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Notes -
My original reply was lost in site reset but I will try to sum up.
While it is very possible that “He Gets Us doesn’t get it" it seems obvious to me from the rest of your post that you don't really "get it" either. I think that by attempting to frame/justify Christainity in explicitly secular left-wing/Rousseauean terms you're effectively falling into the trap I described in my Inferential Distance post about narratives and the Matrix. In short, you still think that's air you're breathing.
If you were to ask a representative sample of sincere Christians for the "starting point" of the Christian faith I'd wager that a significant majority would respond with some take on John 3:16 i.e. For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. For such a short phrase there's a whole lot to unpack there, but I'm going to stick to the elephant in the room. God is not just mighty, he is the mightiest, the literally All-Mighty. And yet he sacrifices, he suffers, and he is humbled. Consider the narrative role of this act. Consider the obvious question it raises in the mind of the attentive reader. Why would he do that? Sure, in the very next line we get so that whoever believeth in him should not perish but that doesn't the question so much as add a layer of abstraction. Why would God care if our sorry sinful asses perish or not? That's the Big question.
In contrast the whole "sky-daddy said so" brand of rhetoric, you seem to be endorsing here with your talk of Jesus as "the most dominant person" and virtue as mere "status-seeking behavior" is a weak/straw man more common amongst woke academics and edgy teenagers who've read a summary of Nietzsche than actual Christians. The oft heard refrain amongst Christians is not "what did God tell you?" or "what's in it for me?" it is "What would Jesus do?" Sometimes to "be Christlike" means associating with undesirables. Sometimes it means humbling yourself by washing the feet of your guests. Sometimes it means beating the shit out of a shady money changer in the temple square, and sometimes it means having a specific hill that you are not only ready but willing to die on.
Virtue is not desirable because it leads to higher status and other worldly rewards (though it can) it is desirable because contra the irony-pilled twitter and substack perverts that get regularly linked on this forum. Good things are good in and of themselves.
While the Lord knows I have my own issues both theological and otherwise with Bill High, the Signatory Foundation, and wider Calvary Chapel-adjacent subculture that puts out these adds, I have to give credit where credit is due, they seem to have come up with a strong pitch, and it seems to be annoying the correct people.
Edit: spelling/links
I’ll supply two answers, one theological and one psychological. IMO the psychological is more interesting.
Theologically: see how Jesus unpacks John 3:16. To finish the phrase and with my emphasis added,
The loving God is loving, but His love is defined on His own terms, the terms defined in his book. So important is faith and so assured is punishment, that immediately after the mention of love we are lead to eternal life versus condemnation. “God so loved the world, that he saves only those who believe in his son.”
You are right that this passage does not explain why God is loving. But I think an answer to this question isn’t possible when we know that God’s very nature is love. God is loving because that is what God is. And yet, it is up to God to define the term. This is explained in the Book of Job. Job continually seeks a final explanation from God, only to be shown how absolutely powerful God. At the end, Job admits —
Note that Job was the best of the best. “None like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man.” Yet he was put through his trials because of the question, “does Job fear God for no reason?” In the end, Job understands that the final justification of the fear of God is that He is infinitely powerful and totally beyond him in understanding. He did not find affection as the final answer, although God did shower him in gifts after his ordeal. Instead he found frightening, awe-full power beyond his understanding, which worked to compel his faith despite heroic tragedy.
But maybe you believe that Christ somehow changed the nature of God from the old to the New Testament. Is he no longer to be feared? But Jesus says, “fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”. In Luke, this is a rare case of triple emphasis: “ I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!”. And in the Magnificat we read, “mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.”
Did the atonement somehow eradicate fear? Not for everyone. Because we read in Hebrews,
Maybe I am sidetracked now. To get directly back to the question: Jesus must be seen as dominant and powerful, possibly even before he is loving. This is what “Lord” means. The Lord had power over the entire kingdom. Jesus acted mercifully toward those who already feared God (as was normative in first century Judea), but who lacked an understanding of God’s forgiveness and compassion. But these two things — fear and love — are tied together. The threat of punishment is key: “it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” which doesn’t believe. It is precisely because of our nature that God needed to send the highest status man, his Son, to rescue sinners.
Psychological explanation
We can reliably predict what humans desire: it relates to status and reward. Super Bowl commercials illustrate our hopeless addiction to status and reward, as companies vie to associate their false hopes with the highest status and pleasure. What ads attempt to get across is that their product will deliver you beatitude, ie happiness. Iteration after iteration proves that this changes consumer behavior. “This is the way to beatitude; its absence will result in loss and alienation and pain.” There must be some reward for a behavior to occur, or some threat of pain, and the whole world is trying to sell you things based on this. There is no Stanley Cup without the felt sense of loss without its possession. There is no desire for the Super Bowl ring without the fear of losing it — causing many to fumble. They use celebrities in their ads because, in addition to being woefully sinful, humans are woefully social.
