In discussing this and that this evening, I mentioned to Margie the (to my mind) most offensive bumper sticker (or similar media) I’ve seen.
Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.
Where can I begin? The arrogance? The self-righteousness? The hubris? The faux humility wrapped in smug assurance that, well, yeah, we may be sinful, and let’s not talk about last weekend, but at least we’re not going to Hell over it?
From a strictly philosophical and theological view, it has merit (from a Christian perspective, at least). A key to Christian belief is the idea that (a) all have sinned, but (b) all have the possibility, with true repentance in God’s grace, to overcome that human frailty and be saved. I could raise all sorts of interesting discussion points about that, but it is a statement that, on the face of it, is actually a positive thing. Stated in full, it might read, Christians are not perfect, but when they acknowledge their shortcomings, and seek both forgiveness and to improve their relations to God and mankind, God’s grace will save them. That’s a bit wordy, but it’s actually kind of a nice sentiment.
But on a bumper sticker, trimmed down and blaring at following traffic, it’s a slap in the face. Why does one put something on a bumper sticker? To state a position to others, either as a badge of “This I Believe” or, at least tacitly, an assertion that “You should Believe It, Too.” Well, another Christian is going to know that particular dogma, so mentioning it again to them is at best pointless and at worst more than a bit cliquishishly self-congratulatory.
So who is this bumper sticker targeted at? Obviously, non-Christians. And the implication is that, in fact, non-Christians are not forgiven for their sins, and are perforce condemned to the Fiery Furnace, while all those sinful-yet-forgiven folks who hold the right Religious Membership Card will be sipping Mimosas in the clouds and clucking their tongues sadly over all those folks condemned to eternal torment in the Lake of Fire, and, hey, what about those Seraphim?
So, at best, it’s a threat. At worst, it’s a smug slap in the face, an arrogantly self-righteous assertion of salvation and forgiveness because one belongs to the right Club (“Where the Elite Meet to Avoid the Brimstony Heat!”). Forgiveness (and “just” forgiveness) is granted, it seems, not because one’s sins were any less than anyone else’s, or one’s attempt to turn away from such acts were any more profound or sincere or successful, but because one got a Get Out Of Hell Free card at the local Christian Church, and too bad for the folks who don’t know the secret handshake. It’s rude at best, pridefully Pharisaical at worst.
It’s the one bumper sticker that makes me want to key someone’s car. And I say that as some who, ostensibly, falls into the “forgiven” category, and who abhors damaging someone’s property. But it just strikes me as — in bumper sticker form — the precise opposite of what Christianty should be.
While Margie’s no particular fan of the sentiment, she didn’t immediately buy that it’s the most offensive bumper sticker out there. So here’s the challenge: relate (or find in the Internet) a bumper sticker that I agree is more offensive than the above. Granted, there are plenty of offensive bumper stickers out there (“Bible or Murder: Pick One for Your School” rates right up there), but I must confess, it will take a lot to beat the bravura offensiveness of the sentiment above.
As a prize if you do, I will (if you wish) buy you a copy of sticker, so that you can perform whatever sort of ritual disposal of it that you prefer. (Or, alternately, if I can’t bring myself to pay for such a horror, I’ll donate the price to the charity of your choice.)
The hot lines — or comments — are open.
The I’ve been seeing is:
JESUS LOVES ME
and you
Well, it’s unseemly to put “ME” before “you” (especially if there’s that distinction in typeface). But at least it’s a more or less positive message, even with the hint of smugness about it.
Thank you good sir, yes that is an other one that sticks in my craw…and while what you said is going to be hard to fit on a bumpersticker it the correct place sentiment and how things should be.
To simple Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven. is just telling anyone that reads it that “Hey, I’m going to be an asshat but I’ll still gat all the goodies because I’ll be forgiven”. It’s not teaching society anything and it’s not being part of a community if that is your outlook on life….it’s just being selfish.
Also, why are your rants so much less frothy. ;P
My favourite bumper sticker, which I saw on a business trip through Maryland, reads “In the event of the Rapture, this car will be driverless.”
Isn’t that bumper sticker a giant brimstone target?
At best, that’s exactly the reaction that’s likely. At worst, that’s exactly the attitude that it’s conveying. Drives me nutty (if not frothy).
And, as certain as I can be about anything regarding God, someone who takes that sort of attitude about their forgiveness is going to have a very long, very unpleasant conversation with Someone eventually.
It strikes me that Jesus tended to be … a bit irked at those who presumed to being favored of God.
And if you really feel that way, aren’t you admitting that your car is going to go careening out of control upon the Rapture? In which case, aren’t you knowingly endangering others? Others who have not yet been actually condemned to hell, but are scheduled to go through the Tribulations and can still be saved? Isn’t that sort of callous attitude sinful? Shouldn’t you instead stay off the road, to show your concern for others?
I.e., no in-motion cars will be driverless at the Rapture, since the Elect would not be in their cars because of the danger to others. QED.
(If I believed in the Rapture, that is.)
