoke of many instances where he was thinking about a particular problem he had, when, suddenly and repeatedly, he’d be bombarded with many similar bible passages addressing the problem.

Of course, I think all these coincidences are just that: coincidences. Any extra meaning is put there by the person’s own mind. For instance, my dad was considering buying a cool early ‘80s Jaguar sedan. I had never paid much mind to this particular model of car before, but once he mentioned it, I was seeing them everywhere. A friend of mine had the exact same circumstantial experience when he was thinking of buying a new (different model of) car himself.

I have also been thinking of a problem, and then suddenly find myself bombarded with tv shows, magazine articles, quotes, etc, that have to do with that problem. Thing is, my problems where this occurs aren’t theological, moral, or even usually personal; mostly, they’re about some sort of trivial knowledge. It’s just that because I’ve been thinking about these problems, I take special note of stumbling upon items addressing the issue. There is no guidance from on high.

Hell, there are even atheist coincidences.

Part 2: Small Groups

Whoa, boy, lots and lots of circumstantial signs here. And way too much discussion of foot fungus as a sign. And too many mentions of watching Oprah (this also involved foot fungus; hence the talking of foot fungus as a sign by some of the people). One guy even made business decisions based on the circumstantial guidance of foot funguses. It was loopy.

Some guys didn’t buy that God would guide through coincidence, as there is just too much uncertainty and randomness there. Most, however, thought coincidences were undisputable proof of God’s guidance. Thus, most of the discussion was just people telling stories about their coincidences.

That everything happens for a reason and that coincidences are always more than just coincidences are unassailable facts to these people, and, indeed, many people, regardless of religion. I doubt that I would have been able to change any minds here, so I held my tongue.

We had run overtime and there wasn’t much time for discussion anyway.

Alpha Retreat teaser

I just returned from the Alpha Course weekend retreat which focused on the Holy Spirit. The retreat took place at a bible camp near Bancroft , Ontario , and a little over 40 of us from the Alpha Course attended. I’ll have a full report later (after I post about day 7), but for now I’ll give you a little summary of how it went down.

1) Discussions. The whole weekend was full of video sermons and discussions all focusing on one thing: the Holy Spirit. Holy crap, did I get sick of them going on and on about this piece of theological fluff.

2) Manifestations of the Holy Spirit (eg. Speaking in tongues). Sadly lacking.

3) Food. I kept hearing about how “amazing” the food was going to be from those who had gone to these retreats in previous years. While the food turned out to be okay, pretty good at times, it was far from amazing.

4) Accommodation. Accommodations were surprisingly good for a camp, kind of like a low-end but clean hotel. At least it was for couples and single women. Single men got old, dirty, cramped rooms that smelled like my grandfather’s cottage.

5) Free Time Activities. The camp had a pretty decent gym with ping pong, basketball, and floor hockey. In the rec floor hockey league than my wife and I play in, we’re both solid but not outstanding players. Compared to the inexperienced and not particularly athletic Alpha Course clientele attending the camp, we were like hockey gods. GODS, I say.

That’s about it. It was only a so-so weekend, with good people, okay food, and kind of boring and inconsequential discussions.

Oh, I also got into a giant (verbal) fight with a church elder, but I’m sure none of you would care to hear about that ;-)

Alpha Course Day 6: How and Why Should I Read the Bible?

Sorry I’m very late. Over a week late, actually (it'll only get worse since this weekend is the Alpha retreat - three sermons, a large group discussion, and a whole weekend of Christ stuff and eating). I blame the cold that I had that I thought went away until it punched me in the face and took me out of commission for a few days. I don’t know if it’s the illness or just general intellectual fatigue (teh stoopid has burned me out), but I let them off really easy today (too easy), despite the fact the group leader was itchin’ for a fight.

Dinner: Mmmmmmmm, sloppy joes. Dessert: Fresh fruit on yogurt with chocolaty bits on top.

Part 1: Sermon

The sermon today was on reading the bible. Gumbel’s main thrust was that it is of supreme importance to read the bible because it’s really precious. He illustrated this with a story about his youthful, newly Christian self smuggling bibles into communist Russia and the joy that these new bibles brought to the oppressed Christians there.

It’s the most popular book in regards to book sales on a yearly basis (though I would question how many of those bibles are actually read). It’s the most powerful book, in that Christians believe it’s a manual for life (and death), and it also serves as form of communication with God.

Strangely, Gumbel veered way off target early in the sermon to talk briefly about the bible and science. According to him, the bible tells us of God’s creation, and science allows us to explore even more of that creation which is not covered in the book. Because this is how it is, science and theology are not in conflict; rather, theology is like “the queen of sciences.” This argument is wrong. First, theology is not a science, let alone queen of them – the methods are very different, since theology is based on authority whereas science is based on experiment and observation. However, it would still be possible that science and theology wouldn’t be in conflict so long as the bible actually agreed with the findings of science. It does not on many levels; therefore, there IS conflict. Unfortunately, since the sermon was actually supposed to be about reading the bible and not about science vs. theology, I completely let this slide during the group discussion. Sigh. I blame my lax brain on still being sick.

Somewhere around here, he quoted Albert Einstein, who said "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," in order to again show that science and religion are the same. It seems like a weird quote for Einstein, a lapsed Jew, to make, but there it is. While it sounds good to Gumbel, I doubt that what Einstein really meant with this quote is what Gumbel hopes it means.

Interestingly, in his explanation for what the bible is, he says it was “inspired by God” but “he didn’t dictate,” meaning that the bible is fully the work of humans – 100% work of man and 100% inspired by God.¹ To explain this, he used the example of the famous British architect Christopher Wren. Wren, in the role of God in this analogy, “built” St. Paul ’s Cathedral, yet didn’t actually do any of the manual labour himself, since he was the architect. I think this analogy is horrible because architects dictate all the damn time, and the way things are built better damn well agree with what they say or else there’s trouble, but I’m just an engineer, so what do I know?

Gumbel also acknowledged that there are “historical and moral difficulties” in the bible. Strangely, he didn’t actually address what we’re to think about them. He gave one example of a historical difficulty (Luke 3:1-2), but showed that this was one historical difficulty that was solved (the gist was that one dude was mentioned as existed during the wrong time period, but subsequent textual findings discovered that another dude with the same name existed during the correct time period). As for moral difficulties, he mentioned the problem of suffering, but didn’t come to reconciliation about it. His summary about “difficulties” is that “We either abandon our faith or we wrestle with the problems. Therefore the bible is the supreme authority.” WTF? Seriously, he went straight from glossing over serious problems with the bible’s reliability to proclaiming it as the supreme authority in a single breath.

After this, Gumbel spent a great deal of time on the “relationship” aspect of reading the bible. He said it’s like “a love letter from God.” I wrote the word “CREEPY” in my course manual. My wife thought I was weird for thinking this way. Anyway, Gumbel’s point is that you have to live like the bible says, not just read and memorize, so in that, I have no disagreement. Except that this was done by AJ Jacobs in his book The Year of Living Biblically, and it did not go over that well.

Gumbel finished with suggestions on how to read the bible effectively. I guess because your average Christian is practically illiterate doesn’t actually read the bible. There sure are a lot of unread/partially read bibles out there.

Part 2: Small Groups

I don’t know if it’s the illness or just general intellectual fatigue (the stoopid has burned me out), but I let them off really easy today, despite the fact the group leader was itchin’ for a fight. As I mentioned, I didn’t fight them about science vs. the bible because I didn’t feel like it was relevant to the “how to read the bible” thing. I also completely forgot to ask them if they were biblical literalists or anything like that. Sorry, I dropped the ball.

The good news is that the lawyer guy brought up the topic of the various non-canonical gospels, like the Gospels of Judas, Thomas, and Mary. He seemed quite curious and not at all dismissive about them. The group leader answered this challenge by saying that the early church councils who decided on the New Testament canon must be correct because they prayed very hard to God and he guided their selections. I said “WTF? What the hell does that mean in real life?” So she tried to explain herself by essentially going on and on and on repeating herself about God guiding decisions for about 5 minutes. I gave up.

I also brought up the difficulties raised in translating and copying the bible (a few things I picked up from Bart Erhman’s Misquoting Jesus). Sadly, the blind faith crowd reared its ugly head again. According to one girl, translation errors “don’t matter because I know the bible’s true."

I don’t know about you, but I think this is a crazy viewpoint. Say I had an engineering drawing, it’s professionally done up, signed and sealed by some other professional engineer, looks all official and stuff. Looks good. However, it’s pretty damn old by some engineering company I’d never heard of. And I have strong reason to believe that the drawings originally had columns but they seem to have been removed by a later draftsman. And I have no idea if the rebar is supposed to be 25 mm diameter at 300 mm spacing or 15 mm diameter at 600 mm spacing. And the height of a wall is clearly wrong. I damn well wouldn’t sweep these issues under the rug or say “it doesn’t matter because the drawing is sealed and signed.” Those are serious issues. FAITH DOESN'T SOLVE THOSE PROBLEMS.

Finally, we readdressed the African tribal issue from many weeks ago. Amazingly, one girl changed her mind back to our original position that says you only get to heaven through accepting Jesus, and that the tribals are screwed, even going so far as to have a serious disagreement with one of the more “feelings-oriented” girls in the group who had been arguing for more subjective entry standards for those who haven’t had a chance to learn about Jesus.

