Alpha week one: Who is Jesus?

This is probably my fourth time through Alpha, and I still wound up taking notes.  The main point of this talk was C.S. Lewis's question "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?"

Freud said people were hungry for love.  Jung said people were hungry for security.  Adler said people were hungry for significance.  We have a chronic lack of good, living role models.  Jesus can provide love, security, and significance.

There was also some documentary evidence of the authenticity of the New Testament, compared to the histories of Herodotus, and Ceaser's Gallic War.  No-one really has any problem with the Gallic War, but we only have about ten copies of it, dating from 950 years after he wrote it.  There are well over five thousand New Testament manuscripts in Greek alone, with a time gap of at most three hundred years, but it's been questioned far more than the others.

It's going to be an interesting course.  The diversity of people is amazing, in age, background, education, and personality.  The role of a leader in an Alpha course is to start the discussion rolling, then shut up.  We're not to steer the guests to a conclusion, lecture them, correct them.  We shut up and listen, and let them thrash it out.  I think half of the value of Alpha is in the chats over food, before and after.

God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.


C.S. Lewis