These days I see them everywhere. On my way to work: "HOME IMPROVEMENT BRING YOUR FAMILY TO CHURCH"
On my way to the grocery store: "If you have truth decay brush up on the Bible."
On my way to the mall: "WOULD YOU FOLLOW JESUS THIS CLOSE?"
Even on my way through the small town where I live: "THE DIFFICULTIES OF LIFE ARE TO MAKE US BETTER NOT BITTER"
I may be seeing them everywhere I go, but I still can't figure out what these blaring road-side messages are supposed to accomplish. Politicians may love their TV sound-bites, but why have so many right-wing evangelicals happily reduced their faith to such mindless God-bites?
Church signs used to be pretty simple: the denomination or affiliation of the congregation, the name of the pastor, the days and times of various services. But no more. Now churches have reader-boards that assault passers-by with bad puns and painful metaphors. (For some reason, lower-case letters are in short supply.) Often these signs scream out confused and confusing rhetorical questions, like the one I mentioned above: "WOULD YOU FOLLOW JESUS THIS CLOSE?" Is this meant to warn drivers against the sin of tailgating, or is it scolding them for not following Jesus closely enough?
Where are conservative Christians when you really need them? Are they still mopping up after the war on Christmas? Or have all their forces been deployed to defend the sanctity of biblical marriage? Maybe they're busy trying to figure out how to get prayer and creationism back into our schools and sex education out of them. But wherever those militant, right-wing Christians are, they've completely ignored a desecration worse than burning a flag or two.
Just who are their pronouncements and invitations intended to reach? Clearly not those already on the road to rapture. For one thing, these signs are on the street rather than inside the church, and they clearly aren’t announcing sermon titles or Sunday school discussion topics. For another, most of these communiqués seem to be aimed at the faithless rather than the faithful. They try hard to seem inclusive (lots of "we" and "us"), but their capital letters and cheery certainty are scary: "LIFE IS A PUZZLE AND WE HAVE THE MISSING PEACE!"
If these nuggets of wisdom are supposed to reach out and touch somebody's heart, their confident assertions are frequently baffling: "SHINE DON’T WHINE" read one sign I passed just the other day. Huh? Or how about this: "THE LAW DETECTS GRACE CORRECTS"
I've been puzzling over this cryptic pronouncement for weeks now and still haven't made much progress sorting it out. Some seem more than a little blasphemous: "ARE YOU A BOAT SITTER OR A WATER WALKER?" I may be confused, but isn’t walking on water a miracle reserved exclusively for Jesus? And while we're on the subject, what's a boat sitter, anyway?
I suspect most drivers ignore this stuff, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about these drive-by assaults lately. For a while I was just scribbling down the offensive messages on my palm or on the backs of gas receipts as I drove by. Recently, though, I've taken to stopping my car and photographing what I see: "ACHEY-BREAKEY-HEART? PUT GOD IN IT"
Maybe the purpose of these God spots is to effect a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion in drivers like me, but I double-checked (Acts 9), and, while there were some flashing lights involved on that occasion, there were no bad puns or cute wordplay, just a simple question ("Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?") followed by a simple—and dignified—command ("Get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do").
What, I wonder, would Saul have made of this: "COME ON IN / ITS HOT OUTSIDE AND WE'RE HEIR CONDITIONED."
And then I wonder where all this stuff comes from. Is there a book or a newsletter? A daily desk calendar with 365 witticisms, one for posting each day of the year? Maybe there's a list-serve? Are there e-mails being forwarded? Or maybe there are a lot conservative preachers who would really rather be on The Last Comic Standing than standing in a pulpit.
Whoever is responsible, it's not the lame puns or the confusing messages or even all the spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors that bother me. (Whatever their intentions, these messages sure won't help kids pass their No-Child-Left-Behind standardized tests.)
What really pisses me off is that so many of the faithful are so busy minding everybody else's business that they've completely overlooked their own. T
he Da Vinci Code poses a threat to the faith of true believers, but this moronic swill doesn't? House Speaker Dennis Hastert promotes the Republicans' "American Values Agenda" as an effort to "protect the faith of our people," but members of the Christianist party don't worry about how this faith is otherwise debased and commodified? We have to protect the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, but anywhere else any old crap can be passed off as God's word?
For true believers, the Gospels represent the "good news." Theirs is the self-proclaimed "greatest story ever told." And while they may disagree about whether the Bible represents the inerrant word of God, the New Testament does equate God and logos, the word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
So we're all supposed to respect this Word and follow It. And while we're at it, we need the House of Representatives to defend It. But, meanwhile, where is this Word and what have they done with It?
It's become just one more advertised special on offer as we run our daily errands. It's part of the general roadway clutter. Christianity and commerce.
This is what I see today on my way to the YMCA: EYE-BROW WAXING. TRIPLE-DECKER BURGERS. LUBE, OIL, AND FILTER. THURSDAY LADIES' NIGHT. GOD. LOW-COST SPAY AND NEUTERING.
I drive right by.
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