What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Best Questions in the World

07/03/2014
We offer a course at St Mary’s every now and then called the God Factor. You may have heard me mention it. It works like lots of church courses in that folk gather around food and have a conversation. In our case we gather around the best pizzas in town which come from just across the road and most of the courses have chosen to meet on a Sunday lunchtime.

However, the God Factor is different from a lot of courses that churches run because I can’t tell you what will happen exactly from one course to the next. I can’t give you the book. I can’t give you a plan for what those on the God Factor will all learn. Why so? Well, because the participants set the agenda. The first meeting is all about collecting questions from the group. Those questions are then grouped and tackled by the group over about eight weeks. The idea is that they get to use those running the course (clergy and laity) as a resource to try to find answers to the questions that have been logged at the beginning.

For those who want a bit of pedagogy, this arises out of a situation where the Vice Provost is into Paulo Freire and the Provost is known to read Ivan Illich in the bath, but let us not be too technical and get too distracted by methodoloty right now. Because the exciting thing is that we’ve just got the questions for the course that is beginning at the moment.

I think these are the best questions in the world to get a group to try to answer. See what you think below. Oh, and if you want to join in with this course and engage in trying to find the answers to these then get in touch with the Vice Provost using this contact form.

The Questions – God Factor – March 2014

Bible
- Is it OK to disagree with some bits of the Bible?
- Do I have to believe everything in the Bible?
- What is the best way to read the Bible?
- If the Bible was written in approximately 400 AD, how accurate is it?
- Why are only some Gospels used today?
Church and churches
- How does the Scottish Episcopal Church choose its clergy?
- Who are Episcopalians and how do they differ from Catholics and other Protestants?
- What is the Church for? Couldn’t we do without it?
- Why are there so many different denominations?
- So few people go to church these days; will it change or simply die out?
Doctrine
- Is God male or female? Black, Chinese, White?
- How will I know that God has accepted me? Forgiven me?
- Can you lose your faith, find it and lose it again in your one lifetime?
- Is there such a thing as condemnation?
- Is ‘God’ a male?
- Reincarnation – does it exist?
- Do you think suicide is a coward’s way out?
- Spiritual ‘dry spells’ – what to do during them.
- What ‘sins’ cannot be forgiven?
- How do we define sin?
- Is there an afterlife? If so, what does it look like?
- Is there a hell?
Ethics
- Why is the Church obsessed with sex?
- Why does a message of peace and love end up causing war, suicide bombings and so much hatred?
- Why so many different rules and regulations, e.g. on birth control and same sex marriage?
- The Vatican = corruption? Wealth? I struggle with their beliefs – no birth control, third world women dying etc.
- Was there any truth in the Da Vinci Code book?
- Why do the different denominations of the Church always seem to be at odds with each other?
- Is faith just for sad people and those who need a crutch?
- Why are so many religions intolerant of different people, e.g. gay people, and contraception?
- Should the Church be involved in politics?
God and Jesus
- Is Jesus God or just a way to God?
- Why did Jesus allow himself to be crucified?
- Will Jesus return?
- Was Jesus God or human?
- Does God exist?
- Why does God not intervene on issues of poverty/hunger etc?
- What does God look like/feel like?
- Was Mary really a virgin when pregnant?
Other faiths/religions
- Why is Christianity different to other faiths?
- Why are there so many different religions?
- Why has religion caused so many wars?
- Why is the Jewish religion so feared? Hated?
- How should we respond to people of different faiths?
- Relationship between Christianity and other faiths.
- Is the Christian faith the only way? What about good Buddhists, Muslims and Humanists?
- Is war and bad weather judgement from God?
Worship
- How can I learn to pray?
- When during services do people ‘cross’ themselves and why?
- Would Scottish independence be good for the UK?
- Does God really love everyone? What about those who reject him?
- How does prayer work? Is there a right and a wrong way to pray?
- Why does it feel so incredibly peaceful in a church?
- Why is incense used?
- Why is the Eucharist important?
beginners, faith, God Factor

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
  Reply
Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply