Three Billboards Outside Providence RI.

This service was led by the Reverend Steve Burt as a special guest. The audio is somewhat garbled because we had technical difficulties. Please refer to the excerpts below if have trouble listening. 

 One day [I] passed Billboard #1: Jesus loves you. Is the feeling mutual? [I thought back to my early years,] that stage we call pre-critical naivety, when believing is effortless and unquestioned. And why not? It comes from trusted adults, reinforced by the culture. …  

But after pre-critical naivety comes a second stage: critical thinking. My friends and I questioned Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. We learned the truth. Then comes stage #3: post-critical naivety, when we either totally discarded those concepts or we made conscious choices to continue the tradition with our kids and grandkids. …  

What I'm railing against is the stunted Christianity of Billboard #1: Jesus Loves Me. Is the Feeling Mutual? Come on, Jesus isn't about the feeling. Fact or fiction, the Jesus story is a metaphor. …

The First Century wasn't a scientific culture, it was a myth-making storytelling culture. …  I have great affection for Jesus the character. … Even if I were to find out Jesus is a 100% fictional creation …

I put him up there with Gandhi, Susan B.   Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr … [as well as] fictional characters like Atticus Finch, Don Quixote, Batman and Superman, …  

Got to confess, I love the Jesus character in Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical Jesus Christ Superstar. … a literary creation in which I see a man trying to live an authentic life built on compassion and justice-seeking and speaking truth to power. …

I also love Gandhi's words: I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.  Okay, Billboard #2, six months later. The flames caught my eye immediately. You've seen variations of it. Where will you spend eternity? …

Billboard #2 is that old fear-driven, hellfire-and-brimstone religion. …

Myself, I prefer positive attraction, not fear. Appeal to people's values, not their fears. …  

Six months later Billboard #3 appeared. When you die, you will meet God. [My wife] Jolyn read the words and I muttered, “I sure as Hell hope so, because I’ve got a lot of questions for God.” …

[Like:] And how did you let Jesus's movement called The Way (or Way of Living) morph into Christianity? It got so far off-track after Jesus died. … My childhood minister used to say, “God, that we humans are your eyes and ears and arms and legs on earth.” Could you please re-send that memo to everybody—everybody—in really big font, and let them know that it means we're supposed to take action, not just excuse ourselves by saying: Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families (or you fill in the blank).…  

Billboard #3, when you die, you will meet God, doesn’t strike fear into me. As a kid I had many questions, as an old fart I’ll have even more. I'll also treat God to some back-patting. Mostly I’ll say: Remember the time? Wicked cool! Or: Zebras were a nice touch—horses with racing stripes. …

When you die, you will meet God. Why does it have to be scary? Why read a threat into it? Because we’re culturally conditioned to hear it that way? Hey, that makes it more a Halloween story than an Easter story, doesn’t it? …  

Let me close with a story. At a craft show I was autographing my book, A Christmas Dozen. A teenage girl with Down syndrome came up. She fell in love with the cover, an oil painting called “Snow’s Taste.” It shows a little kid in a snowsuit, face upturned to catch a snowflake on his tongue. The older woman with her shook her head and mouthed: She can’t read. … So I took the book from her hands and said, “I wrote this book, and I’ll put your name in it if you like.” She beamed me a high-intensity smile that could have melted five inches of snow off your car. I autographed the book and gave it to her. She gave me a little-kid, chopping-block kind of handshake as if saying “Thanks, it’s a deal,” then walked away happy. …  

 For all I know, God didn’t even see the encounter. But I was there. I understood I was acting as God's eyes and ears and hands and feet (yes, acting as an agent for the God I don't literally believe in). And maybe that’s what matters … When you die, you will meet God. I hope so, because I've got questions. But for now I can do without the fear and trembling messages, thank-you very much. Better I spend my energies trying to live a compassionate life of kindness, justice-seeking, and speaking truth to power. You too, because if we don't, I guess we're all damned to Hell here on earth, aren't we?