Editor’s note: I’m taking a short break from the Fixing America series to write a few short ideas that have been gnawing at me in recent days… then back to the series…. MM
I used to drive a nondescript little gray hybrid (Prius) that tooled around the countryside treading lightly on the Earth… kind of like Mahatma Gandhi, that diminutive giant of peace and tolerance.
Several years ago, when the Prius had had one too many close encounters of the bumper kind, I found myself at the desk of one of Colorado’s motor vehicle departments, browsing through license plate designs.
The one that instantly jumped out at me had a beautiful columbine (the state flower) overlaid on the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, and a beautiful message, “Respect Life,” and I ordered that plate without hesitation.
My Prius has a beautiful license plate like one of these…
I wondered why ALL Colorado cars weren’t sporting that beautiful plate, and I got my answer a few months later, when a Christian fundamentalist asked me why I, a liberal, unreligious spiritual guy, sported a neo-Christian license plate on my car.
I was taken aback to learn that the Respect Life message didn’t mean to respect bees and trees and seas and forests and mountain ranges and all of the other wonderful variations of life on Earth, as I’d assumed. It referred to the right-wing, fundamentalist Christian message of respecting human fetuses by outlawing abortions.
Arg.
Ensnared once again by neocon doublespeak (… right to life, compassionate conservatism, death panels, family values, traditional values, class warfare, jobs-killing, creation science…)
For several years I thought about replacing the appealing-but-deceptive license plate with a more benign, less attractive one, or slapping on a bumper sticker that says, “I respect ALL life, not just embryos.”
There’s a famous quote attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Gandhi:
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Whether or not that statement was ever really made by Gandhi, it sums up what many of us today feel about modern Christianity, which (at least here in the States) has become associated with false fronts (like the Respect Life license plates), wealth, intolerance, retribution, fear, and gun ownership… to the point that Jesus today would almost certainly distance himself from many aspects of the religion that’s evolved in his name.
Read more about modern Christian intolerance…
Read more about modern Christian weaponry…
Advocating intolerance of other religions and the use of guns? Is there something in the psyche of extreme Christians that make them want to shoot Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists? That seems to be the message.
Wake up, Christian, for Christ’s sake (as well as humanity’s), get your head on straight.
For the love of God, get over the hate.
Mark Macy
Noble Savage World 
Hello Mark: Greetings. About the license plate, I simply fail to understand why this would be interesting to other motorists in any way. Whatever message a license plate states, who cares a jot? I can’t see that it matters in the slightest if the slogan “respect life” has different meanings. I mean, it just doesn’t matter.
Or is my mind on a downward spiral?
Hi Liz. You’d have to live in modern America to understand. There’s such a tension here between the political left and the political right… and a lot of judgment streaming sharply in both directions. Here in Colorado lots of special interest groups can have custom license plate designs to promote their causes.
From a broader, more global or universal viewpoint,, you’re certainly correct. A simple slogan shouldn’t make any difference.
Maybe it’s I myself who’s in the downward spiral with this. Maybe I’m much too immersed in that political division, and have blown it out of proportion in my mind.
I’ll have to do some reflection on that. Thanks for the heads-up.
Mark
Regina and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant today, and my fortune cookie said, “The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.”
She said it could be interpreted for a liberal like myself as, “The best way to ‘destroy’ the enemy nature of conservatives around me is to befriend them… through tolerance and a caring attitude.”
Food for thought……..