‘Dear Vandals… Thank you?’: Houghton pastor posts open letter after sign defaced
HOUGHTON, Mich. (WJMN) — A Lutheran church in Houghton has posted a thoughtful response after a vandal left a quizzical message on their sign on Friday.
Friday morning, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church posted a lengthy letter on their Facebook page along with a photo, showing a strange message left as a retroactive epigraph to a message they posted on their front sign. It read, “God loves you just the way She made you.”
The vandalism, in red script, read “—SCREWTAPE.”
In the letter, church leaders writes, “at first I was confused, then offended at the property damage, but ultimately a bit amused.”
Pastor Sarah Semmler Smith said it was clear the vandal took issue with the choice to describe God as “She,” writing, “I ask you, dear readers, had we referred to God as he instead of she, do you think we would have gotten that response? It’s just one letter.”
But the question remains, what, or who, is “Screwtape”?
Vandalism on sign outside Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Houghton, MI
Semmler Smith said she discovered it was likely a literary reference to “The Chronicles of Narnia” author C.S. Lewis—though the reference was not to the popular series, but to a satirical 1942 work called “The Screwtape Letters.”
The work is a collection of letters from “Mr. Screwtape,” an assistant to the devil who is mentoring his nephew on how to lure people away from God.
Semmler Smith wrote that she found screwtape to have two definitions; the one related to works of the devil, and another, more recent one: “to bump a particularly old topic thread on the internet or in an electronic forum, by posting an ironic or humorous reply to a previous message.”
If they meant the internet-related definition, did they mean to say that in 2024 we Christians are so beyond the conversation of God’s gendering, that it does not matter whether we use male or female pronouns in reference to them (see what I did there?).
Or, if it was indeed a literary reference they were after, do they mean to imply that to call God she is so offensive, that the people of Good Shepherd (and their female pastor) are the devil’s assistants themselves?
I want to be offended. I did get upset, and even reached out to friends for care. It never feels good to be the target of ignorance and hate, individually or as a church community.
Open letter to vandals
From there, the letter says she turned to the Bible for guidance, and found something at Mark 3:20-35: “And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’”
“Jesus was accused of being the devil’s assistant, too,” wrote Semmler Smith. “Jesus — who welcomed the outcast, challenged oppressive powers, uplifted women— he, too, was called a ‘Screwtape’ in his day. And that, made me feel in pretty good company.”
Semmler Smith goes on to directly address who left the graffiti.
So to our dear Vandals, I want to offer two things.
The first is an invitation: To come forward and identify yourselves to the people of Good Shepherd. We will not press charges, but want to invite you into dialogue. Relationship is more rich when it happens in the daylight, and communities are built on civil dialogue not acts of hate.
The second thing I offer is, oddly(?) our thanks. Thank you for helping re-clarify our mission. Thank you for reminding us that when a person or group of people stand up against the status quo (even with just a single letter), history may want to put a scarlet letter on their chest, use the word ‘radical’ to disown their voice, silence them, or even try to take away their rights.
Open letter to vandals
You can read the entirety of the letter here, and learn more about Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on their Facebook page.
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