This is what I have been pondering for the past week.

Allow me to elaborate a little.

Last Saturday evening, as I left work,  I found one of those adverts stuck under the windshield. You know the ones I mean, printed on shiny cardboard with some sort of invitation (free lunch in this case) to introduce you to something wonderful! amazing! cheap!

Usually it’s something along the lines of time shares (you know, making a monthly payment to enjoy one week a year somewhere exotic–and expensive–in a tiny condo or cabin that could accommodate twelve–if you sleep four to a bed) or, alternatively, a recruiting event for one of those just-this-side-of-legal pyramid schemes.

This time however, it was something I would not, in a million years, conceive.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me describe the card.

We have a slightly androgynous soldier, in combat gear and fully armed with a sub machine gun at the ready, covering pretty much all of the left third of the card. The background of the rest of it looks like one of those camouflage nets used to hide airplanes or camps from satellite or air surveillance. The first line at the top reads, in all caps:

DERELICTION OF DUTY

The last bit of text (if you don’t count the FREE LUNCH! tag on the bottom right corner) is this Bible verse:

If you do not speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, I will require his blood at your hand.

Ezekiel 3:18.

Guessed it yet?

Okay, I’ll give: it was an invitation to the CBC* Annual Evangelism Conference to be held today, some 30 minutes from where I work.

Seriously.

Some sort of evangelization (is this a word?) event.

Some sort of Christian church.

Portraying an armed soldier and quoting Ezekiel.

In 2012.

While trying to understand how anyone could possibly think that such a card could be a good idea, I’m pretty much speechless.

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Couldn’t resist–click on the thumbnail to see it in all its revulsion inducing glory.

*CBC = Cornerstone Baptist Church “Making Disciples – For God’s Glory”