Don't mock fish symbols on back of cars

Editor:

Being a vocal Christian as well as a junior in the biochemistry department, I have received a lot of flak for my views on modern issues, most notably homosexuality, salvation and creation. When my parents were finally able to give me a vehicle in October, it was only a 1977 Chevy van with no air and three on the tree. But that's OK, because it has four wheels and moves faster than I can walk.

One of my first orders of business was, with childish glee, to go to the Gospel Supplies and get one of those little fishies for the back of my van. As I started driving around town, however, that joy was replaced with sadness. You see, I had noticed those ads in the Tucson Weekly for the Darwin fish ("Be an original thinker!" the ad proclaims), but it wasn't until I was a motorist myself that I realized how popular they are. And this is sad.

It's not because it represents people who don't like Christianity, but because it demeans the significance of the fish and mocks those who honor what it stands for. Many people think that it represents the miracles of Jesus when He fed first the 5,000 and then the 7,000 with only a few fish and loaves of bread, but its not. The fish represents the trials and tribulations that early Christians had to endure to be a member of this faith.

In the early church, people who professed to be Christians were severely prosecuted, such as stoning, beheading, loss of property, imprisonment, etc. So as to avoid this but still be able to communicate to other Christians, when a believer was talking with someone they suspected as being a believer also, they would unobtrusively scratch the fish symbol into the dirt with their foot. If the other person was a Christian, they would notice right away and scrub it out with their own foot. If they weren't, then the believer would scrub it out and know that they had to watch what they said.

By mocking the symbolism of the fish, many people unknowingly are mocking the hardships and oppression of early Christians. There have been historical instances where Christianity has oppressed other religions (I'd be a fool to deny that and an even bigger fool to support it), and they have been rebuked for it many times. Don't you think that it's only fair to acknowledge the trials that Christianity had to go through, too, or is it acceptable to say it was wrong for the Church to repress others and then to mock the trials that the Church itself went through? Thank you for your time and I hope you take the time to consider this before you or one of your friends places a Darwin fish on a vehicle. If the manufacturing of these is anything like that of my fishie, it would be bonded to the paint of your vehicle and almost impossible to get off.

Matthew Tennyson

Biochemistry Junior

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