Faith billboard

A few days ago as I was driving home from my internship on highway 55 north, I spotted this:

At first, I wondered what exactly the billboard was trying to convey. It occurred to me that someone might be angry at Bevo church (Bevo is a St. Louis city neighborhood) and had decided to post this billboard in order to shame or boycott them, except that calling a church “liars” or “drunkards” is a clear case of libel (um, unless they are drunkards and liars, I guess). I suppose “enemies of god” could not be classified as libel – you’d have to prove god existed before you could prove someone was his enemy. Nonetheless, a boycott billboard is not out of the question, given that we have a local laborers union who boycotts a paving company who will not unionize with billboards commanding readers not to use the paving company.

On my way home, I came to the conclusion that the billboard was more than likely a publicity ploy by the Bevo church itself, though I was not sure exactly what it meant. Perhaps I would understand better if I were a Christian?

No matter, everything was cleared up once I went to the aforementioned website. On the website is a picture of the same billboard, but the word “drunkards” is crossed out in red and replaced with “lives of freedom” written in cursive. “Enemies” is crossed out and replaced with “sons & daughters”. “Liars” is crossed out and replaced with “speakers of truth”. Written above the “Church at be*vo” is the word “REDEFINED” as if stamped in place.

I think ones of the reasons I had so much trouble understanding this billboard is that I see a “church” as an organization of people who come together for community and religious services. I wonder if Christians think of “church” more directly as the people who are members of the church, in the same way I might think of a “class” at a university. Obviously, the point is that people come to Bevo with all of these sins that define them, and they are supposed to be redefined in terms of their relationship to their god.

Flimsy and I clearly need to infiltrate this church.