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Let's Talk About Alpha

Cochise said:
I was curious about that as well.

I wonder why we of the Abrahamic religions are so insistent on there being one way to true faith. Why wouldn't there be multiple paths? God himself has obviously changed his approach over the millennia, if the Bible has any meaning at all. No-one gets turned into pillars of salt any more.
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Different religions are different paths up the same mountain.
 
My father was a non practising Catholic as well. I still remember the day a priest and 2 nuns came to the door and told my Mother if she didn't send me to the Catholic school I would be going straight to hell.
She didn't and I haven't yet.
 
Steven said:
If only he hadn't used his own background-story as, apparently, an exemplar. What he evidently viewed as an example for us to learn from actually came across not only as bragging and a claim of personal 'specialness' but also as flawed. His coming from a background of poverty; ruining his married life by his debauchery; eventually - after much wild and selfish living - finding Christ at the bottom of a bottle; none of this speaks to me of a piety we should admire. In truth, it speaks to me of finding faith as a last resort when, ideally, it should've been first if one were genuinely a pious and admirable person. Lowest ebbs and last resorts are the easy route to personal salvation or redemption or whatever; a case of saying "Oh well, I've had my fun and now I've nothing left to lose, so I might as well try this." It's great if someone emerges from a personal crisis and then lives a better life; just don't make out to others that your experiences make you Christ-like and a shining example to follow, and then expect to be taken seriously.
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It sounds more like he's pushing for sainthood.
Nowt wrong with having faith and trying to lead a better life for yourself and those around them. It's quite another thing to tell other people what to do, setting yourself up as a God's representative.
 
Stormkhan said:
It sounds more like he's pushing for sainthood.
Nowt wrong with having faith and trying to lead a better life for yourself and those around them. It's quite another thing to tell other people what to do, setting yourself up as a God's representative.
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Maybe he & we would've been better-served if he had used the example of a person other than himself? If for instance he'd said something like "Ask yourself if you've lived a truly Christian life as Saintly Figure XYZ or Unheralded Obscure Person ABC did" then that might've worked. For all the often-justified bad press the Catholic Church gets, there are plenty of genuinely selfless examples he could've chosen from.

Curiously enough, whenever I mentioned someone I consider a good example of a selfless person - Pope John Paul I, who reigned only for thirty-three days back in the Seventies - the Catholics in the group said nothing...as if the circumstances of his tenure and his death were an embarrassment somehow.
 
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Trouble is, most people are so jaded that they can't accept someone as being selfless or essentially good.
This is why when someone is held up as exemplary, there begins a search for the dirty linen.
 
Stormkhan said:
Trouble is, most people are so jaded that they can't accept someone as being selfless or essentially good.
This is why when someone is held up as exemplary, there begins a search for the dirty linen.
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Yes, despite most people having known someone who fits the bill and is uncelebrated or even unknown; the kind of person mentioned in the lovely final lines of Middlemarch:

'But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half-owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.'
 
Iris said:
My father was a non practising Catholic as well. I still remember the day a priest and 2 nuns came to the door and told my Mother if she didn't send me to the Catholic school I would be going straight to hell.
She didn't and I haven't yet.
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Seems like a strange marketing campaign/recruiting tactic for them to employ. More stick and less carrot.
 
I had already started at the state schoool. There was a neighbouring family whose daughter was due to go to the catholic school and apparently they wanted me to be able to walk with her.
As I've written before I had already joined the local C of E myself so my Mother had arranged for me to go there.
It did make me wary whenever I saw any of those Catholic clergy in the future though, and the Cof E minister and his family were such lovely people.
 
I went to a CofE primary school then a non-religous secondary school.
The first was distinctly low-key. Went to the church over the road in the usual seasons - Easter, Harvest Festival, Christmas etc. We had morning assembly with a Lords Prayer and one hymn. Apart from that, the religion was muted.
The second would have music (of many different genres), a pause for 'private meditation or thought'. Pupils would be allowed to attend local churches etc. if they wished.
While the age difference counts, I learned more about different faiths in secondary school because we were exposed to many other believers.
 
""She's transformed," a Christian said. "We all joke about how everyone thinks we're mad happy clappers who don't drink or smoke or swear or have sex or do anything that isn't good (we don't, of course) and Geri joins in. It's a long road for her..."

Blimey. How to call somebody an old slapper - but nicely....
 
AgProv said:
Or bears. (must be female bears). That's the Biblically-approved way of dealing with sneering snotty kids. (2 Kings 2:23-15)
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is the origin of lick them into shape I think, according to mediaeval bestiaries.
 
It was the final insult of many. :D Not unique, though, as outlined in...er...John 24/7 Chapter 3...or something:

And lo, it came to pass that Asda closed early on Sundays. And so the Lord's helpers had to bestow Blue Riband wafers upon the hungry Alpha people. "WTF is this poxy rubbish?!?!?" lamented the ingrate heretic Steven, "I'm not eating this crap. It's put me right off Crispy...Christianity."

"Fret not, O cheapskate one," sayeth Sister Teasmaid, "That bloody priest hath scoffed the lot anyway."

And there was disquiet across the land...
 
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