At the end of June, a group of some 20 people met in the Five Bells to discuss the big questions of life.  The discussion, lead by Philip Cochrane from Farnham and our own Dave Stickland, considered a wide range of themes:  the balance of rights and responsibilities;  do we as individuals matter;  are we in moral decline;  what is the Christian perspective of these and the other issues of the modern world?  This was the first time such a forum had been attempted and the outcome was entirely unpredictable.  In the event it cannot be pretended that any of the questions was answered fully but a good and sometimes quite lively discussion was had.

So, what next?  It was felt that the first session, being a wide ranging one that was inevitably rather superficial, might have prepared the ground for a deeper discussion of a more limited range of subjects.  Accordingly, there will be a Big Question (The Sequel) session in the Seward Room on Sunday 20th September at 7.30pm.  This time the focus will be very specific.  We will concentrate on one question:  why does a loving God allow suffering?

Why, indeed?  A loving entity would not decree it because it is good for us!  The causes of natural disasters often lie in our own laziness, greed or violence;  if they were not actually man made then they were certainly made far worse by our actions.  Again, great suffering is caused by poverty;  it is obvious how much of this is caused by sin, greed, oppression, injustice, corruption, failure to face unpalatable truths – a selfish apathy.  On the other hand, physical laws rule our universe;  without the laws taking the form they do we would not even exist so, in a very real sense, they were made for us.  The hardest cases are illness, premature death - suffering, for which we can’t be held to be the cause – plus God’s apparent failure to protect the innocent.  But do we think imaginatively of a world without suffering of any kind, one where much that we most venerate couldn’t exist:  no courage, endurance, heroism, fortitude or compassion, because none of these would be required;  no great music, because there would be no depths to explore.  In our experience, great love and suffering are inseparable.  Finally, we came back to ourselves.  We have options to do as we wish, for good or ill.  The human condition being what it is, we often exercise the options for ill.  Hence the propensity to get things wrong, to behave selfishly or unwisely and so to become the authors of much

of the suffering which we seek to attribute to others, or even to God.

(later)  Having considered the second question, we went on to a third, naturally enough.  This one was Christian-specific:  "who is the Church for?"  This should have had obvious answers, one would have thought, but that didn't stop an energetic discussion.  Yes, we agreed, the church is for everyone.  Various quotations from the Bible implying otherwise were reviewed:  both Mark and Paul referred to an inner church of the initiated (or priesthood, as we might understand it today);  we touched on women priests - and Paul had something to say about them too!;  on modern Samaritans, prodigal sons and lost sheep.  In spite of all of this, we came back to the view that the Church was indeed for everyone but they don't necessarily realise it!

(even later)  "Should politics and religion mix?" was an interesting question.  The discussion spanned religion in general and it was agreed generally that they were and should be inseparable at a personal level.  Higher up the structure, we considered the establishment of the Church of England but were less conclusive;  the structure of the House of Lords was also felt to be unsatisfactory but with little coherence on the alternative options;  and the concept of the religious state was unacceptable for fear of dictatorship.

"Press: Religion: Bias?" provoked an interesting discussion.  Yes, we are all biased to some degree and so, inevitably, is the media.  It is our responsibility to understand what is being presented.  As to religion, there was a natural and expected bias in the publications such as the Church Times;  on the other hand, the wider media was felt to have an anti-religious bias consistent with the increasingly secular state in which we live.  (Ed.:  There is an interesting article by Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist, in the 22/23 May 2010 FT Weekend Magazine on the subject of media bias.  He concludes that reader opinions and news reporting, as opposed to media opinions, are mutually self selecting:  we read what we like to read and accept its point of view, bias and all, because it is the same as ours;  and a newspaper, for example, publishes the news in the way that it does because it matches the needs of its particular readers.)

"Are the ten commandments valid today?"  Yes, we agreed, but they were aspirational in many respects:  we all fail against their standards to a greater or lesser extent.  That said, they still provide moral guidance:  many countries use the last six of them in their legal codes and Christians accept them all as the word of God.  The context of the commandments, the covenant between the giver and receiver, and their place in the exodus were discussed;  we heard of the freedoms the commandments gave as well as the limitations on punishments;  and we added Jesus's two commandments in the New Testament to the ten (love the Lord your God ...;  love your neighbour ...);  but it was accepted that today's societies have little regard for secular authorities, let alone religious ones.  We then discussed whether any body has the authority to compel people to accept a legally enforceable moral code, the obvious example being the Islamic state based on Sharia law but there are similar Christian, Jewish and other systems, albeit less formal and on smaller scales.  We didn't reach a specific conclusion but agreed they were generally not good things;  the balance between an individual's moral code and the state's need to provide collective services is too often skewed in favour of the latter.  Dave's final thought - Lord, have mercy upon us and write all these thy laws in our hearts - was well received (especially as it was his last Big Question as our priest).

The next Big Question will be on Sunday 15th August in the Seward Room at 7.30pm, subject to be agreed.