Christianity – Boring, Untrue and Irrelevant?

Transcript of Alpha introduction talk

Personal Misconceptions
Before I became a Christian, like many I held these three main objections to the Christian faith.
i. Firstly, I thought it was so boring. Everything that I associated with church I found boring.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in his diary one day “I have been to church and I am not depressed”.
• Heard story of child looking at the list of names on a church wall during a rather long boring sermon; whispered to his dad; “who were they dad?” “the names of those who died in the services!” With some concern; “was it the morning or evening services?”

Frankly – although the church worldwide is growing very rapidly – it has to be said that large parts of the Church in England have been in steady decline for some years. In fact some have been speculating that even God may be wanting to leave the Church of England!

An article appeared in Private Eye magazine awhile back – that went like this;

‘God to Leave Church of England’
Following the precedent set by leading former Anglicans, God has indicated that He too is to leave the Church of England. Friends of God believe that the issue of women priests is behind the Almighty’s sudden decision to convert to Rome. According to sources close to God he’s been unhappy for some time with the direction the Anglican Church has been taking and has now finally had enough. A Church of England spokesman said, “Losing God is a bit of a blow, but its just something we’re going to have to live with.”’

Like many, my brief exposure to a few churches, plus the experience of public school assemblies was enough to instil a boredom alarm system.
ii. Secondly, because nobody in my childhood spoke of Christ with any authority or passion – I also though it was untrue.
At school we sang the hymn ‘Jerusalem’, a well known hymn with the line; “and did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green?” and we all knew the answer was no they did not! Jesus never came near England.

iii. Thirdly I thought it was irrelevant to my life. I couldn’t see what relevance it had to the things that I was interested in.
Like most young people I just wanted to have fun – to have lots of girlfriends, make it big with my rock band, make lots of money, and have a good time. And I couldn’t see what somebody who lived 2000 years ago & 2000 miles away, what relevance they could have to my life today.

So I thought it was boring untrue and irrelevant. But at same time I was ignorant, I knew very little about the Christian faith, and I find that today many people don’t know much about the Christian faith…

My wife used to teach in a West Midlands school and I remember her reading to me some of the answers to a test she set the (older) youth. “A Christian is someone who grows their own vegetables” “Jesus was a Goth, which is why we have gothic Churches”. I actually knew little more than they did.

So I had no real interest – but I was ignorant, and looking back I would say there was something missing from my life. It was an unrest expressed by a low boredom threshold. At the time I was always looking forward to the next thing..
Be it the next holiday…
When I leave school…
When I get a girlfriend…
When I get a new girlfriend…

So what does Christianity have to do with life today?

Jesus claimed to be the bread of life, the one who could satisfy the hunger in our hearts. He said; “I am the Way the Truth and the Life.”

First of all he gives..

1. Direction to a lost world
“I am the Way”. I am the one who can give meaning and purpose to life.

A couple had a Swedish au-pair girl looking after their two young children. She had not quite mastered the English idioms. One day the children were having a row in the bedroom. She burst into the room and what she meant to say was “What on earth are you doing?” but what she actually said was “what are you doing on earth?” Now the question she asked was a very good one! What are we doing on earth? What is the meaning the purpose of our lives? Where have we come from, where are we heading? Who are we?
They are what you might call the first order questions of life. Many people spend their whole lives searching for answers to them.

Freddie Mercury (singer with the rock band Queen) amassed a huge fortune, attracted countless thousands of fans, but he admitted in an interview shortly before his death that he was desperately lonely. He said; “You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man, and that is the most bitter type of loneliness. Success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds, but it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need – a loving, ongoing relationship”.

And ultimately there is only one relationship that is completely loving and totally ongoing, and that is a relationship with God. Jesus said I am the way to that relationship. Once we experience that relationship – the hunger inside is satisfied. We begin to get a new perspective on everything else in life.
One of saddest thing is to see somebody coming to the end of their life and never having found what life was all about. The theologian Helmut Tinica said God would have to put at the end of some peoples lives; “brilliant performance, but they missed the whole point”. The whole point of life is to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus said I am the way to that relationship.

2. Jesus brings Reality to a confused world
Jesus said “I am the Way, I am the TRUTH.

Sometimes people say –“That’s lovely for you – but I don’t need a crutch. Surely this is for weak people who need something to fill a gap in their lives?”
Logically that can’t be the case. If Christianity is true – then its true for everyone! And if it’s not true – then actually we are basing our lives on a lie, and that’s very sad.

CS Lewis said this “Christianity is a statement which if false is of no importance. But if true is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important”.
Is it true? – that’s the question we look at on the second week of Alpha when we look at the evidence for the life , death and in particular the resurrection of Jesus Christ – because the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the Lynch pin of Christianity. And what you discover is that there is so much evidence. I have found it fascinating to look at people who are used to looking at evidence and see how many of them have come to the conclusion that Jesus did rise from the dead.

Historians; like Thomas Arnold who was professor of history at Oxford. He described the resurrection of Jesus Christ as “the best attested fact of history.”
Scientists; most of the scientific pioneers were believers; Descartes, Newton, Kepler, Galileo Locke Copernicus, Faraday, Boyle , Mendel, Kelvin, Pastor, Lister, Maxwell. Simpson. James Simpson – the man whose discoveries paved the way for painless surgery. He was once asked; “what’s the most important discovery that you’ve ever made?” “The most important discovery I’ve ever made was the day I discovered Jesus Christ.”
Lawyers; Frank Morison was an atheist barrister who decided to put the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus through a legal trial – in order to write a book proving it was false. He describe it as the book that would not be written – instead he came to the conclusion that the evidences surrounding the resurrection were as conclusive as any required for a true verdict. He had to write another book called “Who moved the stone”.

