R.I.P. Big Butter Jesus, 2004 - 2010

It is a sad day here in southern Ohio. Thanks to last night's thunderstorms, our very own Big Butter Jesus is no more. No longer will the gleam from his immense, white visage greet weary travelers who happen through his little stretch of I-75 between Cincinnati and Dayton. Oh sure, he will probably be rebuilt, but his “second-coming,” so to speak, likely won't be able to capture the same awe-inspiring grandeur and majesty of the original.

62 feet tall, creamy white, and reportedly coming in at a cool $250,000 (That's a quarter of a million dollars, kids) Big Butter was truly a sight to behold. I imagine he had to come as quite a shock to those visitors who were passing through town, not expecting to stumble upon a Godzilla-sized likeness of the Christian savior fashioned out of foam and fiberglass. As startling as he could be to the unsuspecting out-of-towner, he had to be an even bigger shock to those passing by last night.

I can just imagine. Driving home from work you happen to glance over at Monroe's monstrous messiah just as a bolt of lightning flashes out of the black night sky. Like something out of the Bible itself, flames immediately shoot out of Jesus' outstretched hand, and quickly proceed to consume the entire statue. In a matter of minutes everyone's favorite fig-bucking Jesus statue is reduced to little more than a smoldering steel skeleton and a pile of ash.

I only assume that God finally happened to turn His gaze towards our beloved religious eyesore and decided to get all Old Testament on our collective asses. Full of divine rage, He reached down from the heavens above and smote the abominable J-man in a righteous blaze of fire and for all to see. Doesn't take a Biblical scholar to get that message loud and clear: God no likey ginormous Jesus statue!

Of course there is always the more reasoned, scientific approach to explain Big Butter Jesus' unfortunate destruction. With his giant steel frame, it is somewhat hard to believe this didn't happen sooner. But honestly, who could have possibly known that making an enormous, 60ft tall, steel-framed statue of Jesus out of paper-mache, Styrofoam, duct tape, thermite, and napalm was such a bad idea?

Make no mistake, there is a part of me that absolutely delights in the absurd irony of this glaring example of religion's ridiculous nature being violently wiped from the Earth in a fiery “act of God,” but deep down I am actually gonna miss the silly old thing. Sure, it may have been a profoundly garish and embarrassing eyesore, but dammit it was our profoundly garish and embarrassing eyesore!  Here's hoping they rebuild it, bigger, better, and uh...Jesus-ier! Perhaps the nearby Islamic Center should erect a Big Butter Mohammed statue in its stead. You're right, that probably wouldn't be kosher...

Gone, but not forgotten. I look for his return in three days...