Fear Of The Word

One of Dave Murrow's main disappointments with the church is that we don't strive to be Christlike as much as we strive to be ladylike. Expecting people to behave like princesses is a sure-fire way to fail with men.

Local mischief-makers

I was reminded of this recently when my local church's noticeboard was "creatively rearranged" overnight. This is what it originally said:


The sign is one of those double-sided ones, so the prankster had a bunch of letters from the other side to choose from to alter the message. Here's the other side and the letters they could have used (despite an E going missing).


What to choose?

If their intent was to annoy, ridicule or embarrass the church, they could have easily spelt out S-A-T-A-N or D-E-V-I-L (using the D from the dog). But instead, they substituted the word "dog" in the original message with another word. The letters they used were P,E,I,N and S .... though not in that order. ;)

It seems that in the minds of the impromptu sign-changers (and perhaps the general public) none of the words describing Jesus's arch enemy would startle or alarm church-people as much as the sight of a 'rude' word. (Sad thing is they're probably right.)

When our sense of morality seems to be sourced more from Jane Austen than Jesus Christ, is it that surprising that we struggle to be relevant to the policemen, footy players, mechanics and truck drivers in our world?