Christianity lite (part 2)

Like I said, marketing messages generally emphasize the important attributes of a product and de-emphasize the unimportant attributes -- important being defined as the level of appeal to the target audience. The purpose of marketing is to increase audience receptivity.

Do Christians have a desire for people to be receptive to God's message? They most certainly do.

Are they at liberty to put a marketing "spin" on the message in order to achieve that receptivity? I think the answer to that is no. (The issue of whether "spinning" is actually what is occurring will be tackled in future posts.)

For anyone who isn't so sure, consider whether we have any examples of God using anything like marketing techniques to enhance the appeal of His message in Scripture. From what I see, the pattern is this: a message is delivered -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- and full responsibility for rejecting it is given to the listener. And even in Jesus' ministry, rejection was probably the most common response. Jesus didn't pad His message for appeal. Neither did the prophets. (Yet we mustn't ignore the fact that, some people still listened.) Far from predicting good PR, Jesus warned His disciples that their message -- the same as His -- would incite hatred toward them (Matt. 10:24,25, Luke 6:22,23, Mark 13:13) and that few would be receptive to it (Matt. 7:13,14).

There is no doubt marketing "spin" works. It can dramatically increase receptivity to a message. For pragmatic reasons, the appeal for Christians to utilize such techniques is understandable. But it increases receptivity because it alters the message. It makes it out of balance. And I think I have good reason to question the idea that God has authorized us to alter His message. (Has God ever asked us to make His message more appealing than it already is coming from His mouth??)

It seems to me, editing God's message should, on its face, be easily recognizable as improper. The principle is addressed in Revelation 22: 18, 19:

“I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.”

In my next post, I will examine an example of what I believe is the Christian message being changed -- by a very high profile Christian minister in fact -- in order to solicit a more positive response. (At least that's my guess as to his motivation; I don't suspect this particular minister isn't actually orthodox in his beliefs.)