Against Bumper Stickers

I have discovered the real problem with our world.  It is not the economy, or the Bush family, or Wall Street, or government spending-run-wild, or Somalia, or Martha Stewart, or rap music, or McDonald’s chicken nuggets, or bad beer, or the breakup of the Lakers.  It is bumper stickers.

Yes, that timeless tradition of saying what one thinks about life in ten words which, when applied to cars, has become a kind of rite of passage in our own culture – yes, that admittedly amazing thing we call a bumper sticker is the root of all our problems. 

Now, since I have elsewhere on this cite argued vehemently that we must guard against turning our preferences into moral imperatives, I should immediately note that personally I think I like bumper stickers.  They provide hours of free entertainment; they help define our culture (a useful thing, even when it is somewhat startling).  So my goal here is to attack something, not because I happen to dislike it (I don’t), but rather because I think it is indicative of a serious moral problem. 

Here is something I have never seen on a bumper sticker: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.  For if any man be a hearer of the word only, and not a doer, he is like a man who beholds his face in a mirror, and forgets what manner of man he was.”  Saint James said that roughly 1900 years ago, yet it poignantly describes so much of our modern culture.  People will put up a hundred bumper stickers about feeding the poor; yet they will walk by a poor person in scorn.  A Christian bumper sticker rightly professes the great love of God expressed on the cross: Yet the bearers do not know their own neighbor’s name.  A person displays proudly that they want to save the rainforests, yet how much personal suffering have they endured for a single tree?

Surely it is easy to see why this is so?  It is easier to talk than to do.  That is precisely why actions speak louder than words.  It is easy to buy a bumper sticker, but hard to feed the poor; one might actually have to meet some of them.  It is easier to buy a bumper sticker than to truly show Christ’s love; for Christ’s love was unto the death.  It is easier to buy a bumper sticker than to stop buying products from companies that abuse rainforests (some of which you may like!), or to sacrifice some portion of your income for the trees.  I grow tired of this hypocrisy.  People picket for the starvation of third-world countries; they buy and sell countless bumper-stickers for third-world countries; they write letters to senators on behalf of third-world countries; but how many of those people have ever lifted a finger to help a single person actually from a third-world country?  What would they do if a real person from a real third-world country showed up at their door?  If even one-quarter of those persons were willing to invest even one-thirtieth of their time and money towards that cause, the problem of hunger would almost certainly be solved, not overnight perhaps, but surely solved nonetheless.  It is hard to respect someone who says “you should do this” on a bumper sticker when they obviously are unwilling to do it themselves. 
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And then came a shock.  As I was thinking about hurling some stones at bumper stickers, I realized that I was casting stones at myself.  I suddenly felt as a man does when he has been laughing at the mud on other people’s faces, and then comes face to face with the mud-faced man in the mirror.  I have been scorning other people’s unkempt hair; and with a shock I realize that my own hair is tossed and windblown, that it has indeed rarely seen anything remotely approaching a hairbrush.  I have written an article to attack other people; and I have succeeded only in attacking myself.   

For I am a bumper sticker.  I am words without actions.  I speak of caring for the poor; yet I walk by the poor without offering help.  I speak of God’s love for the nations; yet what missionary have I aided?  To which foreigner have I offered food?   I am the man in the Screwtape Letters, who, complying with the advice of the devil, writes books about his repentance without actually acting upon it.  I am the man who honestly believes that actions alone change the world; but I am comatose.  I vaguely recall that Saint James had something to say about people like me in the Bible; fortunately for my sanity at this moment I have forgotten it. 

And yet — there is hope.  It lies in exactly St. Paul’s place:  “Wretched man that I am,” Paul wrote, “who will save me from this body of sin and death?” Yes, who indeed?  Who can offer help for a pompous windbag, for a bumper-sticker claiming (as I do) to be a man, a man who attacks the very thing he is in the most danger of becoming?  I answer with St. Paul, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  For on the cross Jesus offered forgiveness for our many sins.  And in rising from the dead He gave us power to change; power to love the unlovable; not only to love the person on the street; but even ourselves.       

So, to all my fellow bumper stickers out there: Let’s look in the mirror and remember.  We are all forgiven, you as well as me, we are all loved, me as well as you.  And we – all of us – must (and, importantly, can) get better.  Keep on displaying your stickers, if you must: But remember as you do so the wise saying of someone who gave literally everything he had for literally everybody:  “Wisdom is proved right by her actions.”