all signs point to maybe

One thing I enjoy doing when I’m out driving is to read all the church signs that I pass. Living in Southwest Virginia you see plenty, and they’re usually Baptist or some mutated sect of Protestantism that rests its foundation on ideas that would make Jerry Falwell’s skin crawl. I’m not particularly sure why I read these signs. Many of them are amusing. Some of them are downright offensive. I guess I want to see how the other side thinks.

There’s a Seventh Day Adventist church on the corner down the street from me. The other week their sign read, “Stand and He will deliver.” All I could think of was Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. “Come here, bitch. Stand and deliver!” “Stand and He will deliver” sounds like it involves standing and bending over. I don’t enjoy taking my religion up the ass.

I want to say it was around the 2004 election, although it might have been the 2006 election when the Democrats reclaimed Congress. The sign in front of one of the Baptist churches in town read, “God is what’s right, not what’s left.” Don’t make puns in your sermonizing. It’s all too easy to twist the message of God. Let’s not get into a moral discussion where I reveal my thoughts on the nature of good and evil, and forget the fact that I think the Mike Huckabee’s of the world are doing the work of the devil. Don’t tell me that just because I consider myself more liberal than conservative makes me a Godless heathen who practices witchcraft and forcibly aborts every baby from every pregnant mother he sees. My religious views molded my political views. I happened to use common sense and logic to draw my conclusions. Am I saying I’m better than certain people? Yes. Deal with it. Your church sign is full of shit. Change it.

I think I became interested in church signs thanks to the Simpsons. Whenever we see a shot of the church in Springfield we have another sign gag. One of my favorites is, “No synagogue parking.” This implies some elaborate back story where there’s a synagogue across the street, and the members of each religious establishment use the other’s parking lot on Saturdays and Sundays. Another favorite of mine is a spelling error. The “R” in “friend” has fallen off the sign, making it read, “What a fiend we have in Jesus.” It always makes me smile. Maybe I search church signs here in town to find something amusing. I will keep looking.

The funniest church sign I’ve ever seen is actually from a photograph on a friend’s myspace page. It’s a Catholic church somewhere in Texas, and it reads, “Staying in bed Sunday morning and shouting ‘Oh, God!’ does not constitute going to church.” ‘Nuff said.