There is a Baptist church in our town that I drive by on my way to church at least a couple of times a week. For the past couple of weeks they’ve had a message up on their sign that has irritated me to no end. Now, sayings on church signs have a way of being trite and cutesy, but this one has surpassed that and gone on to outright misguided ridiculousness.

First, the quote from the sign:

“Don’t make me come down there!” – God

Here begins the rant.

I’m trying to think of ways this could be interpreted, and no matter how you do it, they’re all bad. Some things it could be construed to be saying:

  • God isn’t actually involved down here on earth right now. Apparently He’s somewhere distant, and just observing. That’s obviously incorrect.
  • People on earth are at some marginally-acceptable level of sinfulness right now. Wrong again! We’re all sinful. No one does good. We’ve all missed the mark.
  • If we cross some line of sinfulness, then… BLAM! God’s gonna come down and make us pay! No. God isn’t up there threatening to blow us away. He promised he wouldn’t flood the earth again and wipe everything out. (I have to remind myself of that when the springtimes get abnormally rainy…) And He poured out His wrath on Jesus. Jesus died so we don’t have to.
  • God coming down here to Earth is a thing to be feared. Uh, no. God coming to Earth in the person of Jesus is the best thing that’s ever happened to Earth and humankind.

I assume somebody at that church saw the message on the internet somewhere, thought it was clever, and put it up without even thinking any further about it. It pains me that the message has been there for weeks now and apparently no one at the church has discernment enough to recognize the gross error and get it taken down.

A message to church sign designers everywhere: if you’re going to put a weekly message on your sign, keep it informational, or, at worst, cutesy. This sign is a big steaming pile of pseudo-cleverness served with a nice heretical gravy on top. Make it go away.