ken wilson online » ann arbor bumper stickers

ann arbor bumper sticker: i’m already against the next war

ken — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:09:34 +0000

This is what I’ve learned to love about my hometown. Coming out of the Little Caesar’s Pizzeria with my hot & ready, and there in the parking lot is a lady–soccer mom kind of look–stepping into her Volvo with a bumper sticker, just one, carefully placed, black background, white letters: i’m already against the next war. I could drive through other cities, maybe even states and never find a bumper sticker like that. And I could drive through yet other cities and yet other states and find ‘em pretty easily. Places are particular. And if you happen to be a pastor in a particular place–which I personally think is the best kind of pastor to be rather than a roving one–it’s good, I think, to learn to love the particularities of your city. Even if maybe there are things about those particularities that rankle, I think it’s a good discipline to talk yourself into seeing the best in those things.

It’s called sympathy. Jesus was a sympathetic high priest. Presumably he would have made a sympathetic pastor had he also been one of those.

Sympathy is the capacity to have the same feeling as others. It’s a bridge building thing, sympathy. And God is a bridge building God.

Evangelicals who are living up the label are meant to be what? Evangels. And evangels, at their best, are bridge builders. We serve a God who wants to make peace with the human race. He’s got a mind of his own, and thoughts of his own, which are quite a bit higher than ours. There are certain things you can’t get God to do because of this. You can negotiate with this God if Abraham is an example of what God will allow. But the old gospel song is also true: your arm is too short to box with God. You don’t want to get into a contest of wills with him, at least not on the wrong issue. Because he will win, if only by outlasting you.

All that to say, truth is truth, God is God, facts are facts, and all that, but evangels are those who at their best when they are are bridge builders. And I don’t think we/they have been at our/their best over say, the last thirty years, here in the U.S. of A. We’ve especially not been bridge builders to the lady with that bumper sticker on the back of her Volvo, or was it a Saab? actually come to think, it might have been a Suzuki. I’m certain it wasn’t a Hummer.

Is there something in the sentiment of that particular bumper sticker that is in the sentiment, the lean, the predisposition of God’s heart? I’m already against the next war. Yep, I too think it’s possible that a war may be necessary at times. A war may be a lesser evil to some greater evil. But on the whole, if you scanned the war horizon, it’s not a bad thing, war, to be predisposed against. The people who know war from first hand experience tend not to be eager to have unnecessary ones.

Here’s what I’m trying to say in an extremely roundabout way: to be an evangel is different than having opinions that line up with the current culture of that breed of Christian cat called American Evangelical.

Can I get a witness?

how not to win friends for the environment

ken — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:20:09 +0000

Latest Ann Arbor bumper sticker sighting on the back of a red Honda Insight-Hybrid: My car sips gas; your car sucks. Great! I thought. Just what we need to convince more people to buy cars that get better fuel economy. Nothing motivates the unmoved like a little self-righteousness from the newly moved. I couldn’t help myself, and drove next to the bumper sticker displayer. Doing a little profiling, expecting to see a middle age white guy, thin, with glasses and a beard. Sure enough, stereotype held. Middle age white guy, thin, with glasses and a beard. Sigh. We’re literally in this hurting environment together. We’re hurting it together and we’ll only be able to be kinder to it together. Could we please drop the self-righteousness? Unseemly in matters religious and environmental. And worse, ineffective, which we can’t afford to be right now.

how do you really feel: bumper sticker sighting

ken — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:56:09 +0000

I love Ann Arbor, my hometown. I keep telling myself to make a list of the most out there bumper stickers. Like the one that said simply F*** Bush, only without the euphemism symbols. Just like that. I drove up close to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me, but no, there it was: live and in livid color. Being a boomer, I remember the visceral hatred that many felt for the President during the Vietnam war. LBJ, remember, decided not to run for a second term. And Nixon was not a beloved figure. But never the likes of that bumper sticker with the two four letter words stacked on top of each other. Whoah.