DangerousTalk

The other day I was behind a car that had a bumper sticker that stated, “Real Men Love Jesus” among other bumper stickers that were sufficiently fundamentalist Christian. Well, I guess I am not a real man according to that Christians. Oh well.

The thing is that this bumper sticker brings up a few issues. First, I thought fundamentalist Christians hate homosexuality and yet here this guy goes telling everyone about his gay relationship with Jesus. Seriously though, I think it is an arrogant way of devaluing other people and so I was surprised when I saw the same bumper sticker among others on a progressive’s car later that same day.

As a biological fact, whether one loves Jesus, doesn’t love Jesus, or doesn’t even accept the existence of Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with one’s gender. For the record, neither does loving people of the same gender or of the opposite gender. A more accurate bumper sticker should read, “Real Men Have XY Chromosomes.”

Also, I want to mention that outstanding PR campaign that Jesus has. The reason why both the right wing and the lift wing Christians sport this bumper sticker is because they all think of Jesus as a model of morality. But any full read of the New Testament shows that Jesus is far from that model.

There is no doubt that there are some positive things that the character of Jesus as portrayed in the Bible has said, but most Christians are not aware of or quickly dismiss all the really horrible things that Jesus said. I blogged about this before so I won’t repeat it in this blog entry.

The point is that if the claim of the bumper sticker is taken figuratively to mean that loving Jesus is macho (in a good way), I think it goes in the wrong direction. The positive macho trait of being a protector and a gentleman clearly supports taking issue with many of the claims, opinions, and attitudes of the character of Jesus as he is portrayed in the Bible.

Filed under: culture war, Preaching, Religion, wwjd