All your sin are belong to me.
I kid you not.
OMFG, airdisc, that is a classic.
Then there’s the classic:
Seven days without prayer makes one weak.
One church I saw had ‘you’ instead of ‘one’. They didn’t even get their own joke!
Funny? No, they are using the signs as a way to scare people into doing things their way.
Just as Jaguar ads are mostly targeted towards people who already own Jaguars (to enhance owner identification with their cars), many of these church ads are targeted towards church-goers, or potential church-goers.
Yeah, some religious folks are dumb enough think you might convert if threatened by hellfire, but the ministers/priests/etc who are putting up those signs aren’t naive.
If the intention was directed towards inspiring thought on your part, they’d say things like:
“College educated, and have read everything but the Bible? What are you afraid of?”
“Don’t talk with an honest, educated priest. What if he’d heard your arguments before and had answers?”
Since “gee” is a command to mules, oxen or horses to turn right, do you suppose that “gee” for Jesus is a euphemism for a “right” turn as well? Or at least religious right? 
Actually, while I am irritated by people coming to my door with religious messages, I couldn’t care less what churches put on signs on their own property. Sometimes they’re amusing.
I think the churches should go with signs like this:
“Hey, our guess is as good as yours”
“We promise not to screw your children”
“You probably aren’t doing anything on Sunday mornings anyway”
“Be like the rest and hedge your bets”
I don’t get why anyone would be offended or insulted by whatever a church sign says. What would you expect, it’s a church–they’re probably going to post a religious message. I can see laughing at the signs, or thinking them stupid, or like most people, ignoring them, but why would anyone bother to take offense or be insulted???
This is America, dammit milroyj, land of the offended, home of the insulted. Love it or leave it.
[sub]so shut up, or I’ll sue. [/sub]
Put him over the fireplace so He isn’t cold.
I thought about making God a part of my house, but he wouldn’t hold still long enough. Guy’s a busy deity. He works all the time with no break - he’s gonna burn out one day. Look at Vishnu - that guy doesn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘break’. He’s always out preserving the world, while Shiva trapises around destroying stuff and Brahma plays with his K’Nex Set of the Gods. When he crashes, he’s gonna come down hard.
So no one has any idea what my quote means either? To wit: “People who have known suffering rarely seem unhappy.”
Cardinal, that’s code for “people may seem perfectly happy and not be Christian, but they’re really suffering inside because Christianity is the only way and they know deep inside they’re going to Hell”, maybe?
If that’s the intent, I find it horribly hidden.
Oh, I interpreted it as “People who have known true suffering but have survived have known the love and grace of the Magical Sky Pixie and are thus happy despite having shitty lives.”
Hey, I’ve seen one very similar to that!
Most of the churches near me try to capitalize on the latest news stories. (I think they are trying to be hip, but they come across as trendoid.) Lately it’s been things like “ALL nations are under God.”
Cardinal, I took the quote to mean that people who have really suffered don’t go around whining as much as people with littler problems. But I might be over-charitable.
Most of the churches around my place have funky little sayings on their message boards, but there is one that, without fail, seems to scrape the bottom of the barrel. For two weeks, the sign was blank - it seems they couldn’t think what to put on it. After what I’m presuming was a great deal of head-scratching, they came up with this gem: “Christians are named after Christ”.
REALLY??? I didn’t know that. Here I was thinking it was the Hindus.
I am wondering who frequents this church - and who forms their working bees… I mean really… after two weeks of thinking hard about their latest sign… “Christians are named after Christ”??? That sign has been up for three weeks now. I’m presuming they’ve lost all their creativity. Or maybe the sign working bee has gone away for a prolonged dirty weekend??
Max.
Welcome to the board, SopranoRosa!
I had the same idea about people who’ve really suffered. There was a professor at our university who’d been in aNazi concentration camp. I was in awe, I couldn’t imagine living through so much suffering.
I don’t think these are an improvement on the ones cited, but they do show a (quite) modest creative trend. No doubt they’re funniest to those to who know the message back-to-front in the first place.
I’m not kidding about this one.
Painted on the steps in front of Traveler’s Rest Baptist Church:
“NO SITTING ON THE STEPS”
(The church is in Baltimore, these words were on the steps for much of the 1980s, eventually the warning was painted over and the name of the church was changed)