STATUTORY WARNING: You may find this post offensive and hurtful. So if you are a closet radical (or a Republican) OR have any affiliations with a certain Mr. Thackerey and his type OR if FOX news is your favourite channel, then this is probably a good time to stop reading.
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION??
A few days ago I had blogged about us Asians being very thin skinned. And that’s just S.E. Asia. The Middle East, I am not even going to get started on.
And just a day after that I came across this report about a poster in New Zealand put up right around the advent of Christmas and commissioned by (hold your breath here) the St. Matthew church itself.
It shows a dejected-looking Joseph lying in bed next to Mary under the caption,
"Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow".
St Matthew’s Church in Auckland, which erected the billboard, said it had intended to provoke debate.
Quite predictably the larger Catholic Church community, among others, has condemned it as "inappropriate" and "disrespectful" (which, quite frankly and with due regard to freedom of speech etc, it was).
Anyway within hours of its unveiling, the billboard had been defaced with brown paint by someone who I am guessing was a very devout Christian.
Meanwhile the church's vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, said the aim of the billboard had been to lampoon the literal interpretation of the Christmas conception story.
"What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about," he said.
"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?"
Archdeacon Cardy said the church had asked an advertising agency to come up with a few ideas in November, and that the billboard they chose was infact one of the less radical ones offered up to them.
"One of the options we turned down had a sperm coming down with the words 'Joy To The World' " he said.
Last month a campaign by New Zealand Atheist Bus Campaign raised $20,000 in public donations to fund bus ads which read:
"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".
Those ads created a storm when they ran on the London Underground and British buses this year.
Similar ads have run in the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Australia, Finland and Germany.
Now the point here is not about the moral accuracy of these posters and what they symbolize.
It’s the amazing ability to have a discussion without resorting to burning buses, destroying public property, death threats etc.
Dissent with just a can of paint??
Can we expect that in India???
We should be so lucky.
So when they say developing countries, maybe they aren’t just talking about out economies.
Think about it.
Till next time.
Luv
Vish
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