"Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."

Oscar Wilde said that, according to the quick Google search I just did. And I'll note that it's not the title I was originally going to use, I had planned to use a Tripping Daisy song off of this album, but the song was "You gotta have friends" rather than you gotta have faith, so I had to find a back up.

And side note, that linked album is a great listen to. Especially the aforementioned Tripping Daisy song.

So the church I attend, Iron City Church, is having their one year celebration party on Sunday. This is a church that has advertised on 105.7 The X, Pittsburgh's local alternative station. Imagine hearing Nine Inch Nail's "Closer", then right before you hit the scan button during the ad break you hear a spot for a church. Or, imagine seeing little signs next to all the Obama and McCain signs as you're driving around that say, "More Jesus, Less Crap".

Yeah, that's how I roll church wise

For a few years after moving to Pittsburgh, I didn't really attend any church. I'd become sort of disillusioned by a lot of things that can bog down a church. Things like not helping homeless people but spend on lavish church member only events. Things like spending a month on a series preaching the need for the various Christian factions to just set aside their differences and come together, but only a few weeks later at a baptism claim that their way is the only true baptism. Things like getting so bogged down in the details of each ceremony that the true meaning behind it is lost.

Also add to the fact that I'm not a normal Christian. Sometimes I feel as if I'm the only person praying on a Sunday that is pro-choice, supports Gay marriage (They really can't do as bad as the 48% marriage success rate us straights have going...), believes in Evolution (Though I guess it's an Intelligent Design belief), listens to non-CCM music (Which is published or shelved based only on the amount of times Christ/Jesus/God is said, not based on any actual musical talent it seems) and watches South Park. Just about every non God fearing stereotype one can have, there I am.

A lot of times because of the above I don't pass a lot of Christian's holy litmus test, and a lot of times when I'm the token Christian person I'm branded as an outsider because I have leave early for church the next morning.

I guess it makes me lucky in one single respect: I'm able to actually hear both sides of this metaphysical divide. It's weird when both camps claim that the other runs the world and is out to get them. Non-Christians often say that they're in a Christianfied world, that the Jesus Freaks run everything and just won't leave them alone. The Christians feel that the secular world encroaching on their lives, ruining everything. I can see the truth to both sides from my unique position, and the areas where they are overreacting.

Being in the middle describes me a lot more than I care to admit. Well, maybe not in the middle, but an outsider in a given inner circle. It's a position that I'm innately comfortable with, it seems that for any given group odds are I'll be inside a certain allegorical fence, but hanging on the fence while everyone congregates in the center of the pasture. As a Christian (And I really hate saying "As a Christian", it has an arrogant, Better Than Thou feel to it. I don't mean it this way, but still forgive me for using the term) Revelation 3:16 makes my position not that great from the heavenly point of view. I console myself believing those words mean spiritually hot or cold, but I'm not Biblical scholar, I haven't read the original Greek, I only rely on translations. It's like assuming the person giving you directions on disarming a bomb from someone else isn't trying to get you killed: you're pretty sure they're on your side, but if they're not, or if they are and they hear the color red as orange and tell you to cut the orange wire, well, boom and there's nothing you could have done to prevent it.

I don't know, I guess, which when you think about it (And I do tend to think about this, a lot) is what faith really is all about. I have a very analytical, engineering mind. I want to deal with the hard facts, provable and repeatable, able to be documented in a standardized way. Which a religion really cannot provide. It asks for faith. Faith, it is acknowledging and accepting facts like a being of immense power to create by speaking invests him/her/itself in me. It is acknowledging that a collection of books that can at times be racist, contradict itself (So do I believe the Genesis 1 creation story or the Genesis 2 creation story, since the order in which everything gets created is different, one must be wrong, and another right...), and basically takes place in a time so far removed from my own that it's fantasy literature at best, well actually has a given meaning for me.

Faith is believing in something even though you really don't have any proof about it. And on most days, that's all I really have. Maybe my faith is just hedging my bets, some religions don't believe in an after life, others believe in redemption during one's afterlife, others believe in reincarnation, trying over and over until you get it right. The big three monotheistic religions don't, but since one could make a case that they're all worshiping the same god if you go with one of these, and they're right, then you're covered. If you're wrong, then you'll still get it right sooner or later in one of the other ones.

Or maybe I'm a weak minded fool seeking some refuge of categorization in a chaotic and uncaring world, calling this also chaotic force God and placing my fears of all that is uncertain into "His larger plan". Or maybe I'm right, and my faith in Jesus and God will be rewarded when I die.

But anyways, as I was saying about ICC, it's a church where, while there's a normal service every Sunday, there is a lot of focus and attention on just being good neighbors. Handing bottles of water out, free car washes, the sort of things I've always thought a church should really be about. The guy we name ourselves after had this wacky idea of just not being total douche bags to one another, nothing more and nothing less. And it's nice to get back to something like that.

Like I said ICC's 1st anniversary is this Sunday, and from it sounds like it's being aimed for people who just have a lot of questions and confusion about the church. Being part of this outside on the inside effect I have is that I've been exposed to a lot of stuff I only would have believed as stereotype: Wicca, Islam, and Buddhism to name a few. A lot of times you learn new things, and sometimes your preconceived notions are held up as fact. If you're in the Burgh and interested in just seeing if what you've thought about church is true or not, feel free to show up, directions are at the ICC site above.


(And PS for getting down here, I'll start bringing the funny to the blog again, as you can tell I've been in reflective introspective mode the past few days, which isn't conductive to the Lawls. Until then, if you want some great short audio fiction, that site I linked above The Seanachai has some great podcasts that are amazing to listen to)