¹ You know, whenever a believer says that God can do anything within the realms of logic so he CAN’T make 2 + 2 = 5, I get a little headachy, since believers usually take great pride in beating the dead horse that 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 and 100% + 100% = 100%.

Alpha Course Day 5: Additional Prayer Journal Stuff

I forgot to add a few words about Nicky Gumbel's prayer journal. In his Alpha sermon, he recommends that everyone keep a prayer journal. That way you can record all the stuff you pray for and you can "tick" off every prayer that comes true. He says that you'll be amazed how many more ticks than not ticks you will have, and it will convince you of the power of prayer.

Funny, for I've heard that for most people it generally follows that the more of a longshot the prayer is, the more unlikely it is to be fulfilled, and for most people when all prayers, probable and improbable, are taken into account, perhaps 50-50 is the best way of putting it, ie. It’s no different than luck.

Remember all the hubbub about scientific studies testing the effects of prayer on heart surgery patients? And remember how those studies showed that prayer had no effect? And remember how all the religious apologists said that you can’t put God to the test in that way? Well, so much for not putting God to the test in all those prayer-health studies. These prayer journals could easily be viewed as a very rudimentary prayer study, and Gumbel says that they do work.

Does God only answer the prayers of people who won’t publish in a scientific journal? If so, what a bastard, eh?

Alpha Course Day 5: How and Why Should I Pray?

Over the weekend, I came down with an annoying and persistent cold, so I ended up hunkering down on the couch watch TV the whole weekend…which was pretty much what I planned on doing the whole weekend anyway, so being sick was no real loss. However, I wasn’t fully healed and energetic by this Tuesday’s Alpha Course. I went, but was not my normal combative self. Then again, perhaps my lack of combativeness was due to the letdown from my frustrations last week. Regardless, here comes Day 5’s blog

Dinner: Surprisingly, they made fajitas. Not good fajitas, mind you – by far not enough meat – but still acceptable given the venue. Nice smoky beans and rice, too. Dessert: Personal angel food cakes with lots of fresh fruit and ice cream. Kudos to the cook for two weeks of enjoyable food.

Part 1: Sermon

No names were dropped this week, though Billy Graham was involved in one of Gumbel’s storys. Strangely, Gumbel used Carl Sagan’s “billions and billions” of stars comment (though he left it unattributed) to say how awesome God was. The gist was that God created all the stars and things in the heavens for us during a single day in Genesis, so, yes; God has time to deal with every single one of our prayers.

For the most part, the sermon just covered the basics of how to pray. Gumbel stated that it is important to pray because prayer is two-way communication with God. We should ensure our prayers deal with four topics (Gumbel calls it "A.C.T.S"): Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.

Gumbel said that we’re supposed to pray to God “through Jesus” whatever the hell that means. (Though didn’t Jesus say to pray using the Lord’s prayer, which doesn’t refer to Jesus himself at all?) He made this clear with a weird statement that we have "no right to speak directly to God." Huh?

He also tried to answer why God doesn’t appear to answer all prayers. Possibly you are praying for something that is morally wrong. Sometimes God has a different plan for you that is better than your plans (Gumbel assures that God always makes better plans than you). But often it is because you have a mental barrier in your faith, such as committing a sin that you fail to recognize and ask forgiveness for, or not trusting in God to answer your prayer in the best way.

Gumbel also stated how prayer was the most important thing you can do. Oh, how I wish more Christians lived like this (and just sat at home praying instead of screwing with science education, human rights, etc).

Part 2: Small Groups

I wasn’t very combative this day, as I was battling a cold, and for the most part the discussion stuck the plain prayer – what people like to pray for, what they were struggling with that could prevent them from having communications with God, etc – so I generally didn’t say much or challenge anything today. There are of course things I could have said, but I suspect they wouldn’t have much impact in the discussion we were having. For some good questions and comments about prayer, check out Ebon Musings.

We discussed the convolutedness of who we are supposed to pray to. Many group members didn't like what Gumbel said about not having a right to speak directly to God. Do we have to pray to Jesus, as the sermon stated? Or is it to both, either by simply interchanging “God” and “Jesus” at random, or via praying to God, but ending the prayer with “we pray this in Jesus’ name,” as many pastors do? Or is it just to God, as many of our worried group members pray, and how the Lord’s Prayer, as given by Jesus in the Gospels, says?

To end the discussion, the group leader lead a prayer according to what was talked about it the sermon.

Let me fill you in on one aspect of Christian prayer I have learned over the years that was reinforced here. To pray properly, you have to absolutely ensure that you say “God” or “Lord” or “Father” or “Lord God” or “Father God” or “Heavenly Father” or even “Lord Heavenly Father God” a lot. In general, every sentence should start with one of these, every sentence should end with one of these, and there should be one of these in the vicinity of most commas. It is really, really annoying.