Yesterday at work, I had a woman I work with make a snide comment about Right Wing Christians. I asked her what she meant and she stated that most of these people were uneducated and gullible. She was flabbergasted when I told her I was a Born Again Christian, and that I attended a Baptist church. She told me I was way to smart to believe in that type of stuff. Then she made an unintelligible reference to the Pope and Pedophile Priests and how horrible organized religion was. She asked me if I believed in Adam and Eve? When I answered in the affirmative, she just stared at me like I had two heads. I told her you couldn’t pick and choose what you believe in the bible, you either believe it is God’s word or you don’t.

            I then asked her if she believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Again she answered in the affirmative, and I asked her if she had actually read the book, or dogmatically just believed whatever she was told by the media and public schools? She had never read the book, and couldn’t really explain what the theory was. It was something about evolution, which made much more sense then intelligent design I was informed. I told her in “The Origin of the Species” in chapter 10, Darwin discusses “The Imperfection Of The Geological Record”. In 1845 when Darwin initially published his views, the fossil record had never shown any finely linking specimens.

“The several difficulties here discussed, namely, that, though we find in our geological formations many links between the species which now exist and which formerly existed, we do not find infinitely numerous fine transitional forms closely joining them all together.”
 

            Darwin assumed that as the record of Paleontology grew, we would find many of these finely linking specimens and his theory would be proved right. Here we are 160 years and millions of fossils later, and how many of these finely linking specimens have we found? Zero.
 

            After I brought all of this to her attention, quick as a thought she started talking about how she believed in a higher power, not necessarily God though. I asked her what on earth she was talking about? She just shrugged and walked away. I believe this is the first time I had brought up the fact that I was a Born Again Christian at work, and I actually felt a little embarrassed about it. What in the world has happened to the United States, where you are looked down upon if you believe there was a purpose to our making, and that we aren’t just a random creation equivalent to a blade of grass?

   Welcome to Saved which was supposed to be entitled "Baptist in Massachusetts", but due to the horrible filter Townhall uses, I couldn't use the word Massachusetts I guess they truly despise the Kennedy/Kerry connection, and got a little carried away. Please Townhall; there are truly some conservatives out here.

   I envision this blog as an exploration of my new found faith in God and my salvation through his Son Jesus. Initially the reason I started going to church was for my two sons. I looked at the state of Public education, and told my wife, no matter what sacrifices we have to make, our children were going to private school. I looked around and asked friends in the area, and we decided to send our children to Twin-City Baptist Church in Lunenburg MA.

   This church has a daycare through 12^th grade program, and teaches morals as well as reading and writing. So my wife and I started going to the church on Sundays, and were overwhelmed by the acceptance and fellowship we encountered. For awhile, that was the status quo; we went to church we went home. We enrolled our oldest boy in the preschool, and expected to go on like that.

   I was pleasantly surprised at the church; I expected a semi-liberal kind of place being in Massachusetts and all. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a Biblical church that believes that the Bible is the word of God and to not follow its precepts is to be in Willful-Sin (That was a new one to me). After a few months, my wife and I started talking about being baptized. Both of us had been baptized prior to this, me in my Mother’s Catholic church and her in the Methodist church at the same time we baptized our youngest son.

   My wife had misgivings when we were told that as Baptists, we follow the method described in the Bible of full emersion. She had Pastor Burke over to our house and we talked about it, he didn’t try to pressure her and eventually she found a like minded woman who had been through the same thing she had. So she finally agreed to allow us to get baptized.

   Only it wasn’t that easy, one of us and it wasn’t her hadn’t accepted Jesus as their personal savior, and didn’t know if he did. I also didn’t want to just mouth the words, while I wasn’t especially religious or pious, there just seemed to be something Sacrilegious about praying to Jesus to come into your heart, when your heart wasn’t truly open. So I started having talks with some of the members, and reading the Bible. Eventually I came to the inescapable conclusion that God does exist, he loves me and he sent his Son to earth to die on Calvary for my sins.

   So praying together with Pastor Burke in his office, I finally accepted Jesus as my savior, and eventually my wife and I got baptized. Now the fun begins, I am still learning to get over my embarrassment of actually using “religious” phrases in my speech. Sometimes they would slip out when I was very new. Things like “our lord” or “my Savior Jesus Christ” etc… I am still at that stage, not where I am ashamed of my faith, but I feel awkwardness about stating my religious beliefs in public. Some of our new friends from the church whose youngest 2 children are in class with my two boys, have had us over for a BBQ. I was outside talking with the husband, who seemed like a perfectly normal man. We were talking about our jobs, and I told him my career path, how my company had given me many opportunities that most people would normally not get. That’s when he started telling me how God had a hand in my life, and had truly blessed me. He said it so casually that it took a minute for it to penetrate my mind. Like a cloud moving away, I could actually for the first time see that God had truly blessed me.

   I didn’t mean this opening post to be more than a paragraph or two, but I got a little carried away. I will try to regularly feature commentary about my life, and trying to break free of a culture that makes me feel I have to hide my Christianity in public. As well as any questions or comments I want to make on the whole subject.