The other day while running an errand, I found myself behind a car that was behind a huge dump truck that had the words “FOLLOW ME AS I FOLLOW CHRIST” spelled out on its back gate, and I couldn’t help but hope that Christ didn’t stop short. For if He had, the owner of the dump truck would have had to change the legend to “CRASH INTO ME AS I CRASH INTO CHRIST.”
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On a tangentially related note, this morning, as I lingered in line at a traffic light, I noticed a car in an adjacent lane that was traveling a bit too quickly and that braked a bit too sharply and that stopped with less than six inches between its front bumper and the rear bumper of the car in front of it. Affixed to the trunk of this car was one of those silver Christian fish symbols with the word “JESUS” fit inside it. This made me think of a new variation on WWJD. It’s HWJD. It stands for “How would Jesus drive?”
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I’m so tired of those things anyway. Not the original symbol, mind you, just these modern metallic items that people are endlessly attaching to the backs of their vehicles in endless variations. The original symbol, the fish outline (I’ve just learned this is actually called an ichthys), was, of course, used by early Christians as a clue for the faithful in knowing where to go for worship. Now, for Christians, it’s merely a way of marking their vanity, not a way of marking the path to a secret meeting.
It wasn’t so bad when it was just the ichthys. Since Jesus spent a considerable amount of time, as quoted in the Gospels, speaking against being too public in one’s relationship to God, it wouldn’t be my choice were I to be a practicing Christian. However, I can understand that some people are just so brimming with pride in their relationship to Jesus that they just can’t help themselves.
The trouble, it seems to me, started when somebody decided to stick feet on the fish and to fit the word “DARWIN” inside it. Now, I have to admit that, when I first saw that, that I thought it was funny. However, there is an implication in it that just isn’t true, and that is that simply because someone is a Christian, they must be against the idea of evolution. That’s not only unprovable, but nonsense. Not all Christians are fundamentalists and to lump all Christians together into one mindless group is mere bigotry.
Unfortunately, the Darwin fish set off all sorts of responses, and it all degraded into a kind of bumper sticker debate, which is, I believe, the lowest point achievable in intellectual discourse outside of talk radio.
