Billboards and the hinge of history.

Much was made about the recent posting of a billboard in Times Square, New York, that was funded by an atheist group.    It created quite an uproar among Christian groups and individuals as they decried the thing and the message behind it. It is yet another shot fired in the barrage-like attempt to expunge all traces of God in the public square.  It got me thinking about just how much I, as a Christ follower, should care about this if at all.

Finally I came to this conclusion.

It is irrelevant.

Let's put this in perspective.

I heard the other day that the fastest growing Christian church per capita is in Iraq.  Iraq, where choosing to follow Christ can and likely will mean censure, isolation, prison, torture, or death, often at the hands of your own family.  There, knowing Christ has a real cost.  Do you think that, even for a moment, that a believer in Iraq would care at all about a sign with a message such as this in his town square?  Here today, gone tomorrow.  In the midst of a spiritual battle with a firefight raging all around you, do you stop to read billboards?

But in America we apparently have so little to actually do for Christ that we can afford to focus a great deal of attention on this.  I have heard it said that Christianity in America is a pool that is thousands of miles wide and a half an inch deep.  In Iraq they are in the deep end.  Committed is a word that just falls short.

So if a group of secular humanists with an agenda and a advertising budget wants to expose to the world the symptoms of their unyielding hearts and unbent knees towards God, then so be it.  "If you toss a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps got hit".  The emperor is displaying a robe of reason, clear thinking, and modern scientific fact.  And he is naked except for the chains he wears.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.  John 3:19

But this season is about the Bringer of Light and the Breaker of Chains.  Chains that hold the world in bondage to sin and despair.  Chains in Time Square, chains in Iraq.  Chains in the hearts of those who bought and paid for a billboard that decries the Light of the World as a myth...chains that lay broken at the foot of a manger long ago, chains shattered by the small cries of a baby born to a virgin.

The hinge of history is on the door to a stable.