Mafia Hitmen at Emmanuel College

I was very pleased with how the RealityBites sixth form conference went down yesterday at Emmanuel College in Gateshead. There were about 150 students from two schools present and for the first time I presented two RealityBites talks. I spoke about Celebrity Culture, Human Trafficking and Responsible Citizenship before lunch and then I delivered the Mafia, British Values and Evil talk after lunch.

I was delighted that my stories about Jimmy ‘the weasel’ Fratianno, Giovanni ‘the pig’ Brusca, Toto ‘the beast’ Riina and Frank Sinatra captivated their imaginations. They were paying close attention when I challenged them to tell me how much a Mafia hitman charged for a murder in 2014 (£17,500). It was even better when they listened very attentively to my outline of five ways of looking at evil and suffering:

1) Evil is caused by bad karma
2) Evil is an illusion because nothing exists
3) Evil doesn’t exist because everything is just physical
4) Evil has to exist because it comes from God
5) Evil is caused by human and angelic rebellion against God

In my talk I mentioned Glenn Hoddle, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Richard Dawkins, Plotinus and CS Lewis. The questions they asked were fabulous and showed clearly how closely they had been listening.

I was particularly chuffed when one girl asked me how I understood evil. I was able to say quite a lot about the New Testament and Jesus. I even mentioned the devil and how this relates to bombers, terrorists and Mafia hitmen.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for me yesterday!

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Mark Roques

Mark taught Philosophy and Religious Education at Prior Park College, Bath, for many years. As Director of RealityBites he has developed a rich range of resources for youth workers and teachers. He has spoken at conferences in the UK, Holland, South Korea, Spain, Australia and New Zealand.

Mark is a lively storyteller and the author of four books, including The Spy, the Rat and the Bed of Nails: Creative Ways of Talking about Christian Faith. His work is focused on storytelling and how this can help us to communicate the Christian faith. He has written many articles for the Baptist Times, RE Today, Youthscape, Direction magazine and the Christian Teachers Journal.

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