On Your Face

So I'm driving home the other day behind a car with the above stuck on its bumper, and I'm all like, WTF? What lesson are we to learn from this?

The need to poster one's religion on the backside of one's car has never been something out which I could figure. In whatever iteration, it lies somewhere on the spectrum between smug and insecure; which, when you think about it, are probably both pretty close together at the left end of that long line that runs between inadequate and exemplary. But this one seems to be broadcasting simultaneously on several channels, canceling each other out. Like on a road trip, picking up a new FM even as the one falling into the distance remains audible.

What it mostly screams is "Somehow I sort of think this religious stuff makes me suspect, so, just in case you can't tell how manly I am, I'm saying it. How is it working? Do these clothes make me look fat?" On another level, it says "All you guys out there that make me feel inadequate? Well, how about this, you scary monuments to masculinity: I believe in Jesus. So there!"

But it's all of a holier-than-thou piece, which says the exact opposite of what you'd think the truly religious would be saying. It says, "Look at me! Oh, and Jesus? If you happen to be in the car behind me, check it out: I'm holy. Because without this stuff, maybe you wouldn't know. But oh yeah, you know everything, huh? So maybe you see what I do with the rest of my time. This makes up for it, right? Right??"

Reason I'm bringing it up: I watched the BCS finale last night, and there was Tim Tebow, wearing his religion under his eyeballs:

(If you can't read 'em, they say "John 3:16.)

I just don't get it. (First of all, John 3:16 -- said to be the whole gospel in a nutshell -- contains a lie and something unprovable. Not that that's not the whole deal in a nutshell, all right; but God didn't "give" his only begotten son. He loaned him, and took him back. Neither of them sacrificed a damn thing, right? They knew he wasn't going to die. So it's all a guilt trip, probably the most successful of all time, even more than when your mother pointed out the starving kids in China; it sure has enriched the Church over the eons. [Bernie's a piker]... Second, the life everlasting thing: the existential essence. True? Who knows?) Tim Tebow seems, indeed, an exemplary kid. I take nothing away from him. Fairly good quarterback, excellent human being. Far better than me, and I mean that sincerely. But why the broadcast? What would Jesus say?

Well, inveterate searcher and purveyor of knowledge that I am, I may have found the answer. His girlfriend:





As an unapologetic admirer of the female form, I can relate. I can even hear him hollering "Thank you, Jesus," and meaning it like crazy.

And if that's not enough, here's another view:


No doubt about it. He is risen.

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