Bumper Stickers

I’m not one who likes bumper sticker theology. I did however see on the back of a Volkswagen minivan the following: “God Answers Knee Mail”. I thought it was cute and at least it was a bit culturally relevant. However, I’ve never liked the fish or the “Honk if You Love Jesus” ones. ( Though there are lots of people that love Jesus here in LA during rush hour.) I’m a believer in showing your Christianity not just putting it on your car to cover a scratch you got in a parking lot mishap. Did you know that “People who had a larger number of personalized items on or in their car were 16% more likely to engage in road rage.” (yep, I Googled it). And still quoting, ‘ “The number of territory markers predicted road rage better than vehicle value, condition or any of the things that we normally associate with aggressive driving,” say Szlemko. What's more, only the number of bumper stickers, and not their content, predicted road rage — so "Jesus saves" may be just as worrying to fellow drivers as "Don't mess with Texas"’. Szlemko was the author of this study. Who knows? Maybe the cars with “Jesus Saves” were just rounding up a group to go to heaven sooner rather than later. This just makes me think that if we would let people know through our actions rather than our posters then we could get people to believe the Message without our editorial contributions.

One way we could do this is through “loving our neighbor as ourselves”. Jesus was asked “who is our neighbor” and He replied as He usually did with a story not an answer. Leaving it up to the person who asked, and us, to figure out what a “neighbor” is. After this question Jesus told the story that we call “The Good Samaritan”. Guy gets mugged. Guy gets ignored by the “holy” crowd of the time. Guy gets rescued by the “heathen” of the time. The Samaritan hero rides off into the sunset, on his donkey. (Readers Digest Condensed version). Basically Jesus is saying “Your righteousness doesn’t come from the robes or spiritual position(or the bumper stickers). It’s comes from action. The Samaritan was the neighbor in the story not because he was a “good person” but because he actually helped the other person. He actually loved the other person and this caused him to act.

Now comes the tricky part. Let me ask the question again (to me as well as you). Who is our neighbor? The religious elite looked down on Samaritans during Jesus’ time, and yet he used the Samaritan as the hero of the story. What does that say to us? Maybe our neighbor isn’t the couple next door with their teenage daughter. Or the people we work with. Or even the people we go to church with. Maybe, just maybe, we need to look for our neighbors in other parts of town. Our neighbors could be people we wouldn’t normally think of. They could be: homeless or Muslim or Gay or Democrats or Republicans or insert whatever person is radically different from you. If we could call another person a neighbor. If we could put a face on a person instead of lumping them together as a group that we can hate or ignore. If we could look a person in the eye and say “hey neighbor, good to see you today”. If we could love that person, our neighbor, as ourselves. Then we wouldn’t have to tell people about God from the back of our moving car, they would know Him from the way we drive, live and love.

On second thought, this is my bumper sticker theology: “Love ‘Em All, Let God Figure It Out”