Touchdown Jesus Burns to the Ground

The usual joke is that if you say something that can be construed as blasphemous, you hope that lightning doesn’t strike you. I wonder what Jesus did? Because Monday night, Jesus was struck by lightning. Well, the 62-foot-tall statue of Jesus known as Touchdown Jesus (because of how his arms were raised up like a football referee) that sits along I-75 in Monroe, Ohio was struck by lightning  – reducing the famous figure to ashes.

The statue, called “King of Kings,” was built by a local 4,000 member non-denominational congregation called Solid Rock Church back in 2004 and had attracted so much attention the church built a walkway for people to come and gawk at the giant Jesus.

News of Jesus’ demise brought the usual comments from posters at the Yahoo! News site — many speculating that the destruction was caused because of how the United States has turned her back on Jesus and doesn’t deserve to have his huge likeness around anymore — so he’s outta here.

Others, like commenter “Jenna,” who lives in Touchdown Jesus’ neighborhood, had a different take on the demise of the $250,000 structure:

”… they could have spent that money on the community or some other good cause. That was God’s way of telling them that too. I wish He would have done it sooner. People are not going to believe in Jesus because of a statue. No, they would have seen God’s work through that church serving them with that money.”

Apparently, the church hasn’t learned its lesson:

The church’s electronic sign had a simple message flashing Tuesday: “He’ll Be Back.”