“I drive my car, it is a witness. My license plate, it states my business.” Only the hardcore may be able to place this quote from Daniel Amos’s impressive 1984 album Vox Humana. Even when I moved away from Christian rock after college, I kept Daniel Amos in my head—this is truly inspired artistry. Pop culture and religion courses have become a standard offering in religion departments over the past few years. We are, even as secular as we may be, a very religious society. When my daughter’s high school music program went off on its biannual concert tour, this year they headed south. On the itinerary: Dollywood. I came near to Gatlinburg, Tennessee on the trip I made to South Carolina to see my father for the final time, but I did not stop. I am told, however, that Dollywood is something to see. In one of the gift shops, my daughter snapped a couple of photos for my blog that draw all these disparate thoughts together.
What we put on our cars is what we want the world to know about us without ever seeing us. This makes cars a perfect evangelistic tool for both the shy and the aggressive. The car becomes a tract. A statement that this vehicle is driven by an evangelical. I’m not sure it makes me feel any safer on the road. How many times have I been rudely cut off in traffic only to find a Jesus fish winking at me from the bumper of the offending car? Sometimes swallowing a Darwin amphibian. Religion speaks more loudly behind the wheel than it does from the pew. In the stress of traffic, what do we really believe?
Cars are also the ultimate tools of self-assertion. Human beings, with little natural armor or predatory equipment, surround themselves with metal and accelerate themselves at velocities that nature never intended. We feel godlike behind the wheel. That metal box in front of us, driving too slowly, or having just pulled some stupid maneuver, is not a person. It is a thing. And those who choose to declare their faith on that object are under constant judgment. Well I know the evangelistic pressure to witness—fundamentalists are expert at manipulating guilt. Put these plates on your car and the world will know what you really are. But be careful. It’s not how you say, but how you play that will express what you truly believe.
