Poor Joseph: God was a hard act to follow.

This is a genuine photo in the London Daily Mail of a billboard standing in front of St. Matthew-in-the-City, an Anglican church in downtown Auckland, New Zealand. It was in this morning’s Washington Post (sans photo) and there are multiple citations on the web.

It was put up during Christmas week by the church itself, in an attempt to spark discussion about faith in one of the world’s most secular countries, with 31% of the population non–religious, up from 27% in 2001. It has certainly sparked discussion about the propriety of the billboard itself. It was vandalized with paint a few hours after its debut, and has been torn down and replaced twice.

Archdeacon Glynn Cardy intended to challenge what he calls “stereotypes” about the virgin birth. His church teaches that Jesus had two human parents and was conceived in the conventional manner. In an interview he said, “We wanted to say to people who are on the margins: If you want to find out about God and Jesus, you don’t have to hang up your brain, you don’t have to believe in supernatural things. There are Christians who don’t believe God is a being in the sky who directs traffic on earth.”

He went on to say that to engage members of an increasingly secular society with topics such as virgin birth requires a demonstration that one does not take onerself too seriously. He doesn’t regret putting up the billboard or the debate it triggered, because “We knocked Santa off center stage… for a day or two.”

 

And apparently two of the people responsible for defacing the billboard at various times are avoiding prosecution.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/st-matthe...rt=0&thepage=1&st=gsa&mediatype=Any&dates=Any

The billboard made national news (I'm a kiwi myself), in one of the articles I saw, they discussed some of the other options that were considered, including a giant glow in the dark sperm swimming down from heaven.

 

Awesome!

Common sense strikes another blow against Fundamentalism!

ODT: Jesus and Mary billboard ruled not offensive
NZ Herald: ASA: Jesus' mother sex billboard not offensive
STUFF: Church billboard ruled not offensive by ASA

 

On both counts - how do you know?

 

But God/Allah/Yahweh, Joseph, Mary, Jesus and (possibly) Mohammed are all imaginary characters in fairytales. To mock them is equivalent to mocking Beowulf, Robin Hood, Dorothy and Toto, Hiawatha, Winnie the Pooh or the Tooth Fairy. Insensitive to a particular culture, perhaps, but hardly grounds for "all hell breaking loose." Much less grounds for the homicide your Stone Age Muslim role models have advocated and even committed when their slightly modified version of your little fairytale was mocked.

If you're going to do such an abysmal job of raising your children that they never learn to stop believing in fairytales, the least you can do is prepare them for the rest of the world to ridicule them when they grow up to be fools!

 

You (and sandy) are missing the point though.

The Billboard was erected by a Christian Church to raise awareness around the meaning of christmas to christians.

This wasn't some publicity stunt by a bunch of atheists making fun of christianity.

The billboard was erected by freaking christians.

 

What about the billboard mocks Christ?

I mean seriously, you're going to have to explain it to me.

Are you suggesting that Mary and Joseph weren't a Human Married Couple?

That they didn't have sex, and that Jesus didn't have a half brother named James (Matthew 12:46; Matthew 13:55; Matthew 13:56; Luke 8:19; Mark 3:31; Mark 6:3; John 7:1-10; Acts 1:14; Galatians 1:19; - or are you a Catholic)?

At worst it's a tongue in cheek look at the immaculate conception, presented in a way that most modern youth can relate to.

 

A mythical figure in the legends of the Mohawk Indians. Most Americans are familiar with the name, if not the story, from Longfellow's famous poem "The Song of Hiawatha." I chose him because I wanted a figure from the legends of a premodern people on my list.

To "worship" an imaginary character from a myth, legend, fairytale or popular story, as if he were real, is profoundly ignorant. It's difficult to respect people who are that stupid, and to suggest that the rest of us should alter our behavior in order to avoid offending them is preposterous. It is EXACTLY like commanding us to be careful not to deny the existence of the Tooth Fairy in case a child is overhearing us from the next room.

People who don't understand the concept of metaphor are intellectually handicapped. They need to be rehabilitated, not coddled.

You seem to be of the mistaken opinion that all people who consider themselves Christians regard the mythology of Abraham as literal truth rather than metaphor. Even the Pope admits that the seven-day creation and assorted other miracles in the Old Testament are metaphors, and that their status as metaphors in no way diminishes their usefulness as both lessons and cultural icons that bind his people together. Why should accepting the same truth about Jesus be qualitatively different?

The people of New Zealand have progressed further than perhaps any other major nation categorized as nominally Christian, in freeing themselves from the tyranny and ignorance of dogma. Yet they are good people, certainly better than the Abrahamist fundamentalists who are, as we speak, doing their best to destroy civilization. One of the key components of wisdom is a sense of balance. Being able to see the humor in a legend hardly diminishes its power. Arguably the worst single feature of all three Abrahamic religions is their overwhelming humorlessness. Taking oneself too seriously is never wise. Taking one's myths too seriously is positively idiotic.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, it does not matter that Jesus was almost surely a fictional character. The stories told about him tell us as much about ourselves, our culture, our strengths and our weaknesses, as any archetypal story--from "Beowulf" to "Avatar."