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Presenter: Dick Stetler – November 21,
2021 The simplest way to define truthful advertising
that works is to notice that often it has nothing to do with the
professional advertising industry.
The best advertising is word-of-mouth.
Recently, I had the pleasure of encountering a
mature doe and her two fawns in our back yard.
A number of people in our community encounter deer on their
property and they do not consider the experience as a pleasant encounter.
Deer are hungry and they enjoy dining on the expensive shubs of our
neighbors. People go to great lengths to stop this practice
but none of the deer repellents appear to work. Neighbors have built
high fences and used all kinds of contraptions that have constantly
moving parts driven by wind currents.
The deer are not fooled.
Often the deer feed under the cover of darkness. However, our son discovered a product that works
one hundred percent of the time.
We still have deer but they come for the plentiful crop of acorns
this year and they leave our shrubs and plants alone.
The name of this product is
Bobbex. To my knowledge, the news of this product has not spread by
advertising. Few people
recognize the name because its success may be spreading only by
satisfied customers. We often wonder how the teachings of Jesus spread
all over the world when he wrote nothing.
Believers through the centuries have indicated that there is
only one way this could have happened.
The faithful credit the Holy Spirit.
Has it ever occurred to believers that God may have had nothing
to do with the spread and the eventual publishing of Jesus’ teachings in
countless languages? How could this be? The answer is that what Jesus
taught really works. Word
of mouth is the best advertisement there could be.
An interesting aspect about this
form of advertising is that it is not found in verbal testimonies.
People cannot trust the verbal swagger of someone proudly
announcing, “I am a born-again Christian.”
When people have to announce to
someone why they are saved, they often miss the mark.
Others may not see them as they see themselves. The come to Jesus invitations by evangelists
may be false advertising. Jesus’ teachings work because of the choices
people are making to live those teaching. Giving your heart to Jesus
sounds wonderful but what are those words asking believers to do?
Teaching ourselves to be kind, compassionate, and
forgiving heals our warts, our spirits, how we act, the words we choose
when we speak, and how we have risen from the numerous pitfalls that
come with the territory of living in this world.
How people live and the attitudes they display are more
recognizable by others than what people say.
Many of us recognize the song, “They will know we are Christians
by our love, by our love, they will know we are Christians by our love.”
(John 13:35) When Jesus told Pilate that his Kingdom is
not of this world, he said everything he needed to say. There were three
political parties in Jesus’ world. The Pharisees who obeyed
faithfully the Laws of Moses, the Sadducees, who were the
business tycoons and well-connected to people in government, and the
Essenes, who became like monks who separated themselves from the
society where all others face daily temptations.
Jesus did not belong to any of them.
Jesus lived a humble life of quiet piety, but he
walked among everyday people as a walking advertisement of what the
lives of others could become after they awaken to the presence of their
inner world. Devotees pointed to
the consequences of taking total responsibility for how they live.
They did not need God, the Father, the Holy Spirit, nor Jesus to
live their lives for them. God will not intervene in anyone’s life.
Very few people believe or understand this.
Often divine intervention is the subject of prayers.
This is our time to show up in all settings and be the
spirit-beings that we are.
Jesus modeled for his listeners how to live his message rather
than their seemingly relentless search for a savior.
Yes, it is difficult to forgive.
Yes, it is a challenge to be kind to people who have not
discovered their ability to do so. However,
what is the alternative? Do
we allow others to kindle our defensive responses thus making us to
become like they choose to be?
It is perfectly normal to be vulnerable and hurt by others.
Remember, we are in a training program by coming to earth.
How else can we practice turning the other cheek until there is a
deep hurt causing us to do so? Jesus
died on the cross with words of forgiveness on his lips. The reality is
that he did not die. None
of us do. All that we leave
behind is our physical form. Jesus was teaching people what his listeners are
capable of doing when the absolute worst drama enters their experience.
There is no justice in this
world. Frequently our
best teachers are those in power who demonstrate total spiritual
blindness. Are they really the winners they believe they are? The Romans and the elitist Jews had done their
worst to Jesus and yet, they could not break his will to express
forgiveness toward them. The names of those Romans and elitists
are lost to history, but not the name of Jesus.
Did his closest disciples personalize his teachings?
They did not. Fear
caused them to repeatedly miss the mark. (Luke 9:54) (Matthew 26:74) What Jesus was teaching works all the time when
people put their love in motion. What
people thought decades later after Jesus’ death, placed barriers to
understanding what Jesus did on the cross.
They began to assign weird theologies for the meaning of
the crucifixion of Jesus.
The apostle Paul using his brilliant mind, provided an answer as to why
God allowed Jesus to die in such a horrible fashion.
Again, God does not intervene in anyone’s life.
Paul reasoned that Jesus was the sacrificial lamb that
took away the sins of the world. (Romans 5:8) Really?
Did Jesus ever teach such reasoning? Was God really involved in any way to save Jews and
Gentiles because of Jesus’ crucifixion?
(I Corinthians 15:3) If the crucifixion was necessary for our
salvation, Jesus would have made his self-sacrifice a primary teaching.
He did not. Such a teaching was not a growth from The Golden Rule, the
source of Jesus’ lessons for living. Because Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but thine be
done,” (Matthew 26:39) he sounds as though he left his life or death up
to God. Would God do such a thing?
Ever since the Bible was written, theologians have tried to make
sense of linking salvation to Jesus’ crucifixion.
None of them have been
convincing. Jesus stated his purpose in life very clearly when he said,
“I have come into this world for one purpose, to teach people the
truth of how to live their lives.” (John 18:17) The reason Jesus was murdered was because the
Jewish elitists were screaming for his crucifixion.
Jesus submitted to the inevitable and died between two thieves.
He was still teaching, “Father, forgive them, they know not what
they do.” (Luke 23:34)
There was no need for weird theology to develop.
He was teaching how far people can go with forgiveness.
We only stumble through life because of our lack of
understanding. The
treasures within everyone remain undisturbed by most because people
never accessed them. They remain a victim of self-betrayal. As
Shen-hui once wrote, “The true seeing is when there is no seeing.”
For Jesus, forgiveness was never needed because he was never
offended by human frailties. He had come to recognize that he could only
point to a different path of responses for his listeners towards those
who have chosen to live in this world. We do not want to buy Bobbex and forget to
apply it to our shrubs.
It’s one thing to memorize all of Jesus’ teachings and quite another to
make them visible in our words, thoughts, and activities.
Jesus was never looking for justice in a world that can never
give it. He was living what works when faced with the lack of fairness
and justice. In spite of all the barriers to loving, Jesus said
repeatedly, “Follow me.” |