The Hsu’s Views

I was listening to a Catalyst podcast featuring Andy Crouch. He quoted Tim Keller on the intersection of the church and culture.

“How can we be a counter-culture for the common good?”

“Coming together is a beginning,
Keeping together is progress,
Working together is success.”
- Henry Ford

(from a display seen at the Detroit Airport.)

In recent days, I saw a woman wearing a black t-shirt that said, “I love Jesus” and in smaller print below, “but I drink a little.” That threw me for a loop as I tried to figure out the message of the shirt.

• Was she declaring herself a follower of Jesus that felt it was ok to drink?
• Was she saying she was a Christian, but not a very good one because she drank?
• Was the shirt mocking some Christians and their hypocritical or inconsistent view toward alcohol?

I googled “Jesus t-shirt but I drink a little” and things began making sense. Apparently Ellen Degeneres has been calling an 88 yr old woman named Gladys Hardy from Austin, Texas during her show. This video segment is quite funny, and you hear Gladys admit to Ellen that “I love Jesus, but I drink a little.” In the context of the conversation you laugh because 88 yr old women that love Jesus would not usually be admitting to a little drink.

Nana Gladys now has a website where you can buy the t-shirts and track her antics.

Mystery solved. The message of the shirt is not so much about Jesus, Christians, and alcohol as much as it is an artifact of our television culture… or is it?

“It is not possible for the same group of men in one context—when facing the non-Christian world—to assert that the death of Christ is the one sufficient event by which all men may be made one family under God, and, at the same time, in another context—when dealing with one another—to assert that the event is not sufficient to enable those who believe in it to live as one family.”~ Lesslie Newbigin, “The Quest for Unity Through Religion,” 1955, p. 29

“Far too long, historians have accepted the claim that the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (ca. 285-337) caused the triumph of Christianity. To the contrary, he destroyed its most attractive and dynamic aspects, turning a high-intensity, grassroots movement into an arrogant institution controlled by an elite who often managed to be both brutal and lax.”

Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 33.