I fear I may have been a tad too generous in thinking there might’ve been a more thoughtful purpose to the Bible Society’s Jesus: All About Life advertising campaign than prosletysing… A Bible Society brochure has cleared up all the question marks.
From the brochure:
The ‘Jesus. All About Life’ campaign is all about helping you understand what Jesus said about what he called ‘the abundant life’ or ‘life to the max.’ Many people find this hard to accept because they think that being a Christian means you have to stop doing anything you enjoy and instead walk around being boring and dull.
You think so? Really? The primary reason that people opt for a non-Christian religious practice (or no religious practice) is because they’re worried about walking “around being bored and dull”? You don’t think belief or life experience might factor into this equation?
[ad#adsense250]That there was human life before Jesus, that there were other religious traditions before and after Christianity, that there were (as Tom Harpur noted) “Christ figures [plural] and Christ communities and many Christianities” are of no consequence here. That is unsurprising; uncertainities do not create converts, especially not within people who base their religious orientation on its proximity to excitement and ‘life to the max.’
The trick is to reframe the whole experience. You’re not being ‘converted’ rather you’re discovering how to experience ‘an abundant life.’ The three steps towards this process involve accepting Jesus (as “not just another spiritual option…” but as God), asking (specifically about the death and ressurrection of Jesus and atonement), and finally changing (converting?)…
Increasingly when I approach the subject of religion I am noticing two distinct camps of people. Those that have a very visceral experience of their religious practice, they tend to talk in expressions that embody and celebrate their belief. They might exclaim, “God is love!” or “Jesus loves me” and feel loved. Often these people don’t have a particularly sophisticated theology, and you could probably argue that they don’t need one. (I think from the earlier remark about walking ‘around being boring and dull’ it is safe to assume that these are the kind of people being targeted by this campaign.) Then there are other people who consider religious ideas as ideas, and consider them in a context much larger than their own religious tradition. I don’t particularly understand how one could commit to a religion without a thoughtful discourse about revelation, particularly, and atonement. Because really religion isn’t about morality necessarily, it is about the divine and the mysterious – the mysterium tremendum, it is about the nature and existence of God and whether that force reveals itself and interacts with humanity or not. And what, if any, implications that might have for us as a species. So how do you know God? Through the religious texts, through the relevations he made through individuals? How do you evaluate religious texts? Which prophets are the ‘true’ prophets; and which are mouthpieces for the devil, or suffering from mental illness? Which God(s) are the true one(s) and which the ‘false’ idols? But most importantly consider your own process; how did you come to know these things? How did you decide? What’s your method?
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Mate, you’re missing the point. Being involved in Christianity means being one step closer to driving a V8 with that slogan on its side. Why aren’t you at church already?