The "God Is Still Speaking" Ad Campaign
Aug. 21st, 2005 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldLast year, a United Church of Christ TV ad was rejected by CBS and NBC for being too controversial. It depicts bouncers of the sort that stand guard over the doors of popular nightclubs. But these are granting and withholding admission to a non-Church-of-Christ church service. The commercial then says that Jesus never turned anyone away. It's a good commercial, and it's true that people should accept all the groups the commercial identifies. I only bring it up because the campaign slogan is "God is still speaking." That sentence is either confused or scary. It's bad enough for the United Church of Christ to have a set of doctrines that you and I are not allowed to deny. It's worse if they get to change what we are not allowed to contradict, from year to year. People ignore progressive churches for the same reason they ignore the latest findings about cholesterol as the conclusions flip flop. If God's not even better than science, that's not very godlike.
Religions up until recently have emphasized faith in what one is told to believe, but they don't ignore personal observation and reason. That is, they don't ignore rationality with new recruits, but only with the most advanced followers. They employ personal observation and reason only far enough to discredit personal observation and reason in favor of believing whatever one is told. That's the way they maintain power over their congregations. Their God or holy book has already done all their important thinking for them, and yet they manage to convince their congregations that they have only given up thinking for themselves because this was the logical outcome of thinking. This is a nod to the value of somebody somewhere doing some thinking, but it remains only for them to learn it by rote. One can't have a message from Perfection Personified and simultaneously have room for improvement. That wouldn't be Perfection Personified. That's why dropping the "G" bomb is so final and absolutist. The concept of "god" can only be used as a sanction that asserts perfection and puts ideas outside of the realm of discourse.
Since "god" has no meaning without absolutism, "God is still speaking" is a nerve-wracking pronouncement because it means "absolutist from minute to minute." "Sources of infallible censorship can flip flop without any notice." An image comes to mind of one of the pigs from George Orwell's Animal Farm up on a ladder with a bucket of paint, editing the farm's constitution in the middle of the night. The nice thing is that the gods of progressive churches flop their followers around in the breeze so much that they undermine their confidence and they won't bother the rest of us with knocking on our doors on weekend mornings! I'm appreciative of that.
Religions up until recently have emphasized faith in what one is told to believe, but they don't ignore personal observation and reason. That is, they don't ignore rationality with new recruits, but only with the most advanced followers. They employ personal observation and reason only far enough to discredit personal observation and reason in favor of believing whatever one is told. That's the way they maintain power over their congregations. Their God or holy book has already done all their important thinking for them, and yet they manage to convince their congregations that they have only given up thinking for themselves because this was the logical outcome of thinking. This is a nod to the value of somebody somewhere doing some thinking, but it remains only for them to learn it by rote. One can't have a message from Perfection Personified and simultaneously have room for improvement. That wouldn't be Perfection Personified. That's why dropping the "G" bomb is so final and absolutist. The concept of "god" can only be used as a sanction that asserts perfection and puts ideas outside of the realm of discourse.
Since "god" has no meaning without absolutism, "God is still speaking" is a nerve-wracking pronouncement because it means "absolutist from minute to minute." "Sources of infallible censorship can flip flop without any notice." An image comes to mind of one of the pigs from George Orwell's Animal Farm up on a ladder with a bucket of paint, editing the farm's constitution in the middle of the night. The nice thing is that the gods of progressive churches flop their followers around in the breeze so much that they undermine their confidence and they won't bother the rest of us with knocking on our doors on weekend mornings! I'm appreciative of that.
