DAY ONE: GOT JESUS?

No. Where can I buy some? Does it come in a sling back? Perhaps in taupe?

Oh… It’s not a shoe? Will it lower my cholesterol then? Do I need a prescription? Wrong again? Lotion? Cream? Salve? Perhaps a balm?

The line between evangelizing and marketing grows thinner and thinner with each sign I pass. Does no one at this church have any questions about the efficacy and/or appropriateness of advertising their lord and savoir as one would a liquid dairy product? The fact that this is the same church sign previously referred to in a post by the same Dr S we were heading to see makes me believe that these particular evangelists – at the very least – have not yet grasped the subtle nuances of their craft.

I am never quite sure if these signs come form an increasingly commercial tendency in American Christianity or a more basic inability to write and a decline of critical capacity. When I tie this lifting of the International Dairy Foods Association’s slogan together with the misguided “Jesus Is Coming; Resistance Is Futile” sign outside of a church in Des Moines, Iowa – thus comparing their lord to a merciless civilization bent upon assimilating or destroying all other forms of life – I fear the latter possibility may in fact be the case.

I find it hard to believe that American Christians wish to reduce their god to a two-word slogan, or even worse to a deadly species of cyborgs. But there it is, right in front of us on a weekly basis in detachable black letters. One would have thought that a religion following a guy who went rather postal upon the moneychangers at the temple would have the sense to not emulate advertising agencies…

I don’t know why these signs make me so angry – seeing that I am an agnostic and all – but they do. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I still call myself an agnostic, that I cannot get rid of that last vestige of possibility, that I hold out for a potential to have faith. Or, perhaps I am simply insulted, a sort of “You think you can convert me with that?” reaction. I think I should demand more from a possible faith, and until you American Christians can bring your A-Game, I am sticking to the sidelines.