The Bumper Sticker Philosophy

Have you ever seen those videos that show the size of the earth, and then portray that next to mars, next to the sun, next to the largest star, next to the galaxy, so on and so forth? It's a pretty big place out there. Our place of residence looks like nothing compared to the enormous galaxy that stretches beyond our imaginations. And God, He holds it all... in the palm of His hand (Isaiah 40:12).

Though we are well aware of His glorious awesomeness, there are thousands of people who seem to take God's whole existence and shrink it down into...

"A good God wouldn't allow my family member to die." 

"My God doesn't condemn. My God saves." 

"Well, maybe that's a sin for you, but God hasn't directly told me not to do that yet, so I'm fine." 

"Just because God convicts others to stay out of violent movies and video games, doesn't mean that he has for me. God knows I can handle this stuff." 

... A box. 

It's what I like to call, "The Bumper Sticker Philosophy". The bumper stickers purpose is to take a very broad purpose and put it into a very small sentence to advertise to people. And sometimes, us Christians do this in our walk with the Lord. 

We take God's very broad message of love, and we boil it down, and boil it down, until it can fit on a bumper sticker for us to live by. 

Some people will live their lives around the "Jesus Forgives" bumper sticker, and they will decide that they don't need to live righteously because God will forgive them for their sins when they ask for it anyway. 

Some will live by the, "Just Believe" sticker, where people feel like their salvation goes as far as believing and you're done. 

Or the, "Do good to outweigh the bad" sticker. These people live with the hope that their good works will outweigh their bad deeds on judgement day. 

Maybe the, "Go to church" sticker. When people believe that going to church makes them a Christian, when in reality that makes you as much as a Christian as you walking into a garage makes you a car. 

Don't boil your relationship with Christ down to a Bumper Sticker. We don't want to sell God with our philosophy, we want to live Christ out and shine Him to others. We don't want to be like those sales people in the Progressive commercials who go out trying to convince others to buy their product, but they aren't buying it themselves. If we want others to follow Christ, we have to be 100% in on Christ ourselves. And this means that we are dedicated to following Him in love and servant-hood. 

Stop wearing the bumper sticker and get in on the real relationship. 

~Whatsoever Things are True

Philippians 4:8