revolve

Remember discussion about the TNIV and whether it was worthwhile? As makeovers of the Bible go, that was mild. Check out Revolve!

I've been giving this way more thought than it deserves, and what it's boiling down to for me is the question of whether this is marketing or presentation.
I'm all for presenting timeless truths in a ways that can be understood by each generation. That's why I prefer churches that use contemporary services, with modern music, dramas, video clips and so on. They're using popular artistic expressions as a way to engage the people of their target generation with the gospel. In a good church that practices these things, the substance is rich, the meaning is real, and the timeless stories the Bible contains about jealousy, fratricide, love, sacrifice, resentment and betrayal, and most of all redemption gain new resonance with an audience that might never hear or understand these things otherwise.

Without a doubt we could do some things to present the Bible better.

The problem for me is when we come into marketing. Marketing is generally as phony as a three-dollar bill and, when done this way, has about as much currency with Gen X as that bill. (I'll let members of Gen Y and subsequent generations say for certain what works for them.)

We're past the point with our culture that celebrity endorsements and attractive faces will sell Bibles. That comes across as pure hokum because everybody knows the Bible isn't cool. About the only people who are going to buy these Bibles are Christian teens who want to be be cool within Christian circles. Maybe my imagination is too small, but I don't see this topping bestseller lists.

Marketing like this, while it is well intentioned, is not the way Christ models for us to draw people to God. He also met people where they were at, but in a decidedly personal, nonmarketing way. He never acted cool, and when you get down to it, the gospel is as fundamentally uncool as you can get. It tells us things like this: "Sell all you have and give it to the poor, and then follow me." Or: "If you have two cloaks, give to the one who has none." Or: "Don't resist an evil person; if he sues you for your tunic, give him your shirt also; and if he strikes you on one cheek, turn and offer him your other one also."

It's about not trying to control everything that comes your way, and accepting that some really unfair sh*t happens from time to time.

Last year around this time, you may recall I was in a pretty desparate situation. My son -- I still think of him that way, even though he wasn't born to me -- was about to be taken away from me and returned to the people who he had been born to.

A well-connected politician who knew the situation offered to intervene. Although he couldn't guarantee anything, he seemed to feel it was pretty certain that if he were to step in, Isaac would not return to his biological parents. Other colleagues of mine had ideas on how I could use media leverage or other connections to stop Isaac from heading back into an abusively neglectful situation.

Would Isaac have stayed if I had put up a legal fight and let the politicians who offered to do something to keep him here? Maybe. And you could even argue that I would have been saving him from the heartache of what's happened to him since, not to mention the grief it caused Evangeline when he moved out.

That's not the way of the Cross, though. The way Christ teaches and models for us lies not in fighting tooth and nail to protect our rights or to keep others from hurting us, but in going to the Father in prayer, and sometimes in just dying.

That's a religion for TOTAL LOSERS. Oddly enough, when we make that our practice, that does a lot more to draw people in than marketing the Bible and its inner beauty strategies probably ever will.