Fundamentalist beliefs as seen in bumper stickers.

I probably should have posted this one prior to the election, but I was too wound up about the election to think about much else. Maybe now the election is over and “the people have spoken”, I might be able to concentrate on some other stuff.

Anyway…… I was stuck in very slow traffic the other day behind a car whose driver (unless he just bought the car and hadn’t taken off the bumper stickers, which is a possibility but I doubt it) was obviously one of the right wing, NASCAR, fundy, gun loving types. Among several bumper stickers that I could only sort of understand but were obviously tied to racing and race cars, there were a couple of really big ones that really stood out. One said “REAL MEN LOVE JESUS”. Right next to that one was one that had the traditional red, white and blue donkey symbolic of the Democratic party, shown as being viewed through a gun site, and it read “GOT AMMO?”

For me, that encapsulates the basic, very real danger that fundamentalist thinking in this country presents. One on hand, this person obviously thinks he is very religious and is the very role model of today’s Christian. On the other hand, he is also so convinced that he is morally right on every single subject that exists that he is a proponent of shooting his political adversaries. Oh, sure. If you were to confront this guy, he would say that it is a “joke”. However, jokes like that always reflect what a person ultimately believes. That’s why the person thinks something is funny.

I believe that Jesus existed. I very seriously doubt he was the Son of God. He was just a guy who went around preaching things that the Romans and their supporters didn’t like and were fearful of, so they killed him. But I do believe he existed. As such, this is what I think. Jesus probably never imagined something like a gun that can be used to kill other people with ease. However, I just cannot see Jesus, in any manifestation that you might like to see him as, would condone stoning someone to death just because they didn’t believe in him. I just don’t see it.