Church signs are my version of the car accident: I know I shouldn’t look at them, but I can’t pull my eyes away from them.

I’m not referring to the basic signs, of course.  I’m talking about marquee signs that give info about guest preachers, sermon titles, or my favorite, folksy puns about faith, God, or Christian practice.  I’m telling you—they really are like a car accident—they are that bad and they are that mesmerizing.

There is one such sign that I pass on the way to St. Paul’s each morning that is just that kind.  I don’t mean to make fun of or belittle my Christian neighbors that like this kind of advertising, or to make light of the ministry that is intended by these groups, or this particular church to which I am referring.  I’m sure they are lovely people.  But this sign is worth noting.  Hopefully I can get a picture to post of it.  It said this last week:

Don’t laugh at old age—pray you reach it

Each time I passed it, I had to think about it.  In that way, the sign was clearly effective.  But I always wondered a couple of things.  Things like “who is laughing at old age—do you have someone in mind?” or “are you suggesting that I laugh at old age?” or “so you want me to pray that I should grow old?” kept jumping into my head.  Now, I’m pretty sure I know what they were intending to say: old age is virtuous and those that mock the elderly today will eventually be the targets of that mocking and all of that.  But as a Christian message, it seems a little light-weight.  It seems more kitchy than it does theologically thought-provoking.  Growing old is a blessing.  Got it.

But really, we have too much selfish praying.  God, heal my friends and family.  God, give me a ton of cash.  God, let the Saints win the Super Bowl.  In this mode, prayer is something that gets God to do something for you.  By telling me not to laugh at old age, but pray that I live a long life, I’m demanding a commodity from God (a long life) to which God either becomes a cheapskate for not honoring (dying young) or the fulfiller of desires (granting your long life).  I don’t really think that’s how God operates.

So I started trying to rewrite the statement for them and this one popped into my head.  Just as kitchy, but a bit more appropriate:

Don’t laugh at old age—laugh with it

First of all, it actually fulfills the comedic expectations of these folksy statements, turning the “I’m not laughing at you…” joke into a Christian statement about relationships.  Second, it avoids the issue of prayer about which I was just talking.  Thirdly, I actually like the theological statement: we are called to share joy intergenerationally.

The reality is that we in the church spend so much time focusing on who is not here or on how we are different: in other words, the negative.  We also have to deal with the persona that we are judgers and dictators of behavior (do this, don’t do that), so embodying that by chastising the person driving by for doing something that they, in all likelihood, weren’t even doing in the first place, seems like a weak marketing strategy and poor evangelism.  On the other hand, flipping the script a little bit, and demonstrating something about who you are and who you hope to be is something entirely different.

Perhaps the bottom line is that I wouldn’t put either statement on my sign.  And I probably wouldn’t endorse that you put either statement on your sign (or one to which you have access).  These signs aren’t for my generation anyway: they are for Silents and a few Boomers.  So what do you think a sign directed at me and my peers would actually look like?