omg…people actually buy buy these things…
Seems odd to me that there’s a vanity plate boasting about believing in God. I was raised to consider vanity a sin. Has vanity lost its sin status? Whose call was that? Jim Bakker’s?
God must’ve been sozzled, too.
Robin
:eek: WTF? I would have shrieked and made a scene or something to be let out if I were him. (Men aren’t supposed to shriek, though, are they?)
I have yet to see the plate - and I’m glad. I’m also glad it’s not the standard plate. Woo. It’s bad enough that you have to pay through the nose to tag your vehicle, but to be saddled with a plate like that just grates on my nerves.
Oh, so the time and place for everything is when someone else says so? Anywhere you see someone’s car, unless they drive through your living room window, is a public place, and, if you don’t like the message, then it is your duty to avert your eyes.
I’m not going to say you’re nuts per se, but if you see harm in this, it is my opinion that you’re a little off base.
“Vanity” plate is a name for the plates, not a religious designation. While I’m entirely sure that your post is meant in jest, there are those floating around who might seize on it to make an argument, and I wanted to head that off at the pass.
It wasn’t really meant in jest, though. The fact is that whoever puts one of these on the back of their car is boasting about how pious they are as they’re holy-rolling down the highway. It’s smug, snotty and runs contrary to what Christianity is all about: empty preening of religion-cum-status, rather than being humble about what a good person you are.
Indiana might as well release a vanity plate that reads “Holier Than Thou”; it would amount to the same thing.
Matthew 6:5-6.
Please see my earlier post re: Mt 6:5-6.
And, in light of your tone, I just have to ask you a question: how do YOU know the hearts of every person in Indiana who buys this plate? I’d refer you then, O my amateur Biblical scholar, to the very next chapter in Matthew.
Your first assignment is to read the first five verses and give me three sentences on how it relates to your post re: people you don’t know.
Vanity of vanities; all is vanity! All colors and styles! Eliminate the middleman! We will not be undersold!
Sounds like you could stand to learn a lesson from Matthew 7:1 yourself, Puppy. You’ve got quite the glass jaw when it comes to having your assumptions challenged. What’s in the hearts of the people who wear their religion on their sleeves (and rear bumpers) is not at issue; I don’t care how good or bad they are. But their version of expressing their religion is especially tacky, and runs counter to the humility that Christianity professes. Matthew would surely have amended his passage to read “for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets and boast bumper stickers on their asses and chariots, that they may be seen of men,” if only bumper stickers had been invented at the time.
And back to Matthew 7:1-5: it means that if you’re going to criticize, you’d better make sure you’ve got your own opinions in order, because others are going to hold you to the same standard you hold them to, and rightly so. If you haven’t bothered to work out the kinks in your own personal philosophy, then you have no business carping about others’ kinks. I don’t wear my religion on my sleeve because doing so cheapens it, and I know plenty of religious people who feel the same way.
I hope this clears things up for you, but considering your needlessly harsh reaction to my post, I’m afraid I might be casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).
Don’t we all?
Oh? If you’re thinking that I was knocked out by a light punch, then I’d have to disagree. While I’m not sure if we’re arguing about anything in particular, I’m pretty sure THAT hasn’t happened. If what you mean is that I’m sensitive, then perhaps you might want to use a different metaphor, because “glass jaw” does not mean what you think it means.
Ah, but it is at issue here. Because the verses of Matthew that you brought up deal precisely with that. Jesus is angry at those who are not actually pious but put on a show of being so in order to receive recognition. He says that recognition is all the reward they will get for that.
BUT, what about those who are not “hypocrites?” This is the question that I am asking you. Those who get the plate in order to display their faith, or to use the plates to witness, or to use the plates to identify themselves to others of like faith?
By your post, it is easy to assume that you are making a blanket generalization, that everyone who buys the plate is a “hypocrite.” In fact, it’s not just easy to assume, you flat-out said that this is what you believe.
My point is that you don’t know this, and so to condemn people you have not met and do not know for a sin you imagine them to be committing is to be asking to pluck their mote without seeing your own beam.
Tacky according to whom? Again, you’re arguing from authority when your only authority is your own personal preferences.
This is quite obviously a joke.
I’m sure that’s what you want it to mean, and I can’t say that, for all situations and circumstances, I disagree with you. However, it can also mean that you should clear your own heart of the need to impute impure motives to an entire class of people based on their license plates, before you castigate them for those plates.
And you’re perfectly welcome to do so. How you choose to celebrate your faith is your own business, and it is not for me or anyone to interfere with that. But plenty of people disagree with you for perfectly valid reasons.
Lest you think that I’m getting all up in arms or insulted by your postings, Chance, I’m not. My point is simply that you are painting with a pretty broad brush, and your position in that regard is unwarranted.
