The same night the Lord said to Gideon, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pull beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.
So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the men of the town, he did it at night rather than in the daytime. (Judges 6:25-27)
A while ago, my friend Matt was teaching on this passage. Matt did an incredible job teaching that day about God’s yearning for justice, and His passion for things to be set right. It was inspiring to say the least. It was also during this teaching that I was moved to ask a question. I’m not entirely sure that Matt wanted his audience to leave asking this question, but regardless, this was the question that burned in my mind for the remainder of the day: under what circumstances is property damage okay?
Let me fill you in with my thought process a little bit before exploring this one. I spent the last five years of my life in Bowling Green, OH before moving here to Kent. Bowling Green is a neat, little college town surrounded by cornfields. Like any other neat, little college town in the Midwest, Bowling Green could be considered a party town. There are days every now and then, that the entire town seems to be one big drunken, sloppy, mess.
This is where Girls Gone Wild enters the picture. Girls Gone Wild has a tour called the “Wildest College” tour. Essentially, they tour the nation in a big party bus, traveling from college town to college town, buying drinks for people, filming the results, and making a crapload of money off of it.
To be completely honest with you, I hate the whole concept of Girls Gone Wild, and I wish nothing but bad things upon the people who created/run it. So you can imagine my frustration when the Girls Gone Wild “Wildest College” tour bus came to Bowling Green, and parked only a few blocks away from my apartment.
I had always wanted to force some kind of confrontation when the film crew came to town, but to be honest, I hadn’t really thought about what the confrontation should look like. So when Matt taught about Gideon tearing down his family’s Asherah poles, something popped into my head. Would it be wrong to spray paint “date rape” on the side of the Girls Gone Wild bus?
Something about that phrase on the side of that bus seems so right. Partially because I believe you are just calling it by its proper title. And secondly, it would be great for others to be forced to think about it in that way too. Everyone from the casual passer-by to the film crew would have to read that and at least compare the two actions.
So what do you think? Under what circumstance, if any, is property damage okay? Is my little plot to speak prophetically about pornography justifiable?
