Thankful to be alive.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, this message was up on the board of the local church. At first glace, the message seems straight forward, people should be "thankful" to be alive. Obviously being a Methodist church, God is the target of gratitude. This sort of idea is brought up time and time again throughout the holidays. While I do think people take being alive for granted, that is not the underlying message here (not only the sign but this common message). Here we have a church — a place to worship an invisible being that supposedly created everything.  While the message in a nonreligious context is alright, put it into a religious one, and the message becomes warped. This church is using the classic guilt trip: people do not thank God enough for allowing them to live. I do not understand why any religion would portray their god as this: a complete egomaniac. To get the story straight: God created us, why? So that we could worship and praise him our entire lives, but we cannot forget to be thanking him for allowing us the privilege to do so. If we choose not to, we can spend an eternity burning forever and ever in Hell. We should never take being alive for granted, but this message is pathetic, and only strokes the ego of a being which probably doesn't even exist. To really thank the source of existence, biological evolution should be look towards, and even more precisely, our parents.