Thank God the election is over.
Or as some folks out in Denver might say…
Thank whomever.
Check this out.
DENVER -- A controversial billboard will likely be popping up in a neighborhood near you, just in time for the holidays.
The billboard is paid for by a Colorado atheist group. The message sits against a blue sky backdrop and says, "Don't believe in God? You're not alone."
Ten billboards will pepper metro Denver, while one will be put up in Colorado Springs
And we're putting them up in November and December because of the holidays, when church and state issues tend to come up a lot," said Joel Guttormson, with Metro State Atheists. "To let non-believers, free-thinkers and atheists know that they are not alone, especially in a country like ours that is predominantly Christian."
Pastor Willard Johnson of Denver's Macedonia Baptist Church called the billboards a desperate effort to discredit Christianity.
"The Bible is being fulfilled. It says that in latter days, you have all these kinds of things coming up, trying to disrupt the validity of Christianity," Johnson said. "If they don't believe in God, how do they believe they came about? We denounce what they are doing. But we do it with love, with gentleness, with decency and with compassion."
Bob Enyart, a Christian radio host and spokesman for American Right to Life, said it's hard to ignore the evidence.
"The Bible says that faith is the evidence of things not seen. Evidence. If we ignore the evidence for gravity or the Creator, that's really dangerous," said Enyart. "Income tax doesn't not exist because somebody doesn't believe in it. And the same is true with our Creator."
The billboards will go up Nov. 17. The atheist group, called Colorado Coalition of Reason or COCORE, also wanted to put up signs in Fort Collins and Greeley, but a billboard company there refused to carry the message.
Johnson said atheism is a rebellion against Biblical principals and the billboard will likely offend many Christians.
COCORE said this is about First Amendment rights.
"And I've read the First Amendment up and down and nowhere does it say that I have to care about your feelings. We're either 10 to 16 percent of the population, and the reason we don't really know is because people are scared to come out because they're ostracized by the people around them," said Guttormson.
Speaking of “the First”, the first thing that comes to my mind is that these folks are justifying their actions here by trumpeting the First Amendment as if it somehow trumps Scripture.
When, if I understand it correctly (and Lord knows {no pun intended}, the whole faith thing still doth vex me personally), the First Amendment was written by mortal beings who were created by God who is, at the end of this thread, the author of…wait for it…Scripture.
So logic (and I admit that logic is usually an unwelcome interloper in discussions of this nature) is inclined to dictate that to invoke the First Amendment as a means of getting around the Bible is a little like getting around the drunk driving law by handing the judge a piece of paper that you and a couple of your drinking buddies wrote that says “we get to get shit faced and boogie down the highway whenever we feel like it.”
Of course, it’s easier if you can say you don’t believe in the judge in the first place.
See, there’s the problem with that whole “evidence of things unseen” thing.
From the moment we can first understand language, we are taught (if we are fortunate enough to have parents who actually want to teach us and not just let us grow up courtesy of the culture…but that’s another blog…) that we shouldn’t take things at face value and we should look before we leap and we should be careful not to step on the ice unless we’re sure it’s solid and we should err on the side of caution, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah, hosanna, hosanna, sanna, sanna, ho…
But, oh, by the way, just accept and believe that God is right here with us.
Or right there.
Or there.
Or everywhere.
I digress.
Given the freedoms that the Constitution allows us as citizens of this country (and those who are afraid that Obama is going to pile us all in a truck and head down the Socialist-Marxist Expressway take note), these folks have every right to express their opinion.
And, fair is fair, they’re not advertising or proselytizing on behalf of Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer or even Elizabeth Hasselbeck, for that matter.
They’re simply saying they’re imagining there’s no heaven.
It’s easy if they try.
But, like I said, fair is far.
No do-overs, kids.
You don’t get to change your party affiliation if and when the Glory Train shows up.
Because again, if I understand it correctly, the price of a ticket is believing that the train is coming.
Even if there ain’t no tracks to be seen.
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