Thoughts On A Bumper Sticker

Yesterday I ran some errands before church. A car pulled onto the highway in front of me, and I noticed one of its bumper stickers. At first I thought it had a word on it, but I couldn't make out the letters. Then I realized it was a series of symbols, some representing different religious traditions. Ah, I thought, someone who belongs to an Interfaith church. Traffic slowed as I got off my exit, and I finally saw that the symbols did indeed spell out a word:

When I went looking for it on the Internet, I found at least two other versions, an international one:

and one using flags:

I thought it was kind of neat. Of course, when I went looking for a picture of the bumper sticker I also found a variety of blog postings on the subject. Here are a few to peruse:

• Tom McMahon - The Ten Most Obnoxious Bumper Stickers Found In Madison
• The Political Environment - The "Coexist" Bumper Sticker's Meaning, Symbolism Gets Deeper
• Edu Blather - Coexist
• Pondering Wanderer - Coexist

And at one point, the McMahon post started a brouhaha in Madison, Wisconsin. Having spent the 1982-83 academic year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that doesn't surprise me.

It never fails to call me up short when some Christians are so insistent that their religion is the only way to the truth. They fail to remember that their beloved Jesus was a Jewish man calling people into rightness with God. When the Canaanite woman confronted Jesus (Matthew 15:21-28), he sent her on her way having commended her on her faith and healed her daughter. He didn't send her away a Jew, or even a Christian. And given what Christians have done to Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom--of rightness with God--over the centuries, I have to question the "truth" of their religion.

At the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) Jesus tells the lawyer "Go and do likewise." We would all do well to ponder those words again.

Peace,
Jeff