Faith Bible Chapel

The End of the World is something most of us relegate to our imaginations. We are not terribly concerned that the world as we know it will cease to exist in the immediate or semi-immediate future. Perhaps we may imagine the precursors to be an Overpopulation problem that strips the world of its' ability to maintain homeostasis, Or maybe we imagine a Super-Computer, Or Cloned Army of Genetic Perfection that even our most Advanced Technology trembles in front of. Or perhaps the End of the World will come from Arrogance in terms of Nuclear Weaponry. These scenarios involve a loss of control over our own power, and perhaps it is because of our partial ownership of the problems that we do not have feelings of expectant faith towards their arrival.

However, this is not so for the congregation of Faith Bible Chapel which embraces Armageddon with an eerie greed. If you would like to encounter suicidal tendencies, in the name of Jesus Christ, venture down to middle America, to a new lower-end suburban town called Arvada. Arvada was almost entirely created in the last fifteen years. Historic Arvada exhibits such buildings as a Home Depot and the Olive Garden, built in what looks the antiquity of a decade.

The church itself looks like a business park. It is a new age convention center complete with requisite waterfalls, atriums, and cafes. If you go on a Sunday there is large probability that there will be several police and ambulances standing by "just in case." Not just slightly creepy.
Inside, there is a cafe where you can buy (that's right buy) scones, muffins, or the like. There were also many vendors where you can buy such Walmart products as mascara, scarves, creepy pictures of Jesus, or hair ties. It was Mother's Day on the day of our adventure, and I was under the impression this sale was a Mothers Day event, and it may not be there all the time. Above your head will hang the flags of the nations of the worlds, bringing a strange element of nationalism to this religious convention center. They seem to be saying God loves all nations, which is a strange replacement for what my grandparents taught me, that God loves every person.

These oddities will soon be explained in their purpose & ideology, however at first feel free to be mystified. When you go into the convention room, where the sermon is to be delivered, you will most likely feel aghast at both the size and professional business quality delivered there. This is the stage for the profession of the commercialization of the end of the world. Around you will sit the strangest people you have ever met. The kind of people who make you wonder just how things got to this state. Sitting there you will most likely have the feeling that you are going to be sold something like a self help book. It is similar to the emptiness that is seeing Bob Dylan play in a venue where the Nuggets (or any similarly horrible basketball team) play. Where the best you can do to feel a part of something that you probably love is to stand up alone (feeling partially ostracized for being the first to stand in a crowd of sitters) who are looking a greater percentage of time at the live broadcast of Bob directly behind Bob, who you paid great money to see: live. This will be the only way you can "get into it."

It gives you a sort of hopelessness. I began to imagine those strangers surrounding me sitting here on any other day, knowing that they would be attending all matter of social events that should be participatory in a similarly soulless and rule driven places.

Although I have only been to two mega churches now, (the other being in Michigan) apparently the musical library is limited and I have already begun to know the songs which are projected on the power point screens. Not that they are hard to pick up, they are projected with just the words, no notes. If you know any music theory, they only use chords I, IV, and V. Once I heard a II. Since this is similar to, I would say, 90% of popular music created since the '50's and including most pop and motion pictures, you can sing a song without ever having heard it before. Simply amazing, eh? Seriously. Here in Arvada, they were either intelligent or fortunate to have the mas guapo boy in the entire audience as the lead singer. This was perhaps why the family across the aisle had daughters who seemed happy to be there.

After singing a few songs, and watching several people begin to jump around with out warning (apparently feeling the grace of God), women were invited up to be honored as mothers. Through these church experiences I have learned that to bless is palms down and to receive is palms up, which also makes sense. After the minister scolded the women for needing to find God's light (palms up) and once we (the congregation) blessed them (palms down), they were given a present. What better for these hard working mothers than large nail files with different brightly colored plastic handles. Then they had some sort of new baptism, and then they started in on Israel.

This is the part where you will begin to understand how the eccentricities of this place come together under the banner of politics. Turns out this is place is how Colorado stays a red state. The ideology is that we are promised a second coming of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, who died on a cross FOR YOUR SINS! Yes, I know it's heavy, but its' a reality that a lot of people deal with. The time for his return is at hand. How do we know this? The world is coming apart at the seams and with some editing we can arrive at Bible verses that tell us to screw the world up as much as possible, aim for a condition which seems so irreparable, full of hopelessness and despair, ugliness, and torrential hate that only a true miracle will be able to save you and lo and behold a miracle (J.C. to be exact) will return to you.

Kind of a self fulfilling prophecy, eh? I mean survive that nightmare and you've gotta feel like a miracle happened. If you don't make it. at least there's heaven right? All of a sudden I start to understand the flags, paramedics, the indoor Walmart trash, and the soul-lessness of the place starts to make sense. Sitting there you start to realize that you're in a commercial for your own demise, and not just that, but if this commercial is as much junk as the rest of the stuff they're trying to sell you then you'll probably end up in a pile of trash soon. Then you look around you and everyone else seems so happy to be there and you wonder if they have a soul, because they don't look like they could, smiling when everything is so crappy around them that you think that this really is the worst nightmare you've ever had, and then the preacher tells you that he's sure that your worst nightmare is going to happen soon, and that it will be the end of the world but he's got a ticket out of there. All you have to do is put your name in the interest basket and they'll deliver a loaf of bread complete with your personal salvation to your very own door step. It's on a sliding scale basis of coarse......

And people think fetishes are creepy.