The religious yard sign

In the fall of 2016 and again in the fall of 2020, we saw yard signs in our neighborhood promoting their residence’s religious views. They were usually accompanied by other yard signs advocating a particular political candidate. They went something like this:

In April of this year, I even saw a similar sign, but women’s rights had been replaced by “trans” rights. That made sense to me because those who ascribe to this particular religion cannot define a woman any longer.

Every time I drove by a neighbor’s house with one of these signs, I found myself initially scoffing but as days wore on with these sad doctrinal proclamations in place, they began to be prompts for prayer.

These signs are religious declarations, you see. All begin with “We believe…” They proclaim a worldview. In a day when we desperately need unity and common ground for discussion, these neighbors instead chose to post signs that are philosophically opposed to a Christian worldview, when taken in total.

In and of themselves, each statement on the signs above are meaningless platitudes, devoid of actual substance. The sign as a whole is a middle finger thrust at the God of the universe. There’s no mention of Him. There are no solutions offered, just a declaration of shallow beliefs.

Perhaps my neighbors thought that these signs were less offensive than mentioning the name of God or appealing to Him as life, truth, peace and hope?

I saw a different set of beliefs posted on the internet over the past three years, from a different worldview:

These are doctrinal statements as well. They’re platitudes. While they do not ascend to displacing divinity as the source of life and justice and truth, they do thrust a middle finger at a prominent political perspective in our culture.

So as long as everyone else is posting their beliefs on a yard sign, I thought that I’d design one that I’d digitally post here:

While it would be fun to park this sign in my yard, I’d rather not be so “in your face” and be seen as attempting to “one-up” or even rebuke my neighbors. However, I earnestly believe that these declarations, when believed, lead to peace, life, justice and healing.

Here’s some others I’ve seen on the interwebs:

And this may win as far as a sign we better pay attention to: