drown the fish

I remember when I first considered putting a Christian symbol of my car, announcing to the world that I had come to believe that Jesus was the way, truth and life. I had never been a "bumper sticker" guy, and my only rationale to consider attaching a fish insignia was to give testimony in godless Connecticut that at least one born-again Christian lived there. Plus it was unique, looked sharp and the kids I was working with thought it was cool.

But I never put it on. I think it was during one of my "bat out of hell" rides to the Church where I was working in Stamford, CT that I realized that I either had to change my driving or be an unidentified Christian behind the wheel of a car careening wildly around town "doing God's business." I opted for careening.

I visited the Mecca of "christianized" bric-brac a couple years later, at Maranatha Village in Costa Mesa, California. Southern California was "ground zero" for the "Jesus Movement," and there were artisans who came out of the movement who wanted to incorporate their gifts with a heartfelt affection for God.

But really, most of the stuff at Maranatha Village was junk in Jesus's name. It was more about profiting from people's need for items that identified and clarified their conversion than about who and what God was. Unfortunately, fish and cute sayings and doves and even crosses are more often props to encourage faith than statements regarding its presence.

One of the unfortunate things I've learned in 38 years is that Christianity in the Western World is a surface experience producing surface results. The fish symbol, so casually displayed on every sort of household item, is an ancient Christian greeting: one person would casually draw an oblong circle in the sand; another would fill in a mirror image, creating the sign of a fish. This let each person know they had found a brother. These people were on the run, hiding out, persecuted, mocked, killed. Finding a brother was no small thing.

With that understanding of what the image of the fish has meant to historic Christianity, we might start housecleaning inappropriate uses of it by dismantling "Christian" Yellow Pages. The idea that I should do business with people on the basis of having a fish in their ad is laughable. I don't want a plumber with a fish image in his ad, that's for certain. I won't be looking for a fish in the list of brain surgeons I might need to use. In fact, if someone is selling their services on the basis of their Christianity, they are selling the wrong thing. I'm looking for a contractor. I want the best in town. If he arrives with a fish on his truck, maybe we'll have additional things to talk about, but I'll choose him on the basis of how good he is.

What I knew in Connecticut and saw at Maranatha Village and understood seeing Christian advertising efforts, is that the "real stuff" is usually not the obvious stuff. It was the religious leaders of Jesus' day who dressed and acted like men of faith. They said their prayers out loud and were all about the external signs of religious life.

Wouldn't it be good to lay all the pretense and illusions down, to drown the fish and talk honestly about Christianity and the nature of a relationship between God and man? The fish was a symbol in the sand in a more difficult time. It's battling Darwin on the back of dueling Hondas today, and that is the kind of activity that keeps a great, historic, spiritual faith unnatractive to those considering it.