religion, politics, and bumper stickers

so, i was surfing the web the other day looking for harry potter t-shirts and, consequently, ended up on cafepress.com. for those of you who don't know what this site is, it is essentially a site where you can create your own designs to go on t-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, etc. any way, i saw some interesting stuff while i was on there, so i got back on today to see what i could find.

i was pumped to find some amazing stuff - like a sticker and t-shirt that read "respect your elders or bears will eat you" from one of my all time favorite bible stories - 2 kings 2:23-25 (cam, I know you will be excited about this find!). i also found quite a few things that really disturbed me. the more i looked i began to see stickers that said such things as, "jesus was a liberal" and "i'm the god fearing, gun toting, flag waving, conservative that liberals warned you about!" another read, "so many right-wing christians so few lions." i particularly loved some of the episcopal ones like the one that has the episcopal shield and reads, "challenging fundamentalism since 1789." there must be some proud bishops out there! is this disturbing to anyone else?

maybe i am ignorant or naive, but it seems that political affliation and religious beliefs have become extremely entangled. maybe it has always been like this. it seems pretty twisted to me, but people have apparently managed to wrap their religion beliefs around their political beliefs (or at least this is what it appears from the stickers on this site).

maybe i am opening a bad can of worms here, but i, personally, am sick of people deciding what they believe based on what some crooked politician (or political party) is saying. i am also sick of people asking me if i am a liberal or a conservative or calling me either. I AM A CHRISTIAN, dang it! i am not left wing or right wing. you want to know what i believe - i believe that what jesus said is the only truth. not what obama says. not what bush says. and you might be shocked by this, but jesus was neither a liberal or a conservative. he was god - not a politician. i even had a nice little chat with one of my youth this past year about this after he implied that only liberals were real christians. i kindly asked him if he was pro-life, which he said he was. apparently, he wasn't aware that liberals are pro-choice.

so don't call me a crazy liberal because i am an environmentalist or because i believe that something needs to be done for the poor in this country, and don't think that you can't believe these same things because you consider yourself to be conservative. god blessed us with a world and instructed us to care for it. he also instructed us to seek justice on behalf of the oppressed. but certainly don't call me a conservative either because i am pro-life or because i have a problem with homosexual marriage. i think the bible is extremely clear about these issues. it has been this polarity that has trashed our rich tradition. for instance, somewhere down the line being an evangelical christian became a bad thing because it was considered a "conservative" christian thing to do. since when is spreading the gospel a bad thing? i am sorry to inform you, but if you don't think that spreading the gospel is an essential part of being a christian, then you need to read your bible.

this crap needs to stop. it is time we throw out political titles and reclaim our christian beliefs. can we, as christians, figure out if our political beliefs really match up with what we say we believe in and stop believing things based on our political affiliation? one bumper sticker read, "you're pro-life and pro-death penalty? oh i get it, you're a hypocrite!" there might be more truth in this than we can handle. maybe the real problem is that we have thought far too little about our religious beliefs and simply left them out of our political beliefs. so is it possible for us to begin to fight for true christian values? will there be a time when we vote for politicians not based on what political party they are aligned with but if they really fight for issues based on christian values? can we demand that they stand up for what we believe regardless what the rest of the political party is doing?

maybe this blog will get you talking more than my last one about good movies.

cheers from a radical christian,
jw