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January

So in light of this conversation about experience with truth claims being an evidence of actual truth, let me comment some about our cultural experience with advertising and what I believe to be its effects on the Christian gospel.

I think advertising has been around since the beginning of creation…the creation account describes the first “ad campaign”. You might naturally begin at Genesis 3 to say that Satan put on the first ad campaign, but I would go before that.

But first let’s consider the 6 phases of the Hierarchy of Effects model of advertising (as described on Wikipedia):

An 1985 advertisement for a weight gain product (Image from Wikipedia)

Awareness

Knowledge

Liking

Preference

Conviction

Purchase

Now, In Genesis 2, the expanded story of creation goes into some details about the interaction between God and creation. God created Adam and then made the statement, “It is not good that the man should be alone…”(v18). “Awareness.” Then God tasked Adam to name all the animals who were in pairs…Adam noticed something missing(v19-20). “Knowledge.” Following this, God did a little surgery, created woman, woke Adam up and presented her to him(v21-22). “Liking” Adam definitely liked what he saw, didn’t have many options to express a “preference”, quickly formed a “conviction” and made the “purchase” (v23-25).

It seems that the very first ad campaign was centered around a woman; makes sense that most modern day ad campaigns are centered around the woman too

But from there the next ad was based on a deception, an illegitimate way to fulfill a legitimate desire (Genesis 3. 1-7). So advertising is not a new invention. But advertising in modern history is unique and prolific. Our economy is dependent upon advertising. “Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today.” (NY Times article, Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad, 2007) And in modern times, it has become out of control with deception:

James Laver, a British historian, broadly described advertising during the 19^th century—a time when companies made outrageous claims which could not be proved, and with practically no regulation—as follows:

“Advertising is as old as Humanity: indeed, much older; for what are the flaunting colours of the flowers but so many invitations to the bees to come and “buy our product.” Advertising might be defined as any device which first arrests the attention of the passer-by and then induces him to accept a mutually advantageous exchange.”

In other words, advertising may be described as a mechanism for 1) getting the attention of an individual and then, 2) persuading that individual to engage in some kind of action—ultimately, to buy some type of service or product.
-David from historyofadvertising.blogspot.com

So we are constantly bombarded with messages from all sources and means seeking to persuade us to engage in some kind of action based on a certain proposed truth. Of course we are supposed to be protected by laws that seek to govern the truth of advertising in our society (that’s why we get the “fast talkers” at the end of car and drug commercials who are telling “the fine print” they are legally required to say). But all of us have bought into something that promised but didn’t deliver. And today’s marketing is even more powerful (keeping up with the culture), because it sells you a feeling, mostly through telling a story or convincing you of an alternate reality than you know…which conveniently can be achieved through their product/service.

Therefore, companies are selling “the good life”, offering you to “have it your way”, or selling “guaranteed joy”

Now think about how the gospel has been presented over the years…as a bill of goods based on truth to change your life and give you a different reality (even for eternity). But what about those that it doesn’t “work” for or the “product” testimony about it not “working” for someone else? Just today one of my coworkers gave me a stack of Keurig cups for my coffee maker in my office. I love my Keurig coffee maker and have had it for almost a year now, no problems. He just got one and it quickly broke. He returned it and donated the coffee to me! (of course I’m going to share, come on by) He deemed that the coffee maker isn’t worth the hassle. Now I am simplifying his experience for the illustration, and over-simplifying it to apply to the gospel, but this is how we operate. Religion/faith is not working for me, or someone else I know, so it’s not a product I am going to use.

So how are we preaching the gospel and what promises are we making…do we need some fast talkers after our sermons to give the disclosure statements

I jest, but tomorrow I want to continue on this theme to look at our presentation of the truth in what we call the good news…

Let me know your thoughts on truth in advertising.

Category: Church, culture, Faith, ministry, Post-modernity, seminary, spiritual life, Theology, Truth Tags: advertising, Culture, faith, gospel, modern, postmodern, reason, religion, truth Leave a Comment

What Difference Does Truth (however you define it) Make?

January

written by:brian | 8 Comments

This is the testimony of one anti-theist:

We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true – that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.
-(Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; 2007, p5,6)

Hitchens not only gives testimony to his belief structure/philosophy but in the same breath gives a broad backhand to the faith of Christianity. Similarly, consider the words of one Christian turned agnostic, Charles Templeton:

The record of the Christian church is a checkered one. Over twenty centuries it has done immeasurable good…But the church has seldom been at its best. Too often it has been a negative influence. Too often it has stood in the way of progress…
And despite the fact that Jesus enjoined his followers to love one another, most don’t, each believing that only they have seen the true light of the Gospel and that all the others are in error.
-(Charles Templeton, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith, 1996; p127,129)

And I could go on and on quoting those who have rejected or walked away from Christian faith.
As always, there is another side of the “coin”. Consider the words of those, still philosophically opposed to the Christian faith, who have a different testimony:

[William H.] Lecky spent his life advancing the cause of rationalism, attacking Christianity, and the supernatural. Yet read what Lecky has to say about Christ and Christianity: “It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all of the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hears of men with an impassioned love, has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions, and has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but also the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it may truly be said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all of the dispositions of philosophers and exhortations of moralists.” (D. James Kennedy, Skeptics Answered, 1997; p91)

Thomas Huxley / Image from Wikipedia

I have always been strongly in favor of secular education, in the sense of education without theology. But I must confess that I have been no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept up in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on these matters without the use of the Bible. The pagan moralists lack life and color, take the Bible as a whole, make the severest deductions which bare criticism can dictate, and there still remains a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur. By the study of what other book could children be so much humanized and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between two eternities and earns the blessing of curse of all time, according to its efforts to do good and evil?
(Thomas Huxley, quoted from D. James Kenedy, Skeptics Answered, 1997 ; p94)

My point is not, “see look at what these people said, you must believe now.” I point out these testimonies to state that I believe the primary cause of one’s loosing or rejecting faith is because of this very reason…what difference has their experience with faith/religion made. What is this person’s experience with their own faith or the life of another person who is of the Christian faith? This is not the argument of pragmatism, “if it works, then its true”, but rather a call to Christians to be who we say we are (not claiming perfection) and to live as one who is being transformed by the truths we seek to defend, and thereby transforming our communities. In my theology, sin is sin, and it is harmful to the person committing it and to his/her community (possibly extending to the global community). It is sin if it is committed by an atheist, a theist, or a Christian. However, Christians have at times hid behind “absolute truth” to either justify or escape their own sin.

