The Faith Bus

Before we really get into this, there are some things that I would like to say first.

While I am a man of faith, I do not believe as the owners of this bus do. I am not that conservative or arbitrary. I believe that faith is meant to be inclusive. If faith is not inclusive, then the entire life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ means nothing. The whole point of the gospels is to show that God is for everyone. God is not just for descendants of Abraham or just for members of any particular church. All of those people are honorable, but God is for everyone. No matter where you’re from, who you are, what you believe, whether you’re gay, straight, or any orientation in between, no matter your race or culture, no matter your gender. The narrow view of conservatism in the United States that seemed to bloom in the 1950’s is as rampant today as it was in those days, and every bit as horrifying. How it got this way is a debate for the ages.

Also, unlike the person that owns this bus, I believe that the United States of America is a nation of true religious freedom. It does not mean that it is a Christian nation, but it does mean that you can be a Christian if you choose to be, or perhaps a Jew, or Muslim, or any other religion, or perhaps no religion at all. The government gets no say in the matter. There is one simple caveat – you can’t hurt anybody. While I don’t agree with the message that this bus sends, I do believe that this person has the right to believe it and to share it. They are technically not hurting anybody. While their method of sharing their belief is rather bizarre, it’s still peaceful.

Having gotten that off my chest, now we can cover the story. Today, as I went to the pharmacy, (which resides in between our local hospital and a neighborhood of surgery centers and clinics) to pick up prescriptions, I saw this bus parked on the outer edge of the parking lot. To make it more bizarre, it had a trailer attached to the back (not shown here) that had a bicycle, a lawn mower, and an engine. The windows were tinted, so it wouldn’t have shown up in pictures, but they had an American flag draped over the side windows with a camoflauge “Q” in the middle, symbolizing this person’s devotion to QAnon, the hottest cult of conspiracy in America, for which we somehow have elected multiple devotees to our congress in the past few years (thanks a lot, Georgia). There are some things that are just so absurd that they can’t be made up. That’s a good time to take a picture. Indeed, the truth is much stranger than fiction. After two shots, I heard a dog barking inside the bus and I thought to myself “it’s time for me to go.” I probably could have gotten a decent picture of the flag, but I felt like the best thing to do was just leave.

For the longest time, I thought this photo of a strange scriptural protest bus shot in the 1990s on the streets of Washington, D.C. would be the strangest thing I ever saw. Fast forward 25 years to a medical complex in Missouri and I can conclude safely that I have officially found something much stranger.

Be of whichever faith you wish to be, or don’t believe anything. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find coexistence to be much more interesting than the simple monotony of being in a place where everybody is the same. Whatever you believe, the only important thing I have to say about it is to believe it peacefully. After all, isn’t it better to shoot photos, not each other?

Both of these were shot on an iPhone 12 using the ProCam app to do raw format, processed in darktable, and then edited in GIMP.

And a side note – thou shalt not commit “adultry” (a laugh that I just could not ignore)

The way it’s painted over the top part is a bit difficult to read, but it says “Marriage is permanent – to remarry before death is adultry.”