Man is inherently, comically bad at not giving in to easy but harmful pleasure-seeking. Obesity, addiction, 90% of dieting attempts failing, everyone’s constant lament about their screen time — this is well-proven. Civilization devised a way to fight against this by the institution of social environments. Put a boy in a classroom with a strong and dominant male teacher, who praises upon doing well, and he will study well. Put a boy in a classroom with an inattentive and cold teacher, and he will scroll through Andrew Tate videos on his phone — the dominant man who sells a cohesive existential worldview with a path to beatitude.
So now: what is the reward shown in the ad for becoming a servant of Christ? There is no reward, only discomfort. Why would depicting submissive Christians motivate anyone to seek Christ? Psychologically, the ad is inexplicable. No one wants to be subservient, yet the ad tells us that [advertised social movement] is submissive and uncomfortable — whereas Jesus tells us that the humble are exalted. There is no promise of beatitude, no promise of vitality or eternal life. No promise of Sonship to the Almighty, no promise of retribution to the evildoer. No promise that the worldly interests cast aside are repaid a hundredfold by God. No other advertisement tells you that buying their product will result in you being submissive, right? The best that can be hoped for is a pitiful, “wow, these embarrassing Christians like to show their humility. I guess I dont want to execute them, but neither do I want these losers as my friends and leaders”.
The reaction that a viewer should have for a well-made advert of Christianity should be the same reaction that people had to Christ’s preaching. Amazement. Wonder. A desire for glory. “And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’” Yeah, this isn’t easy to come up with, but if I throw you 100 million dollars I’m sure you could figure something out.
Yes, Christianity is deeply patriarchal. The children do not understand the wisdom of the father, and they don't want to get their vaccines, because the needle hurts, and they do not comprehend the suffering they are being saved from. So they need to trust in the wisdom of the father, and trust that he loves them, even if they don't understand why he asks the things he asks.
Yet this is a very hard sell in a deeply individualized society that rejects patriarchy.
The problem with that metaphor is that in human experience, you are actually supposed to catch up to your father one day. Even in a patriarchal society. He will teach you all he knows, and then he will be old, weak and mind-addled (if he lives that long) while you are young, strong and wiser than you were.
I don't agree with that. The goal of becoming an adult is to fulfill your potential, which can be more, equal or less than that of your father.
In the relationship with God, one can never equal or better, but the crucial part is fulfilling your potential, which is possible.
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And from the other end of it, no understanding of God and Jesus is complete unless it includes both the power and the love. I think you are correct that sometimes, the power needs to come first. The question is whether this is one of those times.
I don't think so, no. The love and tender mercies and so on are repeatedly visible throughout the OT. It's a major theme of the Prophets and the Psalms, and it shows up repeatedly through the histories as well. It undergirds the idea of why God would send his rain to the unrighteous as well as the righteous. The basic problem is that without a personal or communal relationship, his love and tenderness is not legible, not that it is absent; his blessings and mercies are interpreted as either "just the way things are", or worse, as proof of the utility of evil.
The point of the ad is not "you should do this". The point of the ad is "this is who we are." The point seems to be to peel back some of the enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world (and some foolish Christians, it must be admitted) has worked so hard to cement. There is no ad you can make that is going to get non-Christians to adopt Christianity. Moving them toward openness to interaction with actual Christians as Christians would be a clear improvement on the status quo.
I'm skeptical. The problem is that our society is firmly post-Christian; to a first approximation, non-Christians think they know what the Gospel is and think they've already heard it.
In your original post, I think you objected to one or both of the ads showing low-class losers. Unfortunately, those are the people most willing to listen: people who understand that they are missing something, that they are not, in fact, self-sufficient and self-actualized Masters of their own Destiny. Progressivism is the successor ideology because it promises a better path, and there is no better argument against it than to point out that the path it offers is not in fact better. Those who have been failed most disastrously by Progressivism's principles are those most willing to investigate alternatives.
So:
Because it seems to me that those are the messages being sent.
Is submitting really sending that message, or would it have made more sense to show Christians doing good works. Because in the modern context, washing people's feet are not good works, but seem more like either weird virtue-signalling or a foot-fetish.
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But I don't think this will work much. I think it's pretty commonly believed that Jesus was basically a progressive, and so you see people who oppose Christianity as it exists today to it as it originally existed. Doing this doesn't help that, and doesn't help people get a broader vision of what Christianity is actually about.
