It's like my head

However, he maintained his belief that Jesus could cure cancer.

In its consideration, the Advertising Standards Authority said it had looked a photograph of the billboard which was clearly identifiable as an advertisement for the Equippers Church.

But it said the billboard made its statement as a “strong absolute statement of fact” when it should be stated as a belief of the church. It breached the advertising code of ethics on that ground.

The authority said it acknowledged the vulnerability and sensitivities of some of the public exposed to the advertisement, but said it was unlikely that people suffering from cancer may forgo conventional medical treatment because of the statement “Jesus Heals Cancer”.

The authority said that while the church wanted to offer “a message of hope” its billboard was provocative and would cause offence to people who were dealing with, or knew people who were dealing with, cancer.

It said the billboard could cause confusion for some people as it could be interpreted as meaning the Equippers Church was able to offer something that other churches could not.

I must apologize for some topic drift — I came up with a title for this talk some months ago, but the as I was working on it, it…evolved. So what I’m actually going to talk about today is my plan to assault heaven and kill God. You don’t mind, do you?

A little background, first. You may have heard this common phrase.

In the beginning was the Word.

But, wait, no…that’s not true. In the beginning of human society, there was the Blood. The marker of our identity was the family, the tribe, the clan. What united us into functioning social units was our pedigree: the web of familial ties that knit us together. Unfortunately, that union was limited to a fairly small group of people, and could only be expanded by the commitment of marriage and birth. It limited us.

So next was the Word, right?

No, next was the King. The king was a proxy for the Blood: you declared allegiance to the big man, the chief, the royal family. Maybe you werenÕt directly linked by familial relationship, but the King or Pharaoh represented you–he was a symbol of your identity. The size of the social unit grew.

Now we come to the Word?

No, next was the City. In the ancient world, the large social unit was the city: Babylon. Athens. Rome. Kings come and go, but Rome was eternal. People didn’t say they were Greek; there was an awareness of a similarity of language and history, but when you asked who they were, they thumped their chests and said, “I am an Athenian!” or “I am a Spartan!” Rome built a whole empire with an arrogance of pride in that special Roman citizenship, so it was even an identity that could be expanded to a remarkable degree; people standing on Hadrian’s Wall in farthest Britain or on the frontiers of Syria would find honor in calling themselves Roman.

So now we come to the Word.