If you’ve been on Facebook in the past 24 hours, you will know millions of people have rainbow profile pictures, in honor of SCOTUS’s recent ruling on gay marriage, and courtesy of a new Facebook filter. A large chunk of brands (the majority) have also added rainbows to their logos and profile pictures. I’ve even noticed some people simply use the rainbow filter “because it’s cool” and “everyone else is doing it.”
Can you imagine the uproar if Facebook did a Christian profile picture filter? Or, if every rainbow flag you’ve seen on brands, profile pictures, etc. was replaced with a cross? (Even the White House and the Dept. Of Education have jumped on the rainbow bandwagon.) Facebook (and every other business with rainbow logos) would be blasted for “pushing their beliefs on the rest of the population and being intolerant.” Everyone is entitled to free speech, whether or not I agree with it. On the contrary, you can’t expect someone to be tolerant of you if you’re not tolerant of them.
I’ve noticed only a small smidgen of Christians have spoken out against it, in fear of backlash by the “tolerant.” With feeds bursting with gay-pride and little to no opposition, many Christians feel like they are the only ones in the world who oppose same-sex marriage. Inspired by the Resistance during WWII, the original goal of my blog was to encourage Christians to “fight the good fight of the faith.”
After some inspiration from my lovely readers, we seem to agree that we traditional/biblical-marriage believing Christians need to have a unifying symbol as well. Nothing hateful (or nothing that could be perceived as hateful), nothing rude, nothing flashy, nothing sarcastic, and nothing even really pointed at the rainbow community – just a simple way Conservative Christians can say to each other, “I’ve got your back” in the midst of the colorful outbreak on social media. I was debating over a cross, or a man and a woman silhouette. I figured both would cause too much pointless drama, and ended up choosing a fish.
In the early churches, a fish was used as a secret code for Christians to identify each other, as a cross was too obvious. I thought this symbol was perfectly fitting for today. In these times, I feel it’s especially important for Christians to stand up for what they believe, because someday those rights may be gone. I didn’t do this to cause a Facebook war and as far as I stretched my brain, I couldn’t think of any logical way this fish could be perceived as “hateful” or “bigoted.” It’s a respectful way to state a fact – that this user stands for traditional marriage, just like the rainbow was for those who stood for gay marriage. Haters gonna hate (Proverbs 9:8), but it’s something a truly tolerant person, even if they disagreed, would be able to respect. And who knows? It may raise some curiosity and perhaps lead others to Christ.