It’s difficult to inject logic into either politics or faith without being the subject of a lynching, but here goes.
There was a statue, 62 feet tall, of Jesus on the side of a highway in Ohio. People would actually pull over and pray to it. So last year about this time it was struck by lightning, caught fire and burned down. Or burned up. Means the same thing. Now, there’s long been a controversy in Christianity and Judaism and Islam over the making of graven images and with special notice given to a statue, picture or whatever of God.
Much Christian blood has been spilt by other Christians with Iconoclasm being one of the issues.
The Hundred Years War for instance. Somebody who was crawling up out of the Medieval Tradition and had learned to read, and noticed that there was a discrepancy of sorts between “Thou shalt not make any graven image” and the Church tradition of making lots and lots of graven images. So, that left no choice but to wage bloody, expensive and generally tragic War for a hundred years, hence the name. There were other issues, mostly having to do with which Christian king got to own which land and the people therein.
So, now, there’s almost completed, another Touchdown Jesus statue being made by the same corporation which makes the fiberglass Big Boy hamburger franchise statues. With the notation of “it’s lightning-proof”.
Here’s where logic should be employed…
If as the Bible says, God controls the storm, Jesus specifically, then it’s pretty likely that God has decisively said “NO!” to the statue of His Incarnation Jesus, and building another one right in the same spot and DARING God to strike that one with lightning might not be all that good an idea.
In fact, it might be considered downright foolish. And expensive, the last one cost $600,000 and the notion of fiscal conservativism is a big issue with Christians nowadays.
Not that the ones who sing the loudest praises of conservativism actually conserve anything but that’s a longstanding pet peeve of mine and y’all probably already noticed that it’s my pet peeve.
I was thinking of getting a dog and naming it Peeve so I could go around saying “that’s my pet, Peeve” but the humor would wear off after about, o, I dunno, the second time I told the joke. Dogs sometimes live to be twenty years old and I don’t think the joke would last quite that long.
But back to the theme, spending more than a half million to replace a statue that God already rejected, kind of violently and to the point, one could say “in a shocking display” is, I don’t know, maybe “squandering” as opposed to “saving”.
Mind you, it’s not my money. I do, however, wish and pray that people would stop doing things to make Christians look stupid.
In a related theme, a preacher named Pat Robertson has often tried to make White Southern Christians look stupid by telling the entire world that White Southern Christians all agree on his Hate Speech talking points, and that they’re not Hate but Love.
It’s incredibly insulting. I’m not any more than half white and I’m insulted. Maybe Brother Pat can go stand near that statue.
