Post: Religiosity
(Yes, that is a a real word.)
Way back in December of last year I wrote a post about offensive t-shirts which linked to, among others, the picture accompanying this story (a design from T-Shirt Hell‘s now-discontinued “Worse Than Hell” range). Today, five months later, I received a comment on an unrelated post indicating that someone by the name of “Kait” found the t-shirt design rather offensive to their beliefs. I assume the reason this comment was posted there is that the original post has long since been closed to comments for spam-prevention purposes. For the sake of completeness, the comment follows in its entirety.
hi david thompson……whatz with the picture that is connected to your website…..the one that says “Jesus did it for the chicks”…..that is absoulutely outrageous…..Jesus died for you on the cross and thatz the kind of picture you attach to your website….you seriously have issues…and i’ll pray for you because that’s just sick…..you’ve got issues….and unless you ask God to forgive you…….you have know future ahead of you……i feel sorry for you…because…a life without Jesus is no life at all….i hope Jesus opens your eyes one day….
I would first like to say that I am not one of those people who dismisses any religious belief out of hand – the people who say “Religion’s full of shit, dude” or some such. I have had sensible religious debates with a number of my friends, principally on the subject of Christianity, and have attended an Alpha Course (a course based around exploring the tenets of Christianity). I would like to think of myself as a tolerant person who would listen fully to another’s point of view before making my own decisions.
I am, however, going to have to disagree with the sentiment of your comment, Kait. Firstly, while it is an historically-documented event that Yeshua of Nazareth was crucified, I see no reason to believe that he died and was resurrected for me and the human race which is sufficient to overwhelm the apparently arbitrary nature of such a sacrifice combined with Occam’s razor that “the simplest explanation is usually the best”.
In addition to this, the intent of the t-shirt design as I see it is not to attack Jesus, his certain suffering and unlikely resurrection, but to gently mock those who take it just that little bit too seriously. It is quite clear from the sheer absurdity of the t-shirt’s premise that it is not meant to be taken seriously: I would suggest that, if you are unable to take a light-hearted jibe at your beliefs then it is you, not I, who has issues.
Cue debate.
I don’t like the Alpha Course.
ends
Obvious question: why not?
I do not like the t-shirt. I think we should have more respect for religion.
Care to elaborate on why, Mick?
I can see why people don’t like the t-shirt. Imagine if your dad had willingly died a very nasty death for you because of mistakes you had made. I don’t think you’d be too keen on people making fun of that, even if they meant no disrespect. And in response to another of your comments…I see no reason to believe that Jesus didn’t “die and was resurrected for me and the human race” that is sufficient to overwhelm all the evidence combined with Occam’s razor that “the simplest explanation is usually the best”.
I like the stem cell tshirt (despite being anti embryonic stem cell research).
That T-shirt is t3h pwange!! I’d buy it and walk around my catholic high school wearing it 😀
Good luck – It’s from T-Shirt Hell but they don’t do it any more: they discontinued the entire section for apparently being too offensive. Thankfully I just managed to get hold of one T-shirt from there before they closed it: one which says “I like my women like I like my coffee: ground up and in the freezer”.
I want the super t-shirt available from xxxchurch.com that says “Jesus loves porn stars”. It rocks!
“Jesus did it for the chicks” and “Jesus is coming, look busy” are humourous. A T-Shirt stating that “Jesus loves porn stars” would be at best theologically etc. acurate, if it was clearly implying such a message in the context of “Jesus loves all human beings”. However, such a T-Shirt would probably not be very commercially sucessful, and so it seems more likely to fall into the “Jesus loves porn stars because He likes porn, and hey, maybe He even regularly looks at porn online!” camp. Which, any religious sentiments I may have aside, seems to me to ally itself with the “Religion’s full of shit, dude” argument. Which isn’t terribly impressive. Humourous T-Shirts, yes. Just plain silly ones, no.
Responses?
Yeah, but if I wear it, people know I love Jesus, and they know I don’t think he’s in to porn, and they know I think he loves porn stars, so I think it’ll all be ok
Hi David Thompson,
I simply wanted a nice picture of Jesus to use as my MSN display picture, so I did a Google image search and found the t-shirt on the first page of results.
Seeing the Jesus t-shirt fully offended me, and even more so upsetted me. It upsets me that such a little amount of people have respect for others these days. 75% of Americans are Christians, and there are billions of Christians worldwide (I am a Canadian Christian). I’m sure you know all this, but it’s important to realize just how many people would be negatively affected by that image if they were to come across it. I’m glad that the t-shirt was discontinued, but I would greatly appreciate it if you would remove the picture from your website, or make sure that it doesn’t appear in search engines. Self-expression is great, Jesus lived and died for that, but when it disciminates against such a large group and hurts feelings, it becomes terrible. I’m sure you meant it as a joke, but Christianity describes Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, which is nothing to joke about. Thank you for reading this, and hopefully something will be done about the picture.