Yesterday, I was on my way to the grocery store, and while stopped at a light noticed the car in front of me had one of those atrocious Taco Bell chihuahua bumper stickers.
Except . . . wait a minute . . . the dog is saying, “Yo quiero Jesus!” WTF?!?!
I mean, let’s look at a couple things here:
How big a fan of trademark and copyright infringement can Jesus be, really?
Doesn’t this just sort of trivialize Christianity out of all possible relevance? (Not that I mind, but, you know . . .)
Can I get extra cheese and guacamole on my Jesus?
Anyone else see any religious bumper stickers that really stopped you dead like that?
I have to speak up on the “in case of rapture…umanned” bumperstickers. Not only would it be an improvement having less of the rabid fundamentalists around but can you imagine how nice traffic would be afterwards. Around here I see so many of those that even the commuters who live 15 miles away who have the hour and a half commutes (I used to do that literally) would be able to get to work in under 30 minutes in rush hour. WOOHOO! BTW, I wonder if they would let me have their cars?
I have also seen some I (heart) Jesus stickers which annoyed me because they were sickeningly cute among others. I have to think of the one that really annoyed me a few weeks ago (I can’t remember now).
HUGS!
Sqrl
“All things are yours - Paul, Apollos and Cephas, the world, life, and death, the present and the future - all are yours.” – Paul to the Christians at Corinth, I Cor. 3:21-22.
Does it ever. Along with “Got Jesus?” and a few zillion other Madison Avenue ripoffs in the name of Christ.
I’ve been racking my brains for a smart-assed answer that’s half as good as the question, and I’m drawing a blank.
Used to be a button that said, “Get smart, get saved,” as if any sort of virtue on our part, including intelligence, was supposed to have anything to do with it anyway.
A friend of mine reported seeing a T-shirt a couple years back that said, “Jesus: CEO, the Universe” on it. Yeh, like an uber-CEO is what I’m looking to find in Christ.
And then, of course, there’s the “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart” bumper sticker, which, while not specifically Christian, comes from that camp. What they don’t consider is that the death penalty and Desert Storm both stopped a lot of beating hearts, and they are/were all for both. Not to mention, if they’re not vegetarian, beating hearts were stopped to produce their meals.
As a Christian, I take offense to this thread. Well, not really. But, as a Christian, pretty much all those bumper stickers annoy the crap out of me. The Christians out there preaching to those who don’t want to hear it make the rest of us look bad in my opinion.
As for the actual questions:
How big a fan of trademark and copyright infringement can Jesus be, really?
Jesus didn’t tell them to make those bumper stickers. Or kill non-Christians. Or bomb abortion clinics. The list goes on. A lot of things done in the name of Christ would not be condoned by Christ.
Doesn’t this just sort of trivialize Christianity out of all possible relevance?
Yes. I’d say it’s more detrimental than helpful.
Can I get extra cheese and guacamole on my Jesus?
No, but Taco Bell is currently developing the ‘Double Jesus Taco Supreme’ which will be available with sour cream and extra bean crud.
Brings to mind businesses that put the fish symbol or “Jesus is Lord” in their Yellow Pages ads or on their windows. Like that makes them a more reliable plumber or a better dry cleaner??? Just plain tacky, IMHO…
How 'bout those ones where the Jesus fish is devouring the Darwin fish? Sometimes the Jesus fish is labelled “truth” and underneath is something like “FISH CAN’T WALK!”
Turp, I don’t think that’s a Christian bumper sticker but it’s funny as snot, isn’t it?!
As another Christian on the board, I must agree with Aglarond who said:
Amen, brother.
I have to say it really put my panties in a wad when this whole WWJD thing came out. Sure, I can see its significance, a pause to think, to inspire decent, moral behavior, but it turned into this WalMart marketing phenomena that just makes me retch.
BunnyGirl, I think what SoHoMom is saying is that the “render unto Caesar” would weigh against copyright infringement.
Despite the ‘Walmart marketing phenomen[on]’ it’s become (and I agree fully that it has), I think the WWJD thing would be great, if only they’d remember it when practicing the behaviors that drive non-Christians and non-evangelical Christians alike up the wall.
I wish the Christian Coalition would ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” before they prepared and distributed millions of deliberately misleading and deceptive voter guides. I wish Focus on the Family would ask it before they come up with some new excuse that doesn’t hold water for denying gays the same civil rights that straights take for granted. I wish that the folks who demand the right to pray at nonbelievers in schools would ask it before they speak out. And so on, ad infinitum.
It won’t happen, of course: they think of WWJD as applying to individual behaviors - they want people to think of WWJD before they yell at their loved ones, or sleep with someone out of wedlock. But they don’t think of WWJD as potentially applying to institutional actions, to the things they do on a movement-wide basis.
That Christianity has managed to survive its detractors is no surprise to me. The miracle is that it’s managed to survive its adherents.
What I find most ridiculous about those is the unspoken and ironic reliance on natural selection to make their supposed point: the big fish (TRUTH) is eating the smaller fish.
Someone should phone the Darwin-fish people and tell them to capitalize on that.
