A Billboard Christ

       If you have ever been driving on the highway and look to your right you see all of these billboards. Each and everyone of them are being used to sell a product of some kind. They briefly say this quip how this product will change your life in some miraculous way. Do you think about buying it? Some of us would say yes. Why? Cause it was freaking funny or pretty. It is completely natural to be drawn to something that is interesting. An article in businessknowledgesource.com states that billboards are the number two successful advertisement method right behind television.

When it comes to a vast majority of churches nowadays it is how the church looks rather than worrying about the message. I have had somewhat of a first hand look into this parasite in the church, being a preachers child. My dad used to joke about how in the staff meetings he attended that there would be more votes about what carpet they were going to be putting in next quarter rather then how is the congregation is responding to the gospel.

Take easter for example. The message is about the redemption of the human soul and the cleansing of the sin in each person's life. True, that is all about cleanliness and rebirth, but there is another part of the
story that seems to be swept under the rug because it is too gritty. Before the beautiful resurrection, there was the brutal scourging and crucifixion of a man. Some Christians will, without hesitation, say "oh yea. Jesus died for me". That is biblical truth, yes, but it has frills, bells, and whistles on it rather than raw and painful story it really is.

Who knows that laxative on the billboard in the picture above could have some terrible, maybe life threatening, side effects, but how could we know that? We may just think that it is a really funny picture, and we'll snicker and move along with our lives.

As a Christian, this story of how a man gave up his life for me should not have the effect of me just going on with my day. It should rock to my very core and the ground would shake around me. Why has the church prettified this to where it has the effect of a bug on a windshield for some people? My
only guess is that for people to buy into Jesus it can't be to messy, but just enough so that average day Joe isn't afraid of what a life of Christ really means. It is just nice enough to fill the pews but not radical enough to make some major waves.