Citizen Columns
Question
The United Church is reviewing whether its ads showing a bobble-headed Jesus was a good advertising campaign. What do you think of promoting God as "approachable" like this?
Answer
Note:This weekend is Western Easter, and many of you have family and friends who will be remembering our Lord's death and resurrection. The Citizen religion questions are compiled months in advance, however, and don't usually follow any particular calendar, which perhaps accounts for today's odd question about a bobble-headed Jesus.
I have no stake in this debate, but in all fairness the aim of the campaign was to promote thinking on spiritual and moral questions, not to promote God as "approachable" (see www.wondercafe.ca). And these clever ads do raise some serious issues for even the most secular Canadian to think about. Are we getting our family-work-life priorities mixed up? How does parenthood change ones view of the world? Have we gone too far in erasing religion from public life? The bobble-headed Jesus is really a way of asking about the borders between devotion, religious humour and blasphemy (remember the Danish cartoons?). The campaign has been ridiculed by some as proof positive that liberal Protestant Christianity is in terminal decline. But in defence I would argue that churches must connect with the deepest questions people are asking today. Who else provides this forum? So few people have such a space in their lives where life's ultimate questions can be considered thoughtfully without being dismissed or ridiculed. Churches also need to demonstrate that Christianity is a haven of spiritual freedom, and unafraid of questions.
But the bobble-headed Jesus is a long way from the message of the early church, and I worry that mere open discussion will obscure that message. "If the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?" (1 Cor 14:8). Christianity not only asks questions, it speaks with authority, from its experience of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. This is still foolishness and a stumbling block to many, but without Christ and the cross, Christianity loses both its identity and the source of the hope it has given to people for two thousand years. We need to allow for questions, but we also need to speak about our own experience, how we came to Christ and the Church, why we stay. This is the way God becomes more approachable.
Father John Jillions
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