Today's parable takes a new tack... the devil has learned that God has sent one of the greatest prophets of all time to earth and wants to make sure that her message is not heard. The devil makes her incredibly beautiful, her words incredible poetry, her voice like honey. The people swarm to her, but are so distracted by the beauty that they never hear the content.
Marshal McCluhan said that the message is the medium... and sometimes that is true... but sometimes the medium gets in the way of the message. Someone else has said that hollywood is expert at taking that which is not true and making it believable while the church is expert in taking that which is true and making it unbelievable. I'm not sure what all of that says to us, but I'm sure there is a message in there somewhere.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
OK, so I'm reading this book and finding it very thought-provoking, particularly after having just finished reading "The Case for God" by Karen Armstrong.
It seems to me that several of these parables (not necessarily this one so much) point indirectly to the irrelevance of the institutional church as it exists now in the developed world. That is, the church seems irrelevant to the extent that it is not focused on serving the needs of the poor.
I think the church for many people has become an idol, as has the Bible (echoing Peter Gomes here).
Post a Comment