I voted no. No crucifix, no cross, no fish, no WWJD bracelet. I have nothing against any of it; I just don’t own or wear any of that stuff. I wear regular clothes. I do shoes and socks. Sometimes sunglasses, if I’m outside and I need them. Maybe a hat. Coat and gloves some parts of the year. That’s it. If I start wearing a necklace of any sort in the near future, it’ll be a plain brown one that I make from string. I may or may not do that, and if I do, I’ll wear it here and there for a few months until it wears out or breaks or I just lose it.
There have been a few times in the past when I’ve worn certain articles for short periods of time- nothing of religious significance, and nothing that I wore consistently or kept for any significant period of time. I guess that let me know something about myself- if I have a necklace or bracelet of some sort, I’m not going to hang onto it long-term or make it a part of what I’m always wearing.
If I did have a crucifix or a necklace with a cross or anything like that, I’d probably do similar things with them in the long-term. Not because Christianity means nothing to me or because the Cross means nothing to me, but because necklaces mean nothing to me. I wouldn’t want to get something like that and then do what I always do with these kinds of things over the long term. In the short term, I’d feel like I have to wear it more than I really want to just because it’s a cross or whatever the symbol is. In the long term, though, I think my lack of fashion sense and ambivalence (not contempt by any stretch, just ambivalence) toward necklaces and bracelets and so forth would win out and I’d stop wearing whatever the thing is. Then I’d feel kind of bad about that. But I know how I am and I can anticipate what would happen, so I just don’t wear those kinds of things.
If it’s a kind-of-cool-looking necklace that I made from string while I was bored, that would be a different story. I wear it for awhile, then something happens to it or I just stop wearing it. No big deal; it didn’t really mean anything in the first place so it makes sense for me to treat it like it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve done that before; I might do it again. That’s what I generally do with these kinds of things no matter what it is, and that’s why I won’t spend money on them. It’s also why I won’t start wearing something with a religious symbol that probably won’t wind up being a long-term thing. It does mean something and it does have significance, but I’m not the right kind of person to wear it.
