The Hard Questions

Christopher Lamb chaired a couple of evenings on Hard Questions at St Peter’s recently. Here are two of the questions put anonymously, and a suggested answer to each.

How can we reconcile evolution with God? When did we become aware of God, develop a faith? When we crawled out of the swamp or came down from the trees?

As far as we can tell, religion started as soon as human beings developed a capacity for wonder, for asking questions about things. Religion of some sort is as old as human beings – especially associated with mountains, deserts and remote places where people may ask ‘why am I here? What’s it all for?’ Some may regard these as pointless questions: ‘why not just get on with living?’ But it doesn’t stop people asking them.

Most Christians I know have no problem in believing in the Bible and in evolution. The Bible writers didn’t imagine they were writing science or history as we know them, but a deeper truth altogether. The book of Genesis is saying that there is an author of the universe, that he or she is personal not just a force, and communicates with us. We are made to be like God, but we took a wrong turning and need to be restored. The Big Bang is science’s Genesis. Scientists can’t explain why it happened or what was ‘before’ 13.4 billion years ago, or what will happen ‘after’ the universe eventually collapses in on itself. Science asks the question How, and gives us some interesting answers. Religion asks Why, an altogether more difficult question.

If God loves us, why does all this awful stuff happen in the world?

God made a world which is genuinely dangerous. If I decide to jump off Beachy Head I will almost certainly be killed. If the world wasn’t dangerous it would be a sort of dream world where we could never know what would happen next, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. How boring! As human beings we live in a tiny space, where basic conditions like gravity, temperature and atmosphere are just right for human survival – but only just. When major storms and earthquakes happen we realise how fragile our existence is, and how much we need each other to survive at all. This is the natural world, which human beings have made enormous efforts to control, and made a lot of mistakes along the way, but had huge adventures!

Then there is the man-made stuff where things go wrong through malice, viciousness, anger, fear, deceit, neglect, stupidity and all the other things we are capable of. Where does it all come from? Why does God allow these evils in his world? The answer has to be that it is our choice. God shares his own freedom with us, and has given us the freedom to be ‘good’ not because we have to be, but because we want to be. Part of being ‘good’ means being mature enough to take responsibility for others, especially the weak and the vulnerable, children and the frail elderly. Children must be stopped from bullying one another before they grow up to do the same things as adults, causing untold misery. Most of us need to really grow up.

New Burial Ground

For some years now St Peter’s Church, with the Wellesbourne Parish Council, has been working on an extension to the Burial Ground The present graveyard is becoming overcrowded and, rather than close it as so many other Churches have done, we wanted to enlarge ours and thus retain this valuable facility for future generations of Wellesbourne people.

The new site is to the south-west of the Church on part of what used to be Glebe land and the Parish Council have funded the purchase of the site, planning permission has been granted and we are almost ready to start work.

Kineton Local History Group

Most of the activities of Kineton Local History Group involve the past history of the area - the visit in July was to a building open for less than a year: the Sikh Gurdwara Sahib in Leamington.

The party was greeted by the young man who was to be the guide, and our first impression was of the mixture of warmth and reverence that pervaded the building: everyone, visitors and regular worshippers, removed their shoes and donned headscarves, and as people came and went into the central worship area where the Holy Book was being read, all, even the apparently elderly, sat on the floor, relaxed and attentive. Any children present seemed perfectly at home in the space, and free to move around without causing any disturbance. I think that after some minutes our party too was absorbed by the sense of peace, impressed by the tolerance of the Sikh faith which, as our guide explained, believes that faith has many streams leading into the one river of God.

The main part of the building is on three floors - when we ascended to the first floor, musicians were practising for the next day of worship, and readily showed us their instruments and explained them. The views from this level were most impressive; I had not realised this part of Leamington had so many trees. As the sun was setting, even the steel chimneys on the warehouses had a new beauty and were turned to pure gold. We next descended to the basement, where we were shown a film of the history of the Sikhs who fought with the British Army. Then we were led to the dining area where the Sikhs extended to us their well-known hospitality in a delicious light meal.

There was so much to learn about our hosts that evening: if you want to hear more, why not call to arrange a visit for your group, and explore what lies beneath the famous domes that are now a part of Leamington's skyline?

The final visit of the summer will be a coach trip to Bletchley Park, famous for its code-breaking in World War II. A few seats are still available - ring Margaret Moore on 01327 261188. The programme of lectures in the Village Hall resumes on September 17th.

Armscote Manor

Lecture Series

Monday 11th October 2010 - Fergus Garrett - Head Gardener and Director of Great Dixter

Tuesday 12th October 2010 - Karl Sabbagh - A Rum Affair: A Story of Garden Intrigue

Wednesday 13th October 2010 - Val Bourne - Planting Up a Natural Garden

Thursday 14th October 2010 - Gwyn Perry - Head Gardener at Armscote Manor: The Principles of Pruning and Training. Places are strictly limited and cost £25.00

Friday 15th October 2010 - Bob Brown - Fifty Years On - Changing Tastes in Gardening Since the 1950s

All monies raised will be donated to Shipston Home Nursing Reg. Charity No. 1061405.

For tickets please contact Deborah Williams (deborah.williams@armscotemanor.co.uk) or Madeleine James at Armscote Manor, Armscote, Warwickshire CV37 8DA tel. 01608 682375. Please make cheques payable to Shipston Home Nursing and send applications for tickets with a self addressed stamped envelope. More details are on the website:

www.armscotemanor.co.uk/lecture_series.html .

Tickets are not available on the door, and the evening starts at 7pm with a glass of wine. The lectures begin at 7.30pm.

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