T +53

Dear Piglet,

today i just had my first session of the alpha course. Met a few people like minsuk, scott, david and lou. Lou's a pastor participating in the course and they all happened to be in my group. Watched a video where the speaker tried to validate the existence of God, Jesus and the Bible itself. hmmm, i'm not convinced totally. Most of his arguments are based from the New Testament itself. If the existence of the Bible weren't true, his arguments would have felled utterly. But how could one totally negate its existence after its influence on so many people's lives and that it has existed throughout the whole of the past 2000 years.

Somethings Lou said that i thought should be written down for future personal reference. He tried to explain how Christianity was different from Islam and Judaism in that the latter two follow a set of rules, e.g. the Law of Moses. And that in being a Christian, it is faith beyond just following a set of rules. Because, just by following rules make you appear to be a good person, but you are not on the inside. If you do not murder a person but have an evil thought about a person, you would have murdered him anyway. And therefore Christianity is about changing a person from the inside. Sounds really logical and very much acceptable argument for me. But i do not know enough about Islam and Judaism, but do they only base their faith on these rules and regulations whereas Christians follow the example of Jesus himself. Same or different? No one knows unless one knows about all these religions

It was nice to hear about other people's experiences with Christianity and why they went into it. And as Lou said, some people come for the course to fufil their intellectual needs, particularly refering to me i guess. The group discussion went a bit slow though, wasn't as spontaneous as i would have wanted it to be. I shall just try to be as vocal as i can, nobody would hate me anyway. So yeah, got to start breezing through the entire bible soon before i can come up with questions to challenge other people.

And yet, i pray that i will be convinced in the end.

Bear