Abide Baptist Church - June 26th, 2011 - Issaquah, WA

     This is my first faith visit since my friend's funeral and burial...and in it I experienced the best and worst of what religion can bring. Abide Baptist Church is a tiny church near the freeway entrance. It's been around a year less then I've been in Issaquah and follows the Baptist tradition of respect of choice (to believe or not to believe) and separation of Church and State (state cannot enforce on faiths and in theory vise versa). Both of which I think are admirable ideals of the faith.

      The best I experienced was the sense of community with strangers and the reflective nature of the service. It reminded me a little of a Mormon service in that their were hymns but no Christian Rock or Choir music...it was the pastor's wife and the piano with hymns that I've heard play in movies that take place in the south. While I was there it felt like the people I love where there with me, and I felt peace.

     The worst I experienced was prejudice towards people (males specifically) who go outside their supposed masculine roles. The first was the pastor talking about how his school's swim team had become sissy and given people breaks which he never got...and the other was when I talked to his Dad who was ashamed to drive a light colored car during the day when he was driving across the United States.

    The other part was the Theory of Evolution and theology. I understand now why they must have felt threatened...if the Bible is the literal Word of God then Genesis is a fact not a metaphorical story...then the Big Bang, evolution and other theories that contradict these "facts" must be wrong. The pastor it's "Just a theory," disregarding what in science that actually means. Theories only exist due to ample evidence and empirically tested claims. In evolution a large part of this is in the fossil record and our own genetic code in which we can trace our ancestry.

   The misunderstanding science was completed with the "Atheist Checklist," which was a tract that the pastor's father gave to me. The tract is written by Ray Comfort who argues that because a banana is color coded for when it's ripe, spoiled or developing, and can be held in the human hand that clearly it was designed by God. It is like a Coco-Cola can created by humans Ray implies. What he misses though is that bananas were domesticated and evolved to be the way they are by humans. Wild bananas look nothing like the ones Comfort describes. Just to touch on the problems with his hypothesis.That's why they are shaped the way are and edible. The checklist was insulting to science. It ended also with the Ten Commandments and a call to Jesus showing that again, it was apologist work for religion, not science.

    The sermon was about when Jesus told his apostles that he would die and rise again on the third day. The pastor talked about how Jesus made things easy for us, just to accept him into our lives, but we like things difficult. He used the example people who chose not to buy a mix where you just add water, but bought the cooking mix when it required water and an egg. He also brought up faith verse works and that the Bible says it's faith alone but the surveys he said showed most denominations thought good works would get one into heaven. This is an issue for another post the faith verse works ideal in regards to virtue, but I will eventually get to it. Since it deals with the claims of a lot of faiths and human nature.
     
      The service ended with a song we all sang together called "Lean on Jesus" and a final call to Jesus for someone to repent and confess along with the final prayer.

     I'm planning on talking to the pastor about these things at some point. For to bash someone because they are a masculine female or a feminine male isn't virtuous, loving or just, and though Christianity is built on faith, in it's best form, it's about treating others with respect, dignity and love.

     It's good to be visiting faith communities again...and meeting the people who believers of the different faiths and sects within the faiths. It's in these visits and conversations I think come to know God, humanity and myself better in the constant path of learning and growth.