Is This Billboard Anti-Christian ?

Whoa! This looks like a billboard designed to make some people mad. I'll bet many of you are thinking right now that this is another atheist attack on the poor victimized religion of christianity. It has to be a part of the anti-religious War on Christmas. Right?

If that's what you think, then you are dead wrong. The atheists have put up some billboards aimed at making contact with other non-religious people, but they are all much tamer than this one. This billboard is in Auckland, New Zealand, and it was put up by a christian church -- specifically the St. Matthew-in-the-City Church.

Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the billboard was to challenge the literal interpretation of christmas. He said, "What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male god sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?"

Cardy said the church had received about 20 responses and "About 50% said they loved it, and about 50% said it was terribly offensive." I'm surprised he got that high a percentage that weren't offended, but maybe New Zealand is a bit more tolerant than the United States.

But while New Zealand may have more tolerant people than the U.S., it seems the intolerant ones are just as stupid as the intolerant ones here in the States. The billboard had been up for only a few hours before it was defaced with brown paint.

Many religious people have already been told what they think by a preacher and they don't want to be confused with facts, and they especially don't want to have to actually think or make up their own mind. Thinking is too hard when you can just deface property or make death threats (as would no doubt have happened here in the U.S.).

I'll give the Archdeacon and his church an "A" for effort, but trying to make christians think is not a task I would want to try to do.