But when Jesus said “I am the truth” he meant more than merely intellectual truth. The Hebrew understanding of truth was truth as experienced. There’s a difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge.
Let me share this analogy; I have been married to wife for over 29 years, but imagine if before I had even met her I went into a bookshop and saw a book entitled ‘Julie the amazing woman’. And I thought oh that looks interesting. And I opened it up and saw
Chapter 1: Her extraordinary intelligence.
Ch 2: Her sparkling personality
Ch3: Her potential to be a long-suffering wife.
Ch4: Her incredible cooking skills
Ch5: Her dislike of camping. (Almost as great as mine!)

Suppose I looked at all this and thought “wow she sounds like an amazing person” I would know all that from what I had read & that would be head knowledge. But there’s a difference between then and now, when I can tell you “She is an amazing person!” That’s heart knowledge.
And when Christians say “We believe that Jesus is the truth” Its not just head knowledge looking at the evidence; partly its that, but its more than that. Its experiencing a relationship with him. Knowing him as the truth.

Jesus said “I am the WAY, I am the TRUTH and I am the LIFE.

3. Jesus brings LIFE in a DARK WORLD
Everyone is very aware in these days that there is something desperately wrong with our world – Jesus came to set us free from the things in our life that are wrong. Now the things that are wrong in our life are very different from the mistakes that we make. The mistakes we make can be relatively harmless.

Honest mistakes made in exams
• “In the 1st book of the bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children Cain asked; “am I my brothers son?”
•“Moses led the people of Israel to the Red sea where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients at all. Moses went up on Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, he died before he ever reached Canada”
•“The Greeks were a sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had Myths. A myth is a female moth.”
•“Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died of an overdose of wedlock. After his death his career suffered a dramatic decline.”
• “Julias Ceasar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The eyes of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out ‘Tee Hee Brutus’”.
• “Yohan Bach wrote a great many of musical compositions and had a great number of children. In Between he practiced on an old spinster, which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German and half Italian and half English. He was very large.”

The mistakes we make are relatively harmless but there is such a thing as true guilt. There is such a thing as false guilt, but also certainly in my case there is such a thing as true guilt – things that I know that I’ve done wrong or said wrong or thought wrong. But the wonderful news is this ; God loves You and me. And because he loves us so much He’s come to do something about it. And Jesus on the cross died for you and for me. On the cross he took everything I’ve ever done wrong and everything you’ve ever done wrong, everything we’ve said wrong or thought wrong. And he died instead of us. He died for our sins. And the amazing news is, because of that we can be free – free from guilt, we can receive total forgiveness. We can be set free from addiction to the things that so often we hate and would love to get rid of. We are set free from death! Jesus died and he rose again from the dead, so that one day all of us who put our faith in him too can rise to a new life. He defeated death and with that he defeated the fear of death and all the fears that go with it. He made it possible for us to have a relationship with God – to Know God. He made it possible for us to love – to love with a new dimension. To go out into the world, to make a difference with his Spirit living within us. To change into the people that deep down we so often really want to be.

Now it’s not easy to be a Christian. In fact I think in many ways its much harder to be a true Christian today than not to be a Christian. It wasn’t easy for Jesus. But it is such good news. Because God loves us. And what Jesus has made possible for us – its not boring, its so exciting. Its not untrue – its true. And its not irrelevant. Its totally relevant to every single one of us. Because Jesus said I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.

Now I know there will be different responses to what I’ve been talking about. Some of you may never been in a church before in your life. but you say; ‘Yes! Absolutely – I know that. I am today experiencing you saying “a relationship with God through Jesus Christ”’. Maybe you come from a Methodist, or a Catholic, or a Baptist background. That really today is not the most important thing. The most important thing is to have that relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Others of you may respond in a different way. When Paul went to Athens there were three different types of responses. He spoke about Jesus and the resurrection. And I guess its possible there are those different reactions here.

Some sneered.
And if you are sneering please don’t think that I’m standing looking down in judgement on you, because I sneered. I went to talks like this and I sneered at it.

Others said; “I’d like to hear more”
They said ‘we are not yet convinced – but we’d like to hear more’.
And if you are in that category I would urge you to explore. To investigate for yourself. You can do that on your own, get hold of a bible – read the New Testament. Or you could go along to a church; any church, and say “have you got a course that I could go on to explore the meaning of life in a Christian context?”

There are 7000 churches running Alpha courses – within striking distance of everyone in the country. Or you could come on the Alpha course here at The Well. We’d love to have you. You are very welcome on the course. But it doesn’t matter how you do it the only thing that I would say to you is this is so important its worth spending ten evenings of your life investigating and exploring it.

And in Athens it says; ‘some believed’.
They said “that’s all we need to hear, that’s what we want” And it may be that there’s someone here in that category now. You’ve come, first time here, or there may be somebody whose been through the whole of the Alpha course or been to a church for some time, and you haven’t yet reached that point of saying ‘I really believe.’ Maybe you’d like to do that. And I’d like to make it possible. It may be just one person, but I would love us to make it possible for that one person – if they would like to – to pray a prayer in their heart that makes it possible for you to be sure that you’re in that relationship with God, through Jesus Christ. And here’s a prayer that you can pray in your heart right now. …

Lord Jesus Christ, thank you that you are the Way the Truth and the Life. I am sorry for the things in my life that have been wrong. (Just take a moment to turn away from anything that you know is wrong). Thank you that you died on the cross for me. I now receive your forgiveness. And I ask you to come into my life, by your Spirit, to be with me forever. Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen.