Troxler: Jesus is to be mass-produced, imprinted on metal, given a reflective coat, sold for money.

madfloridian

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Fri May-01-09 08:22 PM
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Troxler: Jesus is to be mass-produced, imprinted on metal, given a reflective coat, sold for money.

Howard Troxler of the St. Pete Times, one of my favorite Florida columnists, shows much disdain for the new Florida Jesus license tag.

Jesus is to be mass-produced, imprinted on metal, given a reflective coat and sold for money. His crown of thorns will lie just beneath the "FLORIDA" across the top of the plate; his outstretched arms will be truncated to the left and right by the tag numbers, so that one does not actually see the cross, the nails, the wounds � no, we would not have that! The words "SUNSHINE STATE" will be stamped across his unscathed, unlashed torso.

This image, provided by the Florida Legislature, shows a proposed design for a license plate depicting Jesus Christ that would be available to drivers if lawmakers pass a bill.

What would Jesus think about his license plate?

Most Christians demanded to see their Christ, their holy virgin, their saints. Eventually the dispute was settled in their favor. More than a thousand years have passed since then, and we are still going at it � this time, with a proposal to depict the Son of God, the Lamb, the Savior �

On an official state of Florida automobile tag.

An auto tag.

Render unto Caesar:

My first thought upon hearing this news, as an erstwhile Methodist and reader of the Gospels, was not about the legal separation of church and state in our secular democracy � though this surely violates it � nor whether Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or atheists should now get their own plate � though surely they are entitled, since they pay exactly the same taxes to the state � nor even whether the Legislature should stick to the pressing worldly matters of the day, such as opening up Florida to oil drilling, handing out new tax breaks and protecting old ones in a budget crisis, and otherwise running the state entirely into the ground, a secular task at which it appears to be doing a bang-up job.

Instead, my first thoughts were more about the stories of Christ in the Bible, angrily throwing the money changers out of the temple, and instructing his followers to pray privately in their closets rather than displaying prideful piety on the public streets like the "hypocrites" (which is exactly what he said. Look it up.). Most of all, I thought about the story in Matthew when his enemies tried to trick Jesus, tried to get him to come out against paying taxes so that he could be arrested. Jesus threw it back in their faces by saying, show me a coin � whose face is on it? And they had to reply, it is Caesar's face.

"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's," he said, "and unto God the things that are God's."

Howard Troxler is a treasure in our state. I often felt like a lonely voice here when I was telling how the Florida Democrats went right along with the Republicans on the early primary bill.....and then they lied and said they had no choice.

Troxler called them out their behavior on this issue.

Florida Democrats loved the early primary bill

I have a few e-mails gently protesting my Tuesday column, which blamed the Legislature -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- for moving the state's primary too early.

My friends ask: Isn't it true that the Democrats had no choice? The same bill back in 2007 also got rid of touch-screen voting machines, and they had to take the good with the bad, so it wasn't really their fault.

But I politely disagree, having kept track of the process. House Bill 537 did all kinds of things to Florida elections, some good and some bad. The entire Legislature rushed to pass it. I argued that the issues should have been separated, that the earlier primary was a bad idea, and that the governor should have vetoed it. But he didn't -- maybe because one part of the same bill now allows him to run for vice-president without resigning.

..."The Democrats in the Legislature did not fight the move to the earlier primary; in fact lots of them liked it. At the last minute, as a cynical ploy, some Democrats offered an late amendment to block the change in the primary date -- but they admitted on the floor of the Legislature it was only so that they could show the Democratic National Committee they had put up a token resistance. This is the basis of the present-day revisionist claim that "we fought it but the Republicans made us do it."

Thank you, Howard Troxler, for your clarity of thinking on these two very important issues.