Foolish CrossEngaging culture with the foolishness of the cross.

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1. DonK

   April 2, 2010 at 4:49 AM

   That is not wisdom. It is the ignorance of someone outside any religious group blindly wishing that everyone would just get along. Religious groups gain and maintain influence through asserting possession of absolute truth, which is irreconcilable with any other counter or tangential claim. To allow that any other religious group has valid spiritual knowledge admits that one's own knowledge of God is incomplete or optional and thus irrelevant. While God my indeed be larger than any one religion, due to the human need for power, control, influence, and Divine justification, no one invested in a particular belief will admit it.

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2. Siarlys Jenkins

   May 29, 2010 at 4:36 PM

   Was the intent to examine the wisdom of THIS bumper sticker? Or the wisdom of finding truth in bumper stickers generally? When I gave in and got a car at age 47, I wanted one of those blue and white bumper stickers, "My Boss Is A Jewish Carpenter." I haven't found one. Looking online, I found several jazzed up versions with a four color crucifix, complete with crucified Jesus on it. No, no, no, I wanted the original plain blue and white version, precisely because it is doctrinally ambiguous, and calls on the reader to think deeply about what exactly they believe in. (I discussed my disappointment with an Orthodox rabbi, who offered that he knew a very skilled Jewish carpenter I could take orders from).

   Now, back to this bumper sticker… It's a half-truth. God is what God is, and what we believe about God isn't going to change that. There is a finite possibility that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, by whom all things were made, and that we are saved by no other name. There is also a finite possibility that Muhammed is God's last and final prophet. It is doubtful that both statements can be perfectly true. It is possible that because "My ways are not your ways," both statements are true, in a way the human mind cannot comprehend.

   I have said from time to time that doctrine is mortal man's foolish attempt to fit God into a box the human mind can comprehend, and that the Trinity reminds me of three blind men feeling an elephant. Still, its not that God is "so big" it takes several religions to emcompass Him. Any transcendent God would be, in that sense, too big to fit into all the religions of the world combined. Being God, he could well have specified one true faith, and all others could be false. I do suspect, as C.S. Lewis wrote, that God is monstrously unfair, in that he credits people who make the wrong choices for sincere reasons.

   So this bumper sticker is too facile and self-comforting to be helpful.

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