Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

Earlier this week, our increasingly creaky van was in the shop for some maintenance and repairs.  Which meant that it needed to be dropped off two point seven miles from our house.  I could have asked the missus for a ride back, I suppose, but it was lovely and snowing, just about perfect for a brisk forty minute walk.

Way I figure it, why hit the gym for cardio?  I've got the entire planet as a treadmill.

So having dropped it off, I walked back home, through flakes of fluffy puffy snow, on backroads and through neighborhoods.  When the time came to go back and pick the van up, I returned on foot.

In one of those neighborhoods, I passed a little church, tucked away on the corner of a nowhere street.  Given the age of its construction, it had probably been some flavor of the old-line back in the 1960s.  Now it was Korean Presbyterian, a little independent jobbie, not affiliated with any particular denomination.  At the front entrance leading to the parking lot, there were a batch of signs in a neat little row.  Most I could not read, given my incapacity with hangul script.

But three I could read.

One smiled pleasantly.  Be faithful, it said.  Be encouraging!

I will assume, from my admitted ignorance, that the script above the English said exactly the same thing as the text I could read.

One of these days, I'll have to get one-a-them funky new instant translator apps for my phone.  So funny, this whole "living in the future now" thing that our culture often has going on.

But then there were two other signs, right next to the happy blue smiley sign.

Those two had a slightly different flavor.  Well, OK, a completely different flavor, a taste that is

perhaps best described as "Get offa mah property ripple."  Or "Don't touch my stuff crunch."

"If you park, and you are not one of us, you will be towed, and then billed for your towing.  Do not come here.  This belongs to us.  This is not yours.  We are watching you like a hawk.

And if you'd like to hear this message again in Spanish, please press one now."

Though I've certainly encountered this mentality in congregations that rose out of the Korean American experience...sweet Lord Jesus, but have I...it's hardly limited to that sub-community of Jesus-folk.

It is, in fact, very much the way many Christian gatherings express themselves into the world.

On the one hand, we have what we claim to be good news, our story of a powerful and transforming relationship with our loving Creator, written into being in the person of Jesus, and moving among us through the power of God's own Spirit.

On the other, we're kind of obnoxious about things.  We're tight with our stuff.  We get mean. We're territorial.  We're often cruel.   The way we live our lives in the material world in which our souls are rooted bears no resemblance to the stuff we say.

And this is important, because our every action is a sign, pointing out to others what it is we value and what it is that defines us.  When we set those signs out, people do notice.

Words and Pictures and Guns

Over the last few weeks, I've been intermittently playing around with images and text.  I think it was a sign that stirred it, one carried at a gun-rights protest in Austin, Texas.  "The Second Amendment is from God," it said.   I reflected on that concept in my blogging, but it stayed stuck in my mind's craw.  As did some of the other signs and slogans from that demonstration.

Funny thing, about signs.  They point to different things, depending on how you view them.   Like, say, the slogan:  "An Armed Society is a Polite Society."  Gun rights advocates see one thing.  But I see this:

Then there's the old Charlton Heston classic, "From My Cold Dead Hands."  That evokes this:

That Red Dawn fantasy (Wolvereeeenes!) slogan about defending against tyranny?  I see this, because tyranny in the 21st century?  It won't look like Hessians with muskets:

Tell me that a handgun in the house makes you feel safe and protected when your husband is away?

This guy.  Really.  He's into it.  He totally thinks that.

Here, I'm not so sure.  The attitude is totally right, and the gaming reference is perfect, but it feels a bit like it plays off of racist fears.  Which is ironic, but there's only so far one can run with that without actually being that thing.

So I go with this one instead.  Notice how it's the same picture.  Sure, the composition of the first one is better.  But it's the same attitude.  The same spirit.  The same game franchise.  Tell me that doesn't mean something.

And this one, this one I see clearly.  I wish I didn't.

Westboro Baptist on a Beautiful Spring Day

It was a perfect day for a demonstration.

Warm but not too warm, with a gentle breeze and little puffy clouds scudding lazily across an azure sky. As I arrived at Walt Whitman high school to counterprotest the Westboro Baptist folks, I realized that I was going to be pretty much by myself. The folks from my church and/or from my denomination who I thought might be able to make it...well...it didn't quite happen. And here I was with a little stack of signs. Ah well. I was happy to be out, and curious to see the Westboro show with my own eyes.

After shooting the breeze with some of the law enforcement folks who'd arrived to keep things in check, I settled in across the street from where the cultists were to protest. I struck up conversations with those around me, passing the time with a small cadre of folks from a nearby Unitarian congregation and a fellow from the neighborhood whose kids had attended the school.

The Westboro folks arrived exactly on time, four women and three little kids. Their hateful signs came out. Some painfully reworded hymns were sung. They looked...well...more than a little pathetic.

I began displaying my own signage, a mix of different Bible passages that reiterated the love ethic that is central to the Gospel. For a little while, there weren't many onlookers, and the single largest contingent was three dozen rather bemused cops. Then school let out, and several hundred kids poured over to the police line to have a look. Many were part of the organized counterdemonstration, but most were just curious.

I rotated my signs. I chatted with folks around me. I didn't do the Jesus-skeeving thing for a second. I wasn't pitching my church to anyone, or collecting names and numbers and gladhanding. I wasn't doing anything other than presenting what Jesus taught. I was just there to witness to that essential goodness. Nothing more.

Then one Whitman kid asked if they could have a sign. Then another. Finally, I managed to distribute pretty much all of them. There, courtesy of folks who were just volunteering on the spot, was a nice little wall of grace confronting Westboro. Only one part of that wall was me. The rest were folks who may or may not have been Christian, but who responded positively enough to the core message of the Gospel to be willing to use it to confront hatred.

I found that rather reassuring.