AUCKLAND – A billboard depicting Joseph and Mary in bed together has sparked angry reactions!
A large signed was erected outside the St. Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand. The image depicts a sad looking Joseph lying next to a dismissive Mary. Above their pillows is written, “Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow”!
Almost immediately after it had gone up, the sign had paint thrown on it in protest.
The church’s Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the point of the billboard was to question the widely held belief that Mary was literally impregnant by a male God.
“We would question the Virgin Birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense,” he said.
However, other New Zealand Christians are very unhappy with the image. The idea that the picture was depicting the Virgin Mary just after sex was wholly inappopriate, said Auckland Catholic Diocese spokesperson Lyndsay Freer.
“We would see a billboard like that being used by an anti-Christian group to actually poke fun at the divinity of Christ,” said Free. Such an image would not “give rise to any intelligent discussion on the birth of Jesus.”
While Cardy is disappointed some are misinterpreting the image, the church will not be taking the billboard down.
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Who gives a rats ass if they are offended? Keep it up and do it again and again and again. So called Christians do their own share of offending by doing their best to force their ideology and morals on the rest of the world.
What would Jesus vandalize?
A massive lack-of-faith on the part of the "Faithful" leads to all sorts of paint-throwing and Creation-museum construction. Leave the sign up.
Rich's comment should be taken to heart by Glynn Cardy — that his billboard is anti-Christian, and has the support and good wishes of those who are certainly not Christian.
As for me, imaginary bed scenes involving Mary certainly seem un-Christian.
Today's rabid right-wing "christians" are comparable to the rabid muslim extremists that are taking hold in the old world lands. Terrorism is terrorism in any language. Christianity is just more insidious disguising itself as "word of god"
Sign language is an imprescindible matter to be discussed and taught in school, to integrate our kids to the deaf/mute world.