COMMON SAINTS: Bumper Stickers, Bookmarks & Buttons

I’m not sure if I should be proud — or embarrassed — that the religion I choose to follow has reduced it’s doctrine to information that can easily fit onto a bumper sticker, bookmark or button.

Yes, we live in the information age — the land of the 10-second commercial — where the short attention span is not only epidemic, but desired.  Listen, if you can’t tell me what you believe or care about in less than 10-seconds then, hey, I really don’t have time for you.

Is that my blue tooth buzzing?

As Christians, we really do tend to take the quick and easy way when it comes to slapping our doctrine on others.  We put catchy, religious-sounding phrases on church signs thinking these actually change the lives of those who read them.  As if some guy is driving down the street — he just lost his job, he suspects his wife of cheating on him, his kids are into drugs, he is behind three months in his mortgage payment and then he sees a church sign that says, “C H ___ R C H — The only thing missing is U!”  He wipes a tear from his eye and says, “YES… that’s IT!  That is the answer I’ve been searching for!” 

Of course, if he dares to walk in through the front doors of that church for help he is usually met by a receptionist who has been trained to keep people like him a safe distance away from the Senior Pastor because, ya know, he’s busy preparing a sermon…

When did our faith become “so complicated” that we must water it down to sound bites in order to make it more palatable to the watching world?  Do we honestly believe that Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven is going to change the life of someone strung out on crack?  How does Seven days without prayer makes one weak help the frantic woman struggling with the pain of abortion?

And how about those cute little fishies we slap on our Outbacks?  Not many know that the fish symbol was the secret signal the early Christians utilized to let others know they were followers of Christ.  These lowly fishermen decided to use a symbol of their trade as the secret signal that they were “fishers of men.”

Which makes me really glad they were not proctologists…

Dan McGowan is a comic and actor living in Denver and working anywhere people will pay him. Dan, who was a contestant on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” has appeared in several television commercials and most recently was a finalist in the search for the new Maytag repairman. Dan performs clean comedy and musical parodies in churches and corporations nationwide and is a published author, songwriter and music composer.