Who knew that the Good Lord had such a sense of humor?

A six-story-tall statue of Jesus Christ with his arms raised along a highway was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm Monday night and burned to the ground, police said.

The “King of Kings” statue, one of southwest Ohio’s most familiar landmarks, had stood since 2004 at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along Interstate 75 in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati.

The lightning strike set the statue ablaze around 11:15 p.m., Monroe police dispatchers said.

The sculpture, 62 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised, similar to a referee signaling a touchdown. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained early Tuesday.

Here’s a picture of Touchdown Jesus Himself:

We used to drive past it all the time going north to Dayton after getting on I-75 at Ohio 63.  That such an object has met its Nemesis shows that the Almighty has better taste than we thought.  It’s one thing for time, labor and money to be spent to raise a medieval cathedral to the greater glory of God, but $250,000 on something this ugly is positively blasphemous.