dwasifar's daily gripe

Saw this one the other day:

FOR ALL YOU DO

HIS BLOOD’S FOR YOU

Ordinarily I’d just make up some funny narrative to mock a church sign, but I don’t think I can this time, because this one’s too horrifyingly hilarious to make fun of; nothing I could make up would be as outrageous as the sign itself is.  So I’m left with cataloguing my various reactions to it.  In no particular order:

• This is way more tacky and vulgar than the billboards with miserable crucified Jesus, outstretched arms nailed up, and the caption “I Love You THIS much.”  Way, way more.
• A beer slogan made into a church slogan?  Who are they going for with this?  Homer Simpson?
• “For all you do.”  This turns the beer slogan on its head.  “For all you do,” in the beer ad, meant “all your hard work.”  Here, apparently, it means “all your vile sinning.”  This is an interesting achievement; they’ve managed to be funny and be killjoys at the same time.
• Associating beer with transubstantiation is a break with tradition.  Wine is customary, because it superficially resembles blood.  We don’t have a problem with this when thinking of wine, because we’ve had time to get accustomed to it, so people drinking glasses of red wine don’t ordinarily gross us out.  The same can’t be said of the picture of a bunch of guys at the bar having frosty cold mugs of blood, which is the picture that pops to mind for me.
• Along the same line: Blood is not the body fluid that beer brings to mind, is it?  Think about what the sacraments might have been like if beer had been all that was available at the Last Supper.  We might be hearing sermons about being washed in the urine of the lamb.  Not to mention all the golden-shower nun porn.
• Of course, this could condense the sacraments, I suppose.  Urban is fond of pointing out that beer is liquid bread.  So maybe this is one stop shopping – body and blood (or urine) in one easy pop-top can.  Could Jesus Beer be far behind?  For the mass market, you know.  What would the slogan be?  “Save some for me?”

My various japes at the expense of this slogan do make one serious point.  Organized religion is casting around for a way to stay relevant.  In this case they’re trying base humor.  I sort of appreciate the attempt, but it’s just so tasteless and so easily mocked that I can’t imagine this is a good route for them to take.  Typically religion has traded in grandeur and pomp.  I don’t think they can maintain that by adapting beer slogans (for cheap crappy mass-market beer, at that).  Seems like a bad tradeoff.