The Resurrection : Brought To You By…
The alarm goes off on Easter morning. Regina has the radio set to 104.7 the FISH. (It’s one of those little sacrifices of marriage I guess. 
) I have to be at church early for Worship Team practice so I roll out of bed and head toward the shower. As the song that’s playing is ending and the DJ starts talking and she says something to the effect of:
While today is Easter and we celebrate Jesus and the empty tomb, remember that next weekend you can celebrate this beautiful Spring season at the Atlanta Dogwood Festival. It will be Saturday and Sunday at Piedmont Park with games, live music, food, arts and crafts, and fun for everyone. Bla bla bla.
I’m not one to make tradition or earthy icons into false idols of Holiness but for some reason this struck me as odd. Today is the day that God’s plan for redeeming the fallen human race is finally realized and it’s being used side by side in an advertisement for the Atlanta Dogwood Festival - how low has the Christian subculture gotten? This made me remember something that happend earlier on Friday.
Good Friday is often overlooked but has always been significant to me. I have always imagined scenes like Mel Gibson delivered in his film, while other believers seemed to gloss over it and go straight for the stone being rolled away on a sunny morning with birds chirping and flowers blooming. It was always one of my favorite services while we were at Fellowship Bible. It was intense as we, some of the most spoiled people in the world, took time to remember the great “inconvenience” that Christ endured in His obedience to the Father. Tim, the worship director, was always mindful to “leave Jesus in the grave” at the end of the service to make people think about the great sense of mourning and hopelessness that was felt by those involved.
So like I said, it’s a significant day for me. As I was at work on Friday, a coworker had a little fuzzy thing with googly eyes and feet sitting on his computer monitor. Attached to the fuzzy thing was a tag that said, “Jesus loves you.” Somehow I was sickened to think of the great physical pain that Jesus endured - not to mention the unthinkable spiritual pain of taking on the very wrath of God - and see the message of that event summed up and attached to a fuzz ball with googly eyes.
March 28th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Here’s a different angle. If the FISH didn’t advertise, you wouldn’t have the opportuntity to listen to the same 40 songs in rotation, on Easter morning or any other time.
Was the advertising done well in context, no. But it is necessary. Remember, its “safe for the whole family”TM, not the Gospel for the whole family.
March 28th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
No problem with advertising here, but somehow associating the life of Christ to marketing seems to cheapen both the Gospel and the thing being advertised. Let the advertising be advertising but don’t try and make it “Christian advertising” by taking the sacred and using it to make a buck.
You’ve heard of Jesus feeding 5,000 people by miraculously multiplying some fish and bread right? Well now for a limited time, Captain D’s is offering a “buy one two piece fish dinner, get one free” special. Bla bla bla. Oh, the possibilities are endless.
March 28th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
the idea of cheapening the gospel or watering it down is the main reason i have not seen _the passion_ nor do i plan to.
the underground campaign to promote it cheapened its message. the push to me as a minister was astonding i had never experienced anything like it.
my opinion is that the gospel message is so powerful that is doesn’t need to be watered down or for people to rich off of it. it needs to be lived out by us.
ps. tomorrow afternoon i am going to put a link to one of the best resurection sermons i have heard in a long time!
March 28th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Hey! and the affiliate advertising on the right for a book too… haha that was too funny.
March 30th, 2005 at 9:16 am
no one reads the book, no pictures. plust jesus is dangerous you might actually have to change your life if you actaully saw how he lived and how he wants us to live.
March 30th, 2005 at 10:48 am
hmm..? that made no sense
March 30th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
it should say “plus” not “plust”
March 30th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
no no I don’t get the context to what it was directed at.
March 30th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
I think he is referring to “Hard to Believe,” which in typical MacArthur style tells it like it is as far as the cost in following Christ.
March 30th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
ok now i get it, but I still don’t get the “no one reads the book, no pictures” part?
must have meant something else than the way it is written…?
March 30th, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Hmmm, let us pontificate what Josh meant in his comment. If you go to the original Greek translation you will clearly see that he was referring to the Bible as, “the book” and that people would rather go see a movie than read God’s life changing word.
March 30th, 2005 at 10:02 pm
Spare me the history lesson…. now it is the bible… before it was hard to believe. Also if it is the bible he was referring to as “the book” would it not be proper to use “The Book”?
March 31st, 2005 at 11:34 am
i was talking about the bible. i thought you were saying the “Hey! and the affiliate advertising on the right for a book too‚Ķ haha that was too funny.” that you were refering the the bible as the book too. like gibson had rights to a _passion of the Christ_ bible.
david interpretation is right people would rather watch a movie about the bible than actually read it.
as a minister at a church of Christ we have a tradition of bible study and doing things “by the book” but i am amazed at how few people actually read it for themselves.
as for the captializing i tend not to do that except when i type God or LORD or Jesus or Christ or Holy Spirit. so the bible although it is important is not divinity.
March 31st, 2005 at 1:46 pm
I don’t think we even realize the extent to which this is taken in our culture. Even Cristian radio stations that claim to be “listener supported” (i.e., no advertising) advertise simply by virtue of the fact that they tell all their listeners who their “underwriters” are. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no expectation of an on-air acknowledgement on the part of the giver, and no sense of obligation to do so on the part of the station?
Our culture’s middle name is “Cheap”. We cheapen everything. This insulates us from the sharp edges of reality and responsibility. I do it all the time, without even so much as a second thought. We have a deep-seated fear of anything significant. Nothing is private, nothing is off-limits. There is no intimacy nor is there profundity. Everything is information to be consumed, from Terri Shiavo’s last days, through every excruciating detail of Michael Jackson’s aberrant behavior, to how many people died in Iraq yesterday. To put everything on a level field like this is a reductionism that decouples information from any personal responsibility to act on it. The outcome is physical, spiritual, ad emotional numbness. It’s a hefty price to pay, but hey, since we’re numb then it won’t bother us, so it’s all OK. The googly-eyed fuzzball says Jesus loves me.
March 31st, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Oops - correction on my blog URI.
March 31st, 2005 at 2:37 pm
no… was referring to the amazon link on the right that appeared around same time as this blog post coincidentally, I found it ironically humorous.