Okay, so I think the way I read the bumper sticker and the way everyone else read it is different. I presumed the bumper sticker was being displayed by an atheist and was sending the message:
… “no one is perfect including Christians, but unlike everyone else, Christians are forgiven. So their sins are okay, or not a big deal.”
Which is a snarky attitude towards Christians. Did everyone else read the bumper sticker that way? Or am I just crazy…
Good question. I think bumper stickers allow for people to quickly display their feelings. But also allow for discussion of ideas. Had that person not displayed that bumper sticker, this thread would not be here.
But to me it also shows why we need to allow people to display such items and not censor them. It affords us the opportunity to say, “You see that, that person is an ass”. And we can show the person for what they are… an ass.
The bumper stickers that irk me are the “Support our Troops” mostly. I haven’t really seen any aggravating ones, just mostly funny.
I agree with Webs regarding the ubiquitous “I support our troops” magnets. How exactly do you support our troops? By buying a magnet and slapping it on your car? How does this support the troops rather than just the manufacturer and retailer of the magnet?
I see quite a few bumper stickers targeting us atheists and pro-choice folks. When I see “If you’re living like there’s no God… YOU’D BETTER BE RIGHT!” (with its cute little row of hellfire) I think “How nice of you to accept the possibility that I AM right!” Or was that sarcasm?
Then there are the ones that translate as “My mind is completely closed to anything that I wasn’t brought up to believe.” You know, the ones that say something like “The Big Bang Theory: God said it and Bang, it happened.”
I heard that radical environmentalists were slapping “I’m changing the environment – ask me how” bumper stickers on SUVs. One of my cardinal rules is that you never, ever mess with somebody else’s stuff! I hate those guys.
Now, you didn’t ask about bumper stickers we actually like, but I have to mention my favorite, which I’ve only seen once: “Eschew obfuscation.”
“Subduction leads to orogeny” Makes me laugh.
I may be missing the point, BD. Is that one supposed to confuse dirty-minded people or something?
Another one I saw in store once that I chuckled over was “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do own the whole damn road.”
The guy who has it on his car is a Geologist if that helps, He lives here where a lot of Orogeny happened, and it confuses folks who see what they want to see and not know what they are really looking at.
So, it makes me laugh for several different reasons.
That’s a very unique interpretation, Webs. Since the sticker was a long-time favorite among Christians (usually accompanied by schools of fish), I never took it that way, but I can imagine someone expressing the sentiment in that fashion.
I fully agree that bumper stickers should not be censored. But to me they are anything but a dialog (except for freaks like me who have blogs); they are an advertisement at best, a “This is my opinion, held strongly enough to deface my multi-thousand-dollar car with, and if you don’t like it, you can lump it.”
At least that’s how I view bumper stickers that I don’t like 🙂
As for “Support Our Troops,” I can think of far worse Iraq-related ones out there. It’s just sort of namby-pamby … I mean, support them *how*? It’s a sentiment that could be adopted by arch-warhawks and arch-pacifists and yet still cause them to come to blows (ironically) over its implementation.
Actually, Avo, that’s kind clever — it only implies Creationism at a macro level. As a Theist who believes that the Big Bang started things Billyuns and Billyuns of year ago, I could say that with a perfectly straight face (my interpretation being much to the horror, no doubt, of someone who would put that on their car).
Margie found a bumper sticker she liked — “CO-EXIST,” where each letter is made up of a symbol of a different belief. It’s actually kind of nice — a very non-aggressive sort of sentiment, and as opinion-assertive as I would ever dream of being with a motor vehicle.
Though I did put a Centennial bumper sticker on my car (well, magnet-mounted) when our city was striving for cityhood. And I have a “Put a Brain in the White House” (with a pic of the Brain (as in “Pinky &”) on it), which I enjoyed displaying during the last two Presidential elections.
If Canada had a President, I’d have my “Cthulhu for President” bumper sticker displayed proudly.
Translation: You are indeed crazy ;P
Well at first I thought that was the angle you were approaching this from. I had to re-read the post another time and then it all made a little more sense. Then I kind of assumed I was the only one thinking that way, but was still curious.
BTW, Here are some funny ones I found on the Tubes (I have seen quite a few of them in real life):
Reader be ware, some may be offensive…
http://www.funny2.com/bumper.htm
http://www.prankplace.com/stickers.htm
I enjoy seeing bumper stickers, especially humorous like the one about orogeny. Can’t think of any that really offend me, though some lead me to scoff. I guess I’m just not that invested in the feelings of complete strangers.
Unless, maybe, the sticker is combined with an ironically opposing action like driving alone in an SUV while our troops are dying for oil. That’s a different story.
About the only ones that cheese me off are the various “We were born or lived here before you, you should leave.” ones. Here in Colorado I see “Native” ones all over the place, they make me think of the Dr. Seuss story about the Star-Bellied Sneeches.
Worst though was the South Dakota one with a shot of Mt. Rushmore, caption read, “Okay you’ve seen it, now go home.”
Yeah, nativist bumper stickers are pretty annoying. Unless you were born here, you’ve got no call to be putting it on your car, and if you work for an out-of-state company, your case is still pretty sketchy.
