The Devil will get you

On the way home from our first family beach trip, Cooper hated the beach by the way, I saw a sign on the side of the road.  For whatever reason this particular sign, even though I had seen it before on my many trips to the beach, made the wheels in my mind start turning and I began questioning the purpose and reasoning of the sign.  Written on the sign was, "Go to church or the Devil will get you".  What in the world does that even mean?  The longer I drove, the more the saying irritated me.  What exactly is this sign implying?  That if we go to church we are automatically disqualified from being affected by the Devil and all the evil that comes with him?  Or is it not implying anything?  Maybe it means exactly what it says, if you don't go to church the devil is going to get you.  Either way I find this sign utterly ignorant.

My thoughts were in part stimulated from the book Desire by John Eldredge that was recommened to me by a friend and I would recommend it to others who enjoy reading these types of books.  Not only is it informing, entertaining, easy to read, but it makes you think.  It opens your hearts and minds and allows you to ask questions about your christianity, which is not a crime by the way.  The book is basically about our deepest desire to be the person that God wants us to be.  Desire has consequences and rewards, but we must listen to our desire.  Eldredge wrote, "To desire is to open our hearts to the possibility of pain; to shut down our hearts is to die altogether.".  This to me was a very profound statemnet. But back to the sign.

Let's pretend for a second it implies that by going to church we are free from the evil of the Devil. I can't even think of a good adjective to how glaringly wrong this view is. Gary Ridgeway was a deeply religious man. He frequently went door to door to spread God's word. He would often cry after sermons and church services and he was at every service. If his name sounds familiar it might be because he is also known as the Green River killer. He was convicted of raping and killing 48 women in the '80s and 90's. Ridgeway later confessed to more murders, doubling the amount he was convicted of. For those keeping up, that is around 100 women that were victims of disgusting crimes this great church going man committed; he has the highest body count out of all American serial killers. But I don't get it, he went to church so how did the devil get to him?  All of the victims in all of these tragic events in past years;(Columbine, Virginia Tech, World Trade center, pentagon, now the movie goers in Colorado) are you really going to tell me that none of them with church goers? Of course not, so the sign can't possibly imply that if you go to church you are untouchable from the devil. So it has to mean exactly as it states.

If it does mean exactly what it says then it is written in complete ignorance.  I am not a biblical scholar or any type of scholar for that matter, but since when does God want us to sit mindlessly and completely numb during church?  The sign uses fear to make us go to church.  Whatever happened to going to church for love?  God wants us to love Him unconditionally, not just sitting through a service once a week.  We have to want to love God and have an undying desire to love and please him and even then we are not freed from the temptations and evil of the Devil.  However we will have an ally, someone to lean on, someone that will never leave your side or give up on you.  This is why we go to church, not so the Devil won't get us. We go to church for our desire and love for God and the desire for a perfect eternal life. I believe churches in general focus too much on do's and dont's instead of passion. After all isn't that what Jesus was all about, compassion for others and passion for his father. Take the woman at the well for example, he did not chastise her and belittle her, he simply asked what she truly wanted, what she desired.  Desires can become worldly desires,which is where we as Christians stumble.  I believe God wants us to follow our true desires and be happy and he is there to steer us in the right direction.  But love for God and our unwavering desire to be who we are as people is what God truly intented.  Not for us to belittle those who don't go to church and use fear as a tactic to get them there.  So for the people who put the sign up I pose to you one question:  What is it that you truly desire?