Thursday, October 29, 2009

I saw this sign on a church today: Evolution - When Scientists Became Monkeys. I gotta tell you, this really angered me! I mean, we're supposed to be salt and light, a city set on a hill and they go and put THIS on their church sign? Church marquees in general can be cheesy and preachy and I guess I understand them from a marketing perspective. There's a church in town that always advertises its sermon title this Sunday and they are usually current, culturally relevant (albeit slightly cheesy) titles. Regardless, I can appreciate that they are trying to entice people to come and (hopefully) hear the gospel.

With the church I saw today I don't understand the purpose of the sign. It's obviously not to share the gospel or to entice the unchurched to come check out a service or even to make people think. Instead it simply spreads the stereotype that Christians are a close-minded group of people who would much prefer to sit in their sanctuary and judge the outside world. That they are cloistered away from society and occasionally chuck God Bombs over the wall in the form of sarcastic signs or Chick Tracts. It is very frustrating! If you have some insight into a sign like this that I'm not seeing please comment and let me know... I would love to be wrong in my sweeping assumptions.

The other thing that I noticed today were the changing leaves. In looking at them today death kept being brought to mind. By and large, people think that Fall is beautiful because of the changing colors. But it's only beautiful because we know the end of the story. The leaves change color as they are dying and will eventually fall to the ground but we know that they will return the following Spring. I doubt that we would all enjoy Fall so much if we did not know what was going to happen next.

Imagine if all the world had known was Summer and green leaves on the trees and suddenly that all changed. Leaves began to die and fall to the ground. Botanists around the world were stumped and had no idea what happened. Would we think that the oranges, reds and browns were beautiful? Or would they be terrifying? But since we know that after this death there is rebirth we look on the Fall with joy at the beauty in creation. I think the analogy here is fairly clear... those in Christ know the ending. We have the rebirth after death takes us and can therefore die in a way that is beautiful to those who we will see again and we can approach it without fear, for it is not the end!

Have a great day!