An Argument with a Billboard

On fair skepticism and resisting outrage

Returning to Chicago from a weekend with family, my partner and I are driving across Michigan, dodging semis on I-94. I notice a billboard on the side of the road.

Jesus said marriage after divorce is a sin.

Immediately, I am outraged. “What the fuck does that mean?” I ask my partner, who is driving.

I didn’t expect an answer. I could see him starting to get riled up.

“Hypocrites”, he muttered.

It felt like a familiar strain of right-wing Christianity.

This couldn’t possibly be a real message from the Bible, could it?

It would have been easy to dismiss this and move on.

But instead, I got curious.

I decided to consult my friend ChuckGPT. It was a long drive, and there was nothing I would have rather done than explore what I expected to be a politicized version of religious morality.

I was in an argument with a billboard.

As it turned out, there were several passages talking about how women become adulterers after divorce. I had not expected to find passages specifically justifying the billboard. It was not looking good.

So I asked, “Why do you think Jesus was so hung up on women being adulterers?”

Next, I was pulled into biblical interpretations and historical context. I learned that these passages are less about condemning women and more about Jesus challenging the men of the day to understand their responsibility in the relationship.

Men had all kinds of power over women, and women couldn’t exist independently from men in those days. Men could divorce and move on to another woman without consequence, leaving the woman legally scarred and without a way to take care of herself.

While the passages about “making women adulterers through divorce” sounded condemning of women, Jesus’s message was different. He was talking about morality and politics, and he was challenging the social norms at the time.

His condemnation was towards the men, who, with all their power, had a responsibility. They needed to take seriously their commitments, because if they didn’t, the impact on women was far greater than on them.

I learned that what Jesus cared about here was fairness, compassion, and treating women as humans, not disposable objects. And I learned Jesus named hypocrisy when he saw it.

Now, admittedly, I’m skeptical of modern-day religion. I see a lot of it now as politicized spirituality, less about wrestling with meaning, more about telling people how to think. But when you separate rhetoric from values, there’s often a lot to get behind.

This exploration led me further into the Seven Woes (Matthew 23), which I had never heard of before. They are a series of statements in which Jesus openly critiques religious leaders for their hypocrisy and performative morality. It’s a reminder of how much his teaching was aimed inward.

By the time I was done with my exploration, we were almost back home.

What surprised me most was not the theology, but that it made me more interested in religion and more careful than I expected.

I didn’t end up convinced, but I did end up clearer about how easily values get distorted when they’re stripped of context and turned into performance.

Fair skepticism, I’ve learned, is a lot harder than writing people off in outrage.