You can call it a symbol or you can call it a coincidence, but I had a phone call on Good Friday which gave me a perfect column for this Easter Sunday.

Kalispell area resident Philip Klevmoen was calling from East Texas to let me know about a news story he was involved in down there in the little town of Hemphill.

Philip is the gentle giant who is responsible for spreading the word of God in the form of the Ten Commandments on storefronts, church buildings, billboards, refrigerator magnets, pretty much any medium you can think of.

He and his wife Suzy have traveled tens of thousands of miles not just in the United States, but in foreign counties as well, to do what they believe they have been called to do — spread the Good News of a living God who loves all people and wants to save them from sin.

Some people don’t like Philip — or at least they don’t like his message. So it’s not unusual for Philip to hear from people who want him to tear down his billboards, or threaten to do so themselves.

This time, the people who want to tear down his Ten Commandments sign — placed on private property owned by pastor Jeanette Golden — is the state of Texas.

Golden put the sign up on her property in August. Not much different than all the Ten Commandments signs you  can see throughout the Flathead Valley. Not much different than the Ten Commandments which are honored in several places throughout the U.S. Supreme Court building. But three months later, the Texas Department of Transportation sent Golden a certified letter demanding that she take the sign down because it did not meet the standards of the Highway Beautification Act.

Golden protested, demanding to know how the state could prevent her from posting, on her own private property, a statement of her personal religious beliefs. The state of Texas then explained to her that because the sign included a reference to Klevmoen’s website www.Gods10.com, it was commercial in nature.

No problem, Philip agreed to paint over the web address and let Golden put the sign up as “art in the yard.” But Texas still wasn’t satisfied. They came back and asked Golden to pony up $250 for a permit, plus pay an annual fee of $150.

Enough, she said.

“Too much money to keep it on my private property and I don’t know if I’m doing anything illegal and I’m just standing up for what I believe, “ Golden told a reporter for KTRE television.

After she did that first interview last week, Golden became a cause celebre, with hundreds and maybe thousands of people stepping forward to support her and the Ten Commandments.

Klevmoen said his organization has placed Ten Commandments signs in more than 30 states and that he has never seen an issue like this come up before.

“I go strictly back to the Word of God and I go back to the First Amendment,” Klevmoen said, “and I don’t see anywhere in God’s law or in the First Amendment where a person would have to pay to put up God’s word.”

No one has to agree with Philip that Jesus is the path to salvation, nor sympathize with his mission to call America back to the word of God, but you would be hard pressed to dispute his reading of the First Amendment.

Maybe you could make a case for the importance of highway beautification as a social value, but unless there is an amendment in the Bill of Rights that I am not familiar with, highway beautification doesn’t rise to the level of an individual’s freedom of religion.

Yet everywhere you look, religion is under attack.

This little story from Texas about one woman’s refusal to pay a $250 permit fee is one more instance where traditional values are being marginalized by an increasingly secular society that wants Christians to go along to get along.

So, this Easter Sunday might be a good time — a propitious time — to contemplate whether Christians should go along with society or go along with Christ. Don’t forget it was Christ’s public preaching, along the roadsides and in the cities, which got him into trouble, yet he never hid from the authorities. He told his followers to proudly announce themselves, just as he announced himself when he went into Jerusalem for the Passover meal that fateful weekend nearly 2,000 years ago.

“Ye are the light of the world,” he told his followers in the Sermon on the Mount. “A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

In the context of the many harsh words spoken about both Pastor Golden and Philip Klevmoen because of their love of Jesus and their desire to spread the word of God, it is worth noting that the above passage from Matthew, Chapter 5, follows close on the Beatitudes, including these:

“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”

Food for thought, whether you are enjoying an Easter Egg hunt today or not.