Posters outside churches are generally uncontroversial. Certainly, those of us whose taste tends to the aristocratic may deplore them on aesthetic grounds. Posters are always a little vulgar. We believe that they should meditate on the experience of the British Royal Family: when they started to go tabloid, trouble followed. It would be far better were churches to return to their traditional broadsheet ways, and to nail their wisest and most pertinent reflections, this article say, to the cathedral door.
Occasionally, however, posters arouse anger for what is written on them. Most recently, churches have drawn fire for posters proclaiming, ‘God loves Osama’. Critics argue that the poster aligns God with the terrorists’ cause, makes light of the havoc they have caused, and remakes God, after the image of the misguided and ineffectual clergy, into a simpering wimp.
Church leaders respond that it is perfectly consistent for God to hate terrorism while loving the people who are terrorists. Although this claim lies at the heart of Christian faith, it has always seemed unlikely, never more than in heated times. Even Christians debate among themselves its truth.
Some years ago, for example, back-yard theologians on my cycle-route engaged in theological debate on a garage wall. The first proposed the unlikely thesis, GOD LOVES ABORTION, and spray painted it on the wall. A few days later, a revisionist theologian used paint remover and spray can to alter the message to GOD HATES ABORTION. The response was quick. Love was again substituted for hatred, and God’s love was made personal. The thesis now ran, GOD LOVES ABORTIONISTS. The revisionist theologian, a person with few, but decisive, moves, then scratched out ‘hates’ and wrote ‘loves’, leaving the thesis to read: GOD HATES ABORTIONISTS. The first theologian opened up another front and wrote beneath the much altered message, WHO DOES GOD LOVE? The question, unanswered, still weathers on the wall.
And that is the central Christian question. In the Gospels, it lies at the heart of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees. Does God love only those who act well and faithfully, or does God love the just and sinners alike? For many of his hearers, it was scandalous that one who claimed in his behaviour to represent God’s values ate with prostitutes and traitors. Jesus’ answer was that God loves us when we are still sinners. Or to put it in more modern terms, God