Most
of the time when I see bumper stickers or license plates that are meant to send
a certain message, I smile, cringe or ignore. Some of those license plates are
really hard to decipher. I hate the ones that cite a bible passage, as if
everyone is so biblically literate that the reader knows exactly what the
message is that is trying to be conveyed and is as if any one passage or verse
tells the whole story.
It’s
like the “Honk if You Love Jesus” sticker. If all I have to do is honk my horn
to profess my love for Jesus, being a follower of Jesus is a piece of cake. But
we all know better, don’t we. The only honkers whose honks are meaningful are
geese who honk to encourage the leader of the formation to keep on trucking.
The honks our car horns make are usually made in anger anyway.
But
I really digress. The other day I saw a bumper sticker that read: “The world is
my country. To do good is my religion.” That’s profoundly theological and
totally Christian even it is non-denominational. The truth is that there are as
many religions as there are people. The word religion comes from the Latin word that means “to bind”. We, if you
think about it, are bound by our personal religion: we do what that religion
says we can do and don’t do what it says we cannot. And when we go against that
binding, we feel remorse. When we adhere to it, we rejoice.
To
do good and avoid evil is what our Christian faith is all about no matter what
denomination we subscribe to. “Love God above all else and your neighbor as
yourself” say the prophets, says Jesus, says Mohammed, say you and I. The
truth, further, is that no one need tell us what good is. We know it innately because our Good God created us good.
So when we do not do that which we know deep in our heart and mind that is not
good, we know it.
And
where do we do that good and avoid that evil? Everywhere, that’s where. The
whole world is or country, our homeland. The Old Testament prophets always
reminded the people that they must welcome the aliens among them because their
land was their land as well. The world is our land and we are responsible for
the whole world. That is not to get political although it is, in a sense, a
Greek sense, again. The word political
comes from the Greek word meaning “city”.
The
point of that bumper sticker, at least to my understanding, is that the whole
world is where we are to live out our religion of doing good wherever we are at
any moment in time in that/this world. It means that we truly care about those
who are suffering anywhere in this world and do what good we can to alleviate
their suffering. It may not be much, maybe only a simple prayer, but it at
least recognizes that those who are suffering are our neighbors no matter where
they live. There is sound theology in that bumper sticker and a great reminder
for me and, I trust, all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment