You are currently browsing the Bruce Smith weblog archives for the day 27. July 2011.
27. July 2011 by BruceSmith.
The Real Thing? Super-Models, Airbrushed Teaching, Empty smiles, Stagnant minds
Cindy Crawford has said, “Even I don’t look like Cindy Crawford when I wake up”. She was commenting on the reality of media and magazine over emphasis on perfection, false perfection. NPR recently ran a story on the British uproar over new magazine pictures of Julia Roberts and others who are, despite their beauty, exceedingly touched up on magazine covers. The surprising conflict stems from the British laws which wrestle with truth in advertising. The question is, where does effective marketing actually become deception? If we are selling a kind of beauty beyond that of Julia Roberts, Cindy Crawford, and other world-class models, we have a problem with reality. As the truism goes, “If you want to feel beautiful, don’t read beauty magazines”. That is to say, with all the false perfection, and massive touchups, even the beautiful models are more than beautiful…they are not real. One can become deceived, pre-occupied, and falsely lured with a standard of beauty that is unrealistic. NPR’s program was surprisingly and refreshingly encouraging with regard to the truth of what beauty products can do and can’t do for a real person in the real world, and equally encouraging in that it called listeners to question the kind of false reality our cultures are too prone to admire. It was a rare call for individuals, and entire industries, to actually think on a bigger scale, to go deeper than skin, especially fake skin.
Have we done this in the church as well? If so, and I think the answer is obvious, should we make church laws which ban such false “advertising” in the church? Do we need someone to stand up and say, “Hey, people! Think. Use your brain. Stop listening to the false ads, and actually spend the time needed to understand what is going on!”
Let me see if I can help you understand where I am coming from. Recently, in preparing for some teaching assignments on the subject of suffering and pain in the lives of “biblical heroes”, I came across some well known, often read, and well compensated contemporary teaching on the subject of “victorious Christian living”. The speaker/writer, very well known in our culture, one who sells lots of books, and preaches to lots of people every week, as he usually does, went on to espouse the idea that Christians should experience ongoing, un-interupted, and unceasing victory, accomplishment, and peace in life. He suggested this covers everything from finances to relationships, and including health and emotions. Because Jesus, was ultimately victorious, he suggested, then we should never be without total success in every area of our lives! If we are not experiencing such, then we just need to change our thinking and watch it happen.
Really? Where in biblical revelation does anything remotely similar show up? Seriously. Abraham? Asked to kill his son! Joseph? Imprisoned, sold into slavery, lied about, looked over. Jeremiah? The weeping prophet. Job? Lost everything, health, wealth, family, reputation. Hosea? Asked to marry a whore. Paul? Blinded, shipwrecked, imprisoned, stoned (not the herbal kind!), and left for dead. The majority of Jesus’ key followers, after Jesus HIMSELF was killed, were killed in brutal ways. Jesus sweat drops of blood he was so anguished. He was tortured. He was killed. He said, “In this life you WILL have tribulation.” He had family and friends abandon Him at various times in His life. He was poor. He had no status. He is not the guy we would have picked to be the poster-boy for the religious movement. Success was not even in His vocabulary, let alone esteem.
Romans chapter 8 is a direct confrontation of such teaching, such false and misleading teaching. The list at the end of the chapter leaves no struggle out. We will face them, we are told, if true Christians. In them, through them, as a result of them, we are taught, we become more of what God wants us to be. Some thorns, problems, pains never go away scripture affirms. Bad things DO happen to “good” people, all the time. This is the real story of the Fall. The world, full of sin, sinners, full of sin, all contribute to the reality in question.
The church has to stand up and tell an onlooking world the truth about God’s beauty. What is beautiful is that God knows our suffering, and He actually suffered with us, in Christ. He is not too far removed so as not to be able to comfort and grow us through our pains. As Muggeridge has said, it is through pain that we learn the most. And to want otherwise would be a farce. If we could end all pain and suffering from our experience, he says, life would be too banal and trivial as to be meaningful. Pain, points us to God, to the Cross. And it is the cross which most testifies to the reality of God’s love for us. That is true beauty.
I actually stagger when I hear other ministers affirm the teaching of well known TV preachers and book writers who tell the world God wants them always victorious and blessed. Have any of these people read the same bible I read? One has to wonder. We expect the lost world to come to us and jump headlong into a delusion because we promise them the good life, then they see life get ugly, and wonder if it all is a game. That is not the message of the scripture, God’s heroes of faith gone by, and its not biblical experience. In our comfort culture, our lazy television obsessed existence, we are too lazy of mind and puny in our intellectual and spiritual effort. Like those who would rather take a pill or have a surgery in order to be fit rather than work at it in a healthy way, today’s church-goers want to be spoon fed something called “truth”. We don’t even take time to read the warning labels on such an approach anymore. Easy is the way and the game we would rather play. But Jesus said those who will be “blessed” are those who actually hunger and thirst for him, those who take a counter-cultural approach to life, and those who suffer. That may not sell books or keep them in the pews, but that was never Jesus’ goal. He came that we might have life, life to the full, not that we might have great music and a thirty minute pep talk about our quest for a better life experience.
Why do we, like blind consumers pulled along by false advertisers leading a pleasure hungry world astray, buy into the contemporary American deception? Most of the world, and most of history knows a different reality. And certainly the biblical story is different from this flimsy offering. Large churches, nice suits, big smiles, and large book deals are no correlation to reality, friends. We must learn to think, and think biblically. Anyone can tell you how good your are, how nice life can be for you, and how special a person you must be. That is not, however, the biblical message when presented in its fullness, and its certainly not the emphasis of scripture. How can we sit, without evaluation, because someone sells books and has a soothing voice, and listen to something so clearly out of touch with the whole of scripture? Those who buy in are as much to blame as those who sell it. They have both bought into the same lazy and fleshly approach to life and truth.
The bible tells us, clearly, though made in God’s image as His loved creation, we have all like sheep gone astray and embraced sin. We are in need of His goodness which alone will bring beauty back into our lives, and does so amidst the mess of life in a fallen world. If we don’t hear and understand how deeply sin impacts our life and our world, we cannot hope to see how God’s corrective truth helps us to find our way through toward His better way.
Close the cover on “teaching” which smiles at you and tells you that only good is coming your way. You can no more “claim, speak, or call” such realities into existence than the man on the moon! (he does not exist by the way) False advertising leads entire cultures over the brink and headlong toward emptiness and false lives. Just look at the lives of broken “blessed” celebrities in our culture. More is not always better, and obsession over prettier externals never fixes the internal need. The same is true spiritually speaking. This idea was not for God’s biblical heroes, and it is not for us now, if we are to experience depth and life-giving faith. If God chooses to bring blessing into your life as you follow Him, wonderful! Enjoy it. Don’t make it your quest or your God, however. And if He brings you through the hard journey to bless the world through your faithfulness and example, embrace that fully.
Remember, Job became a signpost to the comfort of God. Joseph became a beacon of God’s providence. Jeremiah called a nation back to God. Paul wrote two thirds of the New Testament (from prison), Hosea became a testimony of God’s radical love for people who reject His loving-kindness, and Abraham is the faithful patriarch of biblical faith. All of them, through hardship and misery, found joy in the journey, and pointed a world back to Him. Put down the airbrush! Use your mind. Choose His truth.
Its all about Him, folks. Its not about us. The world needs to hear that. They want to see the REAL thing. Don’t touch up the crows feet of God’s word. Don’t liposuction the truth. Don’t stuff the body of Christ with fake enhancements. Truth is far more beautiful than fiction, I assure you.
Bruce Smith
www.bruceleesmith.co
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