If I were designing an ad for the purposes of attracting people, I'd try to show Christianity in a way that connects it to real churches with real people that actually exist. I'd try also to make it alluring in the sense of a place where a healthy, well-ordered life can be found in a community. And something to grab the attention.
I'm not sure how well that would work, and so I'd undoubtedly want to put more thought into what would be most needed and most effective if I were trying to commission something super-bowl sized, but I don't think showing "Jesus is nice and this is what Christianity should be like" will do much without also showing that this is what Christianity actually can look like if you go looking for it.
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There’s hardly a case in the Old Testament where God’s love and mercy does not hinge on recognition and submission. See how Christ came in the sign of Jonah: the mercy of God is by swallowing Jonah in a whale when God produced a storm to traumatize him for failing to heed His desire. And Jonah was only released when he “called out to the Lord”, declaring “salvation belongs to the Lord”. Jonah’s mission of mercy was to warn Ninevah of the consequences of their sin: “Yet forty days and Ninevah will be overthrown!” As a response, the Ninevans fasted, sat in ashes, called out to God, and turned from their evil ways.
You write that there is an “enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world has worked so hard to cement”, and I have to say, I dont think this is what is stopping people from being Christian to any significant degree. These people have met Christians, they have passed church signs, they have already seen ads, they have already imbibed the cool-aid Christ that acts like a hippie, they’ve seen the reels or tik toks by Christians before. They actually have an image in their mind of a much weaker and accepting Jesus, I bet. And we don’t actually see the standard irreligious American choose their social identification based on what people are nicest. They don’t chase the jobs which allow them to be nicest to those in need, they chase the job that gives them money. (There’s not a waiting list for retirement community volunteers.) They buy the product that gives them status. They listen to the self-aggrandizing, self-worshipful hymns of rappers. They want the university that gives them status. They care a lot about their hairlines and jawlines. They watch shows and model their identity based off of characters who are cool and beautiful. They are, you know, animals with instincts, like you and me. Or at least just me. The girls used to like Kim Kardashian, now they adore Taylor Swift. The boys like Andrew Tate or John Wick. Humans like high status people, not nice people. I mean, maybe Taylor Swift is nice, but she doesn’t sing songs about washing feet and loving homeless people. Her
liturgiesmusic videos are filled with status signifiers and handsome men.If there are ads that can make people watch movies for three hours, there are ads that can make people pick up some Christian literature or attend a church once. Do you think anyone is watching a movie about the nicest man in existence? The top movies of 2023 are the heroic spider man and the beautiful Barbie.
Yes
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And yet the only public messaging, including this, is about the first two.
They may lobby to ‘beat the shit’ out of money lenders, but inevitably it just means taxing the wealthy or “Wall Street” more to pay for welfare programs of dubious efficacy. The problem with Jesus is that by his present reputation (I will avoid the debate about whether it was his actual character, although the evidence is not uncompelling) he really just was a populist, he was the Bernie Sanders of his day. Sadly we can’t quantify the economic effects of kicking the money lenders out of the temple (presumably they were there for a reason, perhaps its centrality and large size improving access to and the efficiency of credit markets), because for the most part only
Bernie’sJesus’ narrative survives in that event.They were money changers. They exchanged Greek and Roman coins for Tyrian Shekels that could be accepted as Temple tax payments. He also chased out people selling animals for sacrifice.
Money lending at interest between Jews is explicitly forbidden in Mosaic law and the idea that it would be allowed at the Temple is ridiculous.
He wasn't a Bernie Sanders railing against money lenders, because he wasn't railing against money lenders, and his whole society hated them.
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Funnily enough, on my current read through Gibbon, I finally got to the last chapter of volume 1 where he goes into the beliefs and behavior of Christians in the first 100 years of their church. And he points out that most of their behavior was irredeemably antisocial and borderline suicidal. However, they also believed that the end times would literally occur in their lifetime, and the most important thing was doing whatever it took to prove their virtue before that happened. Preserving society, institutions, even their own progeny ranked distant to non-existent concerns.
In the second century AD their behavior was... moderated. Far more pragmatic.
"Borderline suicidal" I will grant, but whether their behavior was "antisocial" or their concerns "non-existent" is another matter.
As you say, "the most important thing was doing whatever it took to prove their virtue" and I think there is a tendency amongst those who've only ever experienced a prosperous liberal society to falsely conflate "virtuous" and "pro-social" behavior with being supportive polite and inoffensive. Point being that being a "good guy" does not necessarily entail being a "nice guy".
One could argue that the subsequent moderation was a product of having successfully established a reputation for virtue rather than the inverse.
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