Too often appeals to the objective truth of the gospel have served as a means for the church to evade its responsibility to live faithfully before the world. In short, Christians insisted that the gospel was objectively true regardless of how we lived. The paradigm I am advocating frankly admits that all truth claims require for their widespread acceptance the testimony of trusted and thereby authorized witnesses. This is as true for the truth claims of science as it is for those of the church.
-(Philip D. Kenneson,”There’s No Such Thing as Objective Truth, and It’s a Good Thing, Too.” Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World. Edited by Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995; p166)

I don’t think it will do us any good to objectively prove God’s existence (which I am not sure you can do nor can you prove God’s non-existence) or prove the Bible is absolute truth and live no different than those who reject such notions. The good news is that all humanity can admit his/her failings, be forgiven of those, be enabled to reorder life around the revealed character of God through Christ (faith), and seek to love others as they have been loved by God.

Category: biblical studies, Brian, Church, culture, Faith, Science, Theology, Truth Tags: absolute truth, ecclesiology, faith, Hitchens, modern, objective truth, post-modern, sin, Templeton, testimonies, truth 8 Comments

Recycled or New Epistemology?

January

written by:brian | 7 Comments

Yesterday, Greg asked the following question in his comment, “Some say Paul experienced a Post-Modern audience…so are there really only two epistomologies repackaged over and over again?”

I do see strong similarities to the culture Paul faced and our current post-modern culture, and I felt drawn to agree that it seems humanity is only re-packaging the same patterns of thought in different skins, however I think upon closer review I must acknowledge a growth of human thought patterns which reaches to the past, assimilates it through what we have learned and lived and applies it in fresh new ways to a different set of cultural questions, assumptions, and problems. The post-modern epistemology is specifically POST-modern because it is a reaction/response to the modern. And the modern epistemology came about through the Enlightenment and thinkers such as Locke, Descartes, Kant, and others.

But before I continue in recent philosophy and developing theories, let me affirm that truth is something very important in scripture. Take a few passages as examples (emphases mine):

Jesus came “full of grace and truth” (John 1.14)
Jesus prayed for his followers, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17.17)
Jesus promised the Spirit of God to come, “he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14.16,17)
Jesus claimed, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14.6)
Paul writes that truth can be suppressed by wickedness, “…by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” (Romans 1.18)
He further indicts humanity for worshiping a lie, “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie…” (Romans 1.25)
Christians are told to test the spirits, “By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” (1 John 4.6)

And we could go on and on. This is nowhere near an exhaustive study on the uses of truth in the Bible. A quick search shows that in the ESV Bible the English word is used 141 times.

Image from Wikipedia

However, if we did a full study, we must acknowledge that we read the word “truth” with a perspective that is uniquely different than those before us who said or wrote those statements. Our concept of truth has been dramatically shaped by “Descartes’s theory of mind as mental process and Kant’s notion of philosophy as the tribunal of pure reason [which] helped produce many of the dichotomies that now appear self-evident: object/subject; realism/idealism; knowledge/opinion; fact/value; reason/faith; rational/irrational; public/private.” (Philip D. Kenneson) In a fascinating thesis, Kenneson, continues to evaluate the concept of objective truth which we have come to accept and attempt to defend:

Within such a view of knowledge, truth (or Truth) is not so much a concept as it is an entity “out there” in the world, waiting to be discovered; Truth is merely the word for the way the world really is which we are trying to picture or mirror with our knowledge. When human beings discover this Truth, picture it faithfully in their minds and mirror it accurately in their language, we say that they have genuine knowledge. Moreover, such knowledge is “objectively true” when its status as true does not ultimately depend on the testimony of any person or group of persons. Indeed, the whole point of claiming that something is “objectively true” is to say that any person, unhindered by the clouds of unreason and the prejudices of self-interest, would come to the same conclusion. (Philip D. Kenneson,”There’s No Such Thing as Objective Truth, and It’s a Good Thing, Too.” Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World. Edited by Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995; pp. 157)

So is there another way or is our only option to categorize everyone as either an objectivist or relativist? Has the attempt to defend the faith according objective truth with modern constructs contributed to individuals disconnecting faith and “real life”? I would love to read some of your thoughts/reactions.

Trust me, I am going somewhere with this…and I’ll leave you with the quote below to whet your thoughts (there’s a mixed metaphor) for tomorrow’s conversation continuation:

Kierkegaard in a coffee-house, an oil sketch by Christian Olavius, 1843 (Image from Wikipedia)

“There is something missing in my life, and it has to do with my need to understand what I must do, not what I must know – except, of course, that a certain amount of knowledge is presupposed in every action. I need to understand my purpose in life, to see what God wants me to do, and this means that I must find a truth which is true for me, that I must find that Idea for which I can live and die.” (Søren Kierkegaard “An Entry from the Journal of the Young Kierkegaard”, quoted in Truth Decay by Douglas Groothuis, p10-11)