Despite the fact that I am not a Christian, I’m not really getting your offense at “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” I definitely don’t get why you’re so irked by it you rank it above any other you’ve seen as most offensive. To me, that’s as succinct a rendition of basic Christian philosophy as it gets, and far less offensive than the more pugnacious variety others sport (like “I know the future: God wins!” or the aforementioned “In case of Rapture…” one, compared to which “…just forgiven” is the very model of humility).
In fact, I see “…just forgiven” more as a response on the part of more moderate Christians to what even they perceive as legitimate criticisms of their more vociferous fellow travellers (the “In case of Rapture…” types). Case in point: My mother is a devout Christian (she’s said to me more than once that her “biggest failure” is that two of her three children aren’t religious), but she has nothing but scorn for the prideful evangelicals. She calls the new, hockey arena-sized church of our local evangelical mega-church
“the Tower of Babel.” She’s not prone to putting faith-related stickers on her car (no room what with all the Bush Derangement Syndrome stickers already on there), but I could see her agreeing with this sentiment.
For myself, the most offensive stickers (other than ones with profanity on them) are the ones that just say “BUSH” with a swastika as the ‘S’. Those display not only a profound level of ignorance, but represent a massive disrespect for the suffering of the victims of genuine fascism. They debase everything that is exposed to them.
As I said, it’s arguably a legitimate and non-provocative sentiment — “I admit I am not all that I wish I were regarding virtue, that I do sin, and that I do fall short of the mark, but I have faith that the grace of God will cause me to be forgiven if I repent of my sins.” Compared to some holier-than-thou types who seem to think that wearing a cross on their lapel pin means that their picture shows up in the dictionary next to “righteousness,” it could be a positive, yet humble, sentiment.
For whatever reason, though, that’s now how it comes across to me. Instead, it sounds more like, “Yeah, we’re all sinners, but at least we Christians aren’t going to fry in hell for it like you non-Christians are.” It may well be that some of the folks displaying that bumper sticker don’t mean it to come across that way, and would in fact be appalled by that sentiment, but that’s still how it sounds to me.
If it said, “I know I’m not perfect, but I hope I’m forgiven,” or “I know I’m not perfect, but I’m working to be forgiven,” that would be something quite different. As it is, the gist seems to be, “Christians: sinful, but forgiven.” That’s just a bit sketchy. And, really, does that (or any of it) really need displaying on the back of your car to the folks following you in traffic? And, if you’re doing that — what are you really trying to tell people?
“Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.”
I’ve met more than a few people who thought and acted as if being ‘born again’ was a Get Out Of Hell Free card, no matter what they did afterward. Essentially an old-school (grimoires, Golden Dawn, etc.) magical view of religion wherein you do the ceremony correctly and the Being in question is bound to act as you wish.
Or maybe they see their God as some sort of clueless bureaucrat.
Yes. There’s sort of a mechanical “say the secret password, collect $200” sense to it.
While I am uncomfortable with the idea that “simple” repentance is enough to warrant forgiveness of sins — there’s nothing all that simple about it. It’s not “I’m sorry I got caught and I’m sorry I am about to go to the Fiery Furnace,” but is (or should be) a profound regret over one’s actions and the harm they cause others, a sincere desire to do better in the future and to make up for the harm done in the past. There’s too much involved in actual forgiveness to trivialize it with a snarky bumper sticker.
“… but I’m too polite to a thoughtful contributor to actually say that.” 🙂
Yes, with true repentance I’d expect to see a serious change in behavior. Let alone literally letting the Holy Spirit or Jesus or whatever into your heart; bonding that closely with the Ultimate would change a person, I think.
One would think. Though from everything I read, while there can be such a “Road to Damascus” sort of change in behavior (kinda-sorta – not sure Paul was actually all that different a person from Saul, just directed differently), one of the biggest challenges is maintaining that “glow” after initial euphoria passes.
Never having been “born again” in that fashion, I don’t know that I can say.
Christianity isn’t the only religion that has instant redemption sects. One of my favorites is Amida-Buddhism (sp) The basic tenant is that if you say the correct prayer in the right way once before you die – boom instant salvation.
Probably “Namyoho renge kyo”, which if I remember correctly means “the jewel in the lotus” same as “Om mani padme hum”.
Remember a pair of teenaged girls trying to turn my 13 year old self on to it as a wish granting chant. Memorable because strange, cute girls were talking to me even if it was gibberish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Land
What does the Bible say?
And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 1 John 3:5-8
Those who go on and practice sin are false converts. Please check out a message entitled “True and False Conversion” (you can do a search and find it from Living Waters or Ray Comfort).
I agree that those who profess repentance but who continue to sin without any apparent effort to reform are “false converts.”
On the other hand, a basic tenet of Christianity is that someone cannot be redeemed through their own actions, because all fall short. In the Law there is only Death, but in God’s Grace there is Life. And like that.
So nobody, even the most noble convert or penitent, is going to be without sin. Heck, one of the biggest conversion/repentance scenes in the Bible is Saul becoming Paul, and he continues through his epistles to rue his ongoing sinfulness and to desire to do better.