My God. That… Gerry Dick’s head… it’s so damn BIG. His forehead isn’t even a fivehead; it’s like a twentyhead. He looks like he’s ready to welcome back Capt. Christopher Pike to illusions of green slave women. Freaky.
“I know I’m a million times as humble as thou art.”
I’m not talking about a knockout here, but my point is that you sure are reeling from my light punch. To hear you talk, you’d think I’d attacked you full-bore.
Fair enough. I suppose I was thinking more that people have the right to be hypocrites, if they want to. But that’s not at issue here.
“Witnessing” is now something you do while barrelling down I-74 at 65 m.p.h.? There’s community for you. It’s obnoxious is what it is. There’s no need to parade around like some pious peacock; that’s not something we need. That’s what the term “holier than thou” refers to: those who are constantly preening themselves to look the part, and that’s the problem here. And if these people need license plates to find other Christians, then I’d say the whole religion is doomed.
Either they’re hypocrites or they’re ignorant of their hypocrisy. When you find such a man, he is ignorant; teach him.
I’m not condemning. I’m judging. Condemning falls under “sentencing.” There is still hope for these people. That’s why I’m discussing this at all.
Interesting how you ignored the part of that sentence where I point out that these plates run counter to the humility that Christianity professes.
And that somehow invalidates the point I made? You know, Pup, sometimes you can make a serious point through humor, like I did with my first post on this thread. Just because you’re discussing a serious topic, you’re not required to remain stern and staid. That makes for a dull, drab world. “A spoonful of sugar maketh the medicine go down.”—Poppins 3:16. (That’s a joke; there’s really no Book of Poppins. I’m referring to a movie here called Mary Poppins, which is not religious at all.)
I disagree. Matthew is speaking pretty universally here. But I’m sure you don’t want that to be the case, after you’ve gone and invoked his book.
Then you’ve got to do a better job of convincing me that I’m wrong. I’m hardly perfect, but I’ve got enough on the ball to hold and defend opinions. Your slur that I somehow have a “need” to assign criticism to people for reasons other than the fact that they need it and that it’s for their and everyone’s own good is base and insulting. I would hope for no less from others (Matthew 7:12.)
Like who? And like what reasons? Why are you pretending you’re in some kind of majority yet you refuse to identify who these people are, or what their “perfectly valid reasons” to disagree with me are? You aren’t even giving me much in the way of a refutation, much less these fictional multitudes you’re invoking. You say you’ve got an orchard, but you have no fruits to show me, and Matthew 7:20.
I’m not from Missouri, but… show me.
A priest in a chapel stands at the altar rail beating his breast, and crying, “Lord, Lord, I am not worthy!”
The Monsignor sees him abasing himself so effectively that he’s moved himself to rush to the altar rail beat his breast, bob up and down in a deep bow, shouting “Lord, Lord, I am not worthy!”
The janitor, who’s been in the back scrubbing lime stains out of the baptismal font, sees this, and is seized with the urge to rush the altar rail, beat on his breast and shout, “Lord, Lord, I am not worthy!”
The Monsignor grins slyly, nudges the priest in the side and says, “Check out who thinks he’s not worthy.”
I love that joke. 
Indiana changes its plate design every 4 or 5 years, issuing renewal stickers in between. There’s an open competition each time to design the new plate. If you have a better idea, you’re welcome to enter the next competition. The artist who designed the current plate was publicly pissed off, because the state replaced a slogan or something with the state’s web address.
Our plates are now flat, and the numbers are printed, not stamped.
The extra fee goes only to the state. When the plate was first proposed, it was proposed that it only be available to those who contributed at least $50 to a victims of Columbine charity, but that didn’t happen.
The political brouhaha was because the phrase “Respect life” is so closely associated with the anti-abortion movement.
It all comes back to this. You’re imposing your own prejudice on people, when you have no idea why they got the plate to begin with.
I appreciate the fact that you don’t want someone else shoving their opinions down your throat; but they’re not doing that here. They’re spending no money at all, just to express their opinion.
Your issue is that you don’t like someone else displaying their faith. Your beef wit that is that you believe them to be hypocritcial, or “peaclock-” ish, or what have you. And you’d have a leg to stand on if you knew what was in the heart of the people that purchased each plate.
But you don’t.
If you wanted to “correct” or “teach” the person that ordered the plates in order to make a pious showing where no pious intent existed, I’d be wary of your motives, and even more wary of your methods, but I’d be OK with your intent.
BUT, you’re castigating a group of people you don’t know, based on what appears to be a reactionary motive. And that worries me. It’s not Christian. It’s not even logical.
I’m so used to the crappy plates we get here in Indiana that I don’t even bother getting pissed off about them anymore.
Oh and AskNott, just noticed your location and wanted to say Hi neighbor 