Take an Alpha course

and still there are cob-webs to be cleared. But then way to go…

which was about “Why Jesus died for us?” – the most controversial part which I always fail to understand. Still I haven’t found answers for a lot of questions here.

The first class was entirely secular and was all about whether God exists or not.

There were lot of reasons given to prove God’s existence – like creation of the universe, creation of living organisms etc. I felt these were non-personal and irrelevant to me. But then there was this reason – transformation of lives – which I felt was relevant.

On second thoughts, transformation of life can happen because of a lot of things – demise of a family member or disapproval from someone we adore the most. In both these cases I have seen people undergo a 180 degree transformation.

The second class was all about Jesus. It was about the proofs of Jesus’ existence, about his divinity etc etc. There were a lot of things I seemed to disagree with at this point. I have seen how people can make a man divine – just like that. On retrospection, I also saw that there was this need in people to have a God or a religion.

P.S : I have added a question in here and please do leave your answer as comments.

3rd Oct

Yeahhh… and I am all set to go!

Btw, I am not going to set this to completed, unless I complete the Alpha course.

I am born into a Christian family. But I have a lot of questions that needs answers to. This is actually a milestone to one of my other goals – Identify my Religion

I think I want to take the Alpha course again someday in hopes that it will serve me better the second time around.

Truth be told, I dropped out of the course shortly after the halfway point, after the retreat. Part of the reason was that I probably was looking for something more intellectually stimulating, though I always learned something from Nicky Gumbel’s talks.

What bugged me the most was my small group situation. The group leaders were great, but the other members all seemed to be in a different place - personally, spiritually, intellectually - than me. This is not to say that I’m in a better place, just different. (Also, there was one particularly annoying guy who monopolized the discussion with tangents and platitudes, and I couldn’t handle him anymore. Of course, now he’s in my church membership classes, proving once again that God has a sense of humor.)

In any case, I would still recommend Alpha, especially for people who are sincerely seeking and looking for answers in life through Christianity.

The class I hope to take starts this week. I hope it’s worth the split-day weekends I’ll be having for the next 3 months.