What Message Are You Sending?

by Jerry Bullock

Tar-zhay … That is French for Target, the new fashion culture of the huge retail operation. You will be able to purchase their $120.00 fashion jeans sporting an embroidered red and white target on the right rear pocket. Another product in this new couture (French for culture) is a $3,185 gold and diamond necklace. The new look was reported this week in the San Antonio Express News.

I am impressed! Just to know that such finery is going to be available to us, right here in River City. There is something especially inviting to think of your enemy walking around with a target embroidered on their derriere (dairy-air). Kids also might think twice before providing an aiming point the next time a spanking is in order. Yes, I do believe an occasional spanking is in order

. Personally I prefer the little alligator or the polo player on the front of my shirt. I have always had this thing about paying someone to be a billboard for their company: Guess, Old Navy, The Gap, and on and on ad infinitum. It is hard to find a good tee shirt today that is not an advertisement for someone’s business.

Tee shirts and polo shirts are a big business today. People will do almost anything if they get a tee shirt for doing it. A few years ago my son Randy and I drove to Wichita Falls in August to ride our bicycles in a bike ride called the Hotter-n-Hell Hundred. We joined with 10,000 other people to make a 100-mile ride around the countryside; The ride lived up to its name; we got our tee shirts and went back to do it the next two years.

“What do you think of Christian messages on tee shirts?” you may ask. That is a good question and will help me reach the target of this essay. Most Christian tees have great messages. They are often a witness to Jesus and as such they serve to plant seeds of truth to those who see them. However, the message depends on the wearer, not the shirt.

Just because I have on an “Old Navy” shirt does not mean I have ever been in an Old Navy store. By the same token an “I Love Jesus” shirt does not mean the wearer has ever been to church. I can have crosses around my neck, cross rings on my fingers, a W.W.J.D. (What Would Jesus Do) whatever and not know the first thing about Jesus, the Christ.

The bottom line, Our lives must be our witness, not what we wear. I have seen church youth groups that had on matching Jesus Loves Me shirts who, by their mischievous behavior, denied the message on the shirt. Lucille is always telling me to think about what the reader will think. When we match behavior to the message, Christian tees are wonderful. However, they can do untold damage to God’s kingdom when the opposite is true.

What message will you send?