I’m driving home from school tonight and I pass by a church with one of those illuminated message signs tonight and I damn near had a wreck when I saw what they had plastered up on their sign. I’ve seen bigoted signs, I’ve seen offensive signs, I’ve seen cutesy signs, I’ve seen misspelled signs, I’ve seen all kinds, but I’ve never seen any church sign quite as profoundly stupid as this one:
Huh??? WTF??? What in the name of Christ’s crucified testicles are you trying to say??? I don’t get it at all. How can you have a rebellion if there are no rules??? Make rules??? In which case, it isn’t a relationship without rules!!!
And you put this sign out in front of your church in hopes that it’ll attract parishoners? What kind of drooling idiots are you trying to attract?
Have you ever read The Way It Spozed to Be, by James Herndon? It’s the memoirs of one year Herndon spent teaching in an inner-city middle school. Since it was the sixties, the students decided in the last month of school to stage “riots”. The “riots” mainly consisted of throwing stuff around; the impression was that they were imitating what they heard of older teenagers doing. No agenda, just mayhem for the sake of it.
Herndon’s classes were the only ones not disrupted. So the administration clucked their tongues, stroked their beards, and fired Herndon. Their rationale was that if no one rioted against him, he must be the only one not enforcing authority.
Actually, that kind of supports what you saw. But it’s just as dumb.
If I see that sign while I’m driving, I’m gonna take off my seat belt and start drinkin’. You’ve gotta call their bluff.
I’m still trying to figure out that first sign. I feel you need a few blatantly stupid rules just to give the kids something to rebel against; it’s part of the learning process.
I think it is a poor attempt at a saying like ‘Freedom without limits is just a word.’ The idea there being that if there are no limits to ones freedom (ie. no personal responsibility) what you get is chaos/anarchy and freedom conversely becomes meaningless. It is also along the lines of the statements ‘Without the dark, there is no light’ and ‘The exception proves the rule.’
Thus I think what they are trying to say is that if there are no defined limits to the relationship, what you will have in the end is a lot of hurt feelings because everyone has limits, and taboo subjects. Personally, I think they chose an obtuse way to state it, but ‘Familliarity breeds contempt’ isn’t quite what they are trying to say I think.
I read it as a cut against people who have children out of wedlock. A relationship (between man and woman) without rules (the Church’s rules of marriage) breeds rebellion (anarchy).
Considering that this is a churches pulpit post (The sign in the OP that is.), I did ignore one obvious religious interpretation of the statement, which is basically that if you believe in God without their interpretation of his rules (ie. are Jewish/Islam/whatever) you are rebelling against him. In other words, ‘yer going to hell Nyah Nyah.’ couched in a manner less likely to get the church egged.
I think it is referring to your relationship w/ God. Directed at and trying to reason w/people who don’t want to “serve,” or “obey” his guidelines/ rules. It is phrased in such an oppressive way. It doesn’t have to be like that!!
;j
I was driving the other day and saw this fine sign on the back of a truck:
JESUS
is not the man
UPSTAIRS
he is the
SON OF GOD
Laid out and punctuated just like that. Except the capital parts were even bigger. So driving up from afar, it just read “JESUS UPSTAIRS SON OF GOD”, which is a nice sentiment in itself.
I just don’t get it.