At times I enjoy the messages that churches put on the signs in their yards. Some will simply list the sermon title for the following Sunday. Some give enticements for folks to come inside. Some use subscription services that provide generic messages. Some try to be clever.
Frankly, I doubt anyone ever decided to join a church -- much less show up out of the blue on a Sunday morning -- because they were so inspired by the words on the church sign.
In fact, many of the messages are downright off-putting. I guess those are the ones I enjoy the most, and I will invariably say to Mary, as we drive by the church, "Let's go there this Sunday." Of course, the notion is forgotten before we are even past the end of the church property.
Negative messages are even posted by some congregations on their signs: "What part of 'Thou Shalt Not' don't you understand? -- God." There is a whole series of those. I'm sure they are especially effective.
Currently, there is a message on the sign of a church near where we live. The church is a small independent fundamentalist church of some variety or other, and their sign, right in plain view for everyone to see as they drive by, proclaims, "There are no Atheists in Hell."
Huh?
Does that mean Atheists don't go to Hell? Does it mean once an Atheist arrives in Hell he or she suddenly becomes a believer? And doesn't that mean they wouldn't go to or stay in Hell?
What is "Hell," anyway? Is it a place? Is it just a bad word we're not supposed to say, or we might end up there? Is it the place Jesus referred to as "Sheol," which as I understand it was some sort of continuously-smouldering garbage dump on the outskirts of town?
And why would an Atheist be frightened of Hell? If they don't believe in God, there is no reason to think God's "judgment" is real, and that one might end up in whatever Hell might be.
So, I guess I just don't understand the point of the message on the sign.
Maybe I'm over-thinking this. Or maybe whoever approved and posted the message was doing some under-thinking.
Whatever the case, it occurs to me that many churches with changeable-message signs are wasting that opportunity. Why not use the sign to give witness to some of the meaningful, life-building, love-promoting tenets of the teachings of Jesus?
Are those tenets too boring or irrelevant that whoever is responsible for coming up with the messages has to think of "clever" ways to get the attention of the people who pass by their church buildings?
Or maybe churches are just too afraid of not fitting in with the dominant societal culture, norms and expectations.
To me, that's one of the biggest struggles facing the church today. The church is so reflective of the world around it that it has slid into the realm of the irrelevant. Why be a part of the church -- and by extension, the faith -- if it's just more of the same soul-deadening nonsense associated with what one of my accounting teachers in college always called "chasing that dollar bill."
It seems to me that churches should be offering an alternative, something that lifts people out of the anxiety, fear, angst, dread, alienation, and everything else that closes in around us all the time.
I don't think Jesus died so that his "followers" would do everything they can to conform to the world and its ways.
Yet, it continues, and the church suffers, the world suffers, and people suffer as a result.
Why the church doesn't see that, to me, is a real head-scratcher.
Oh, by the way, the best sign I ever saw associated with a place of worship actually was a banner instead of a sign. It hung on a fence outside the Friends Meeting of Washington, and was placed there immediately following the 9/11 attacks. As far as I know, it still hangs there today.
The banner read, "War is not the answer." Too counter-cultural for you? Perhaps Christianity makes some demands that you are not willing to meet.
Does that make you an Atheist? I hope not, because we know where Atheists, uh, well, don't end up. Or something. I think. I'm not sure...
