The Crossbow

"Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching."  (2nd Timothy 4:2, emphasis added)

We don't always know when we'll be tested.  Sometimes, it comes as a complete surprise.

My wife and I were out shopping on Saturday.  It was a pleasant, relaxed time for us to just be together.  We had gone out for a leisurely breakfast.  Then, we took the scenic route back to our town from the next town up the road.  Then, we went into the local Dollar General store for a few "domestic" items.

Then, the test came.

While in the store, I looked through a rack of long-sleeve T-shirts.  I turned my head, and there "it" was.  "It" was a black T-shirt with a big skull emblem.  Below the skull was some Greek writing.  Below the Greek writing, in mirror writing, was "666" in fancy script.  And, next to the black shirt was a green shirt with a skull, two crossed guitars (mocking the crossed-rifles emblem of the Infantry branch of the US Army), and "DCLXVI" in Roman numerals.

For those victims of modern public education that never learned to read Roman numerals, that equals "six hundred sixty six".  For those that do not know, the number "666" is the "Mark of the Beast" written about in the Book of Revelation.  That book is the last book of the Holy Bible.  It contains the prophecies about the End Times -- the final years of mankind on Earth.  The final seven years are called The Tribulation, which culminates in the Battle of Armageddon.  (I believe that The Tribulation actually began two months ago.  For a detailed explanation, please read my book, Tribulation:  2008.)

T-shirt on sale at Dollar General store

(depicting "666" in Roman numerals)

photo by:  Tom Kovach

The above photo is of the second T-shirt.  The photo was taken with my cell phone.  I did not take a photo of the shirt with the Greek writing, but wish that I had.  It has been about 25 years since I've read anything in Greek.  (And, even then, it was only a few words and phrases of "Church Greek", which I learned from the Liturgy book while attending a Greek Orthodox parish.)  But, in my limited recollection, I think that the shirt said "Satan".

My wife has gotten accustomed to my activism.  And, although she supports it in principle, she does sometimes find it "inconvenient".  (I agree.  But, I find losing the foundations of our country and our culture to be a lot more inconvenient.  So, I fight on.)  Anyway, when I showed the shirts to my wife, and explained the meaning,  I told her that I was going to talk with the store manager.  Instead of asking, "Do you have to do that now?", she resolutely said, "Please do."

I felt sorry for the manager.  She was caught totally off guard.  I was not rude, nor loud, nor did I speak aggressively.  I simply pointed out the facts.  She was stunned, and she thanked me for pointing it out to her.  She then got a clerk, and they both went over and pulled every one of those offensive T-shirts off the rack and put them in a back room.

My wife and I resumed our shopping.  She told me that she was proud of me, and thanked me for standing up for what's right.  I thanked her for being so sweet and supportive.  Then, the manager came to us in a shopping aisle.  I was caught off-guard this time; but, in a good way.

The local store manager told us that she had called the district manager.  He, in turn, thanked the store manager for taking action.  He then told her that he would be calling every Dollar General store in his Middle Tennessee district, and directing them to pull those shirts from their shelves.  My wife and I were pleasantly stunned.

Having spent 16-plus years in a military uniform, and being a member of the group Rolling Thunder, I'm accustomed to a certain level of gruffness at times.  I personally do not have any skulls or other "culture of death" symbols on my vests, even though "back in the day" I was capable of making a head-shot from 650 meters without a scope.  (It was a paper target, on an open range at Eglin AFB.)  The point is that I've been around skulls and other scary emblems for a long time.  That is a sad by-product of the military defense of country and culture.  Nonetheless, I do not endorse such symbolism on the wide-scale societal level that we have seen grow for the past two decades.  And, because of that creeping (and creepy) growth into our society, selling the "bad boy image" has become commonplace in our culture.

Hopefully, the above explains why such symbolism got past the buyers at Dollar General's corporate headquarters.  Given that the HQ is located just north of Nashville, which is often regarded as "the buckle of the Bible Belt", I'm inclined to think that their buyer simply ordered an assorted load of T-shirts, without necessarily knowing what graphics would be on the shirts.  (But, if that's true, then Dollar General needs to train their buyers to be a bit more thorough.)

Regardless of how the T-shirts got onto the rack in the first place, the good news is that Dollar General managers at two levels took the initiative to correct the problem once it was brought to their attention.  For that, I want to give them credit.  They also passed their test.  (God's test for me was to see if I would point out the problem.  God's test for them was to see how they would handle the problem.  Read the third chapter of Ezekiel.)

"Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."  (James 4:7)