The Bible is officially too offensive for a family-friendly event.

A LEGO enthusiast was pushed out of BrickCon New Zealand after the organizers wanted to censor his graphic displays based on the Bible.

The twist? He’s a Christian.

Lezle Luketina-Johnston set up perfectly accurate displays of popular Bible stories in order to honor his faith, but the violence and sex found throughout the holy book made nearly half his displays unsafe for children’s eyes.

The organisers were concerned about five of the 12 scenes that contained a naked Adam and Eve and other naked figures with Lego-tile bricks acting as breasts. There was also a bloody scene of David’s defeat of Goliath, Abraham about to sacrifice his son on an alter with a knife and a soldier in King Solomon’s court about to cut a baby in half.​.. The show features everything from pirates and enchanted forests to rocket ships and epic recreations of movie scenes. The only limit on creators’ imaginations was to keep it family friendly.

There you have it: Sunday School isn’t safe for kids. It’s official now.

It’s not like we didn’t know this. Just check out the Awkward Moments Children’s Bible, The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, or — because this concept is hardly original — the excellent The Brick Bible in which scenes are recreated using… LEGO blocks.

Luketina-Johnston, however, said the request to leave amounted to “religious censorship.”

“If we want to consider what we do as art, and a lot of us do, you have to treat it like art. “You can’t say the Bible is not fit for children. The gospel is for everyone… What I’ve done is little different from religious art you can see in museums around the world.”

It’s not unreasonable for the event organizers to put a PG-13 sort of limit on displays, but that’s what plenty of churches do too. It’s ironic that depictions of Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Abraham and Isaac, and others would be standard fare for kids’ classes at church but too sexual or violent for a LEGO convention.

It’s tempting to say the censorship went too far, but perhaps churches don’t go far enough.

(Screenshots via Stuff)

