"Touchdown Jesus" Struck By Lightning.

well, you can't be worshipping false idols anyway.

does make you wander

where do you wander?

Wherever my feet lead me.

wherever there's chicks, booze, and music

If people poured a fraction of the devotion, energy and love they give "God" into themselves and their fellow human beings we might realize we are each others angels and demons and we have to care for each other because no mythic third party will save us!:O

Too lazy to read all the posts, but 6 story tall Jesus...in Ohio....frame was steel..... HEY MOM THUNDERSTORM IS COMING, IM GOING TO STAND BY THE FLAG POLE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIELD.... I wonder what will happen next episode

A few things...

1. Statues, or any artistic depictions, of God are not necessarily idols, certainly not false idols, as God is a real god not a false one (according to the Christians who built this at least). The wording of the idolatry commandment clearly aims at idols of things other than God to replace Him, which includes Earthly animals but also Heavenly things like angels which people in the Bible would sometimes make the mistake of worshiping.

It is ambiguous as to the depiction of God Himself, which would also be Jesus to most Christians. It should be acknowledged that among all of Jewish history there has almost never been a statue depiction of God, but Jews have more scriptures than just the Tanakh (the Christian Old Testament) that may be more explicit than the Commandment. The same could be said of Islam. But both of those religions have had periods of history where drawing or painting God was acceptable, and pictures have a relation to idols.

Christians started making statues of Jesus, but it's on a different level since for Christians God has a physical incarnation they can make a statue of. If no one has ever seen God Himself in his Heavenly form (and no one has according to Christians), then you can't make a statue of something you've never seen. I'm sure another part of the reason Christians are okay with statues is from the artistic inheritance of SPQR as well, but the main "excuse" would be that unlike Jews or Muslims, Christians have seen God in physical form and can therefore depict Him.

2. Jesus was a Jew and more than likely looked like any other Jew for his time and place, which means he wasn't white or black, but probably had a tanned olive complexion with a large nose and curly hair (could be black or red). Since there isn't a record of what he specifically looked like, artists used hearsay for some features and made the rest in their own race's image. Think about it, if you're a medieval Italian, you've probably never seen a middle-easterner in your life, and you've probably never read the whole Bible (if you read at all) to understand He was a Jew. A lot of medieval and renaissance paintings will also depict clothing and architecture as from their own culture rather than ~1 AD Judea for the same reason.

One feature that's popular in His depiction is long hair, which some scholars believe to be due to a misunderstanding. He was from Nazareth, a town, which made him a Nazarene, like how being from Chicago makes one a Chicagoan. There was a voluntary religious order among the Jews called the Nazerites who would not cut their hair and not drink wine in order to get closer to God. Samson was a famous Nazerite. So that may be a reason he's always shown with long hair.

One last post and I'll drop it.
Still can't believe they're going to rebuild it...

See not everything in the news is bad!

I will point out that there are religions in the world (Islam) that have the same Exodus, in the same translation, with the same wording unmodified by later scripture, and have come to the opposite conclusion you have. Your "certainly" and "clearly" are not nearly as certain nor clear as you might think. =)

For the sake of Christianity, idolism is considered within the context as putting anything else before God in one's heart, and nothing to do with "graven images."

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment." -Matthew 22:37-38

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon." -Matthew 6:24-25

Almost died laughing.

I lol'd.

lol I've driven past this so many times ........
I can't wait for them to rebuild it..
I hope they go for something more like this

I regard FFXI as my master (of free time) and I regard my mistress as my master. Can go on with more things I can consider my master if needed. I am going to hell now, ***!

Yay for fallacies!

The bible just makes me feel smarter sometimes, you know?

Parts of this thread somehow remind me of the Iranian spiritual leader who said (there's a video of it...) that earthquakes were caused by the fact Iranian women were showing too much cleavage. And nobody laughed. Not a single person. Why? I have not a single clue. Screw tectonic plates and other complicated explanations, it's all about the boobs. Then all those women decided to post videos of them shaking their boobs (including Iranian women, risking their lives doing it) and they called it Boobquake. It was intended to prove the guy wrong, basically. Feminism's getting a lot more interesting than it used to be, don't you think?

Wait, what was the OP about? Oh yeah, a giant Jesus getting struck by thunder... AHAHAHAHAHA :D

OMG HAHAHAHAAH (cough)

For those wondering (I'm not sure if anyone really was), part of the church burned as well but no one was hurt. Did about $700,000 worth of damages, if I recall from the articles I read the other day. And yes, as someone mentioned, they DO plan on rebuilding it.

FAIL! Maybe next time the whole place will burn down for rebuilding the statue, if it does then it has to be a sign for sure!!!

my thoughts exactly...

Have to wait and see then. My thoughts exactly. You'd think the saying:

" Once Burned, twice shy" Would make them rethink...


hmmm??

No win situation.. I want to hope it burns down just so I can laugh at their dumbasses wasting all that money... BUT, then they'd just rebuild, again..

Someone outta run up and kick 'em in the crotch though.. Too bad there's no law binding churches to allocate money in a wise manner.. If I went to that church, I'd boycott the hell outta it for wasting money I gave them via donations..

So I am starting this church up that hates other churches because they are stupider, anyone in?! We have spaghetti, giant flying spaghetti tuesdays.

This is what they need to build.

I think the Islamic and Jewish interpretation of this Commandment is very close to that of mainstream Christianity within the context that one side believes God has a human form and the other does not. They all agree that the worship of any besides the one God is a sin, and idols, physical or not, are a manifestation of that.

The divergence of opinion over "idols" of God cannot be discussed in the absence of their vast divergence of opinion over whether Jesus was the physical incarnation of that God. But regardless of what Muslims think of this rule, my intention was to focus on the Christian interpretation since that's what came into question several times in this thread.

The issue of "idols" of God has come up in Christian history a few times, such as the iconoclasts of the Byzantines and the fanatics of the Reformation in the west. The prevailing opinion from all of these movements is that statues of God are not necessarily sinful. It's not every Christian's view, but it is the majority view.

LOL Cincinnati has been totally "up in arms" about this. Can't believe this has made national headlines and now FFXIAH!!!! I live just south of this and there have been traffic problems on the highway lately with all the people slowing down to see this......