THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

May 10, 2003

Have you ever been to a movie where you felt yourself responding emotionally and you could not figure out why? You did not like or relate to the characters much. Those same characters were developed like a bad Polaroid. The plot was minimal and connected by the weakest of threads. The movie itself was edited with a chainsaw. And yet, at the proper moment you felt that well of emotion. If you have experienced this chances are good you were watching a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

Chances are even better you were being suckered. You see, in movies like this your emotional response is not genuine. The people making the movie have simply learned how to push the right buttons to elicit that response. The lighting is right, the music properly swells, and the camera angle tells your eye you are in the middle of a situation that demands a specific emotion. You my friend are being grossly and profitably manipulated.

Manipulation happens every day in our lives. Such manipulation is the sole purpose of commercials and advertising, and we have gotten very good at those things. Roller coasters, through the impingement of g-forces, manipulate us into thinking we are going to die, thus producing an excessive release of adrenaline and you feel invigorated. Children use such manipulation everyday. You know when they get a little older and cry on cue; they are attempting to manipulate the protective response in a parent that will remove the unpleasantness from the child’s life. When my wife and I oversleep our cat sits at the door and makes a sound that makes us feel like she is going to die if we do not instantly arise and feed her – emotional manipulation.

Such manipulation is a powerful, powerful thing. By artificially inducing certain emotions in people we can elicit from them behaviors that they might otherwise never exhibit. A good fright has been known to reduce the manliest of men to screaming like a little girl. As with all things, this power can be used for good, it can be used benignly, or it can be used for evil. As with most things powerful, it is the circumstances that dictate whether doing something is good or bad.

I think it is fair to say that much of what defines our current media era is learning how to do this sort of emotional manipulation. As I said before, the advertising industry, in its many forms, is devoted to such manipulation. The entertainment industry, which is really just a front for the advertising industry, is likewise dedicated to such manipulation. We have in fact gotten so good at it, that as I started writing about, we can make a movie poorly acted, with characters you hate and no plot line, and still you will cry at the end. (Think "Con Air")

The church, needless to say, has attempted to capitalize on this new and powerful force. I must confess that I was at the forefront of such efforts. In Young Life, we were the masters of it. We choose the pacing and volume and lyrical content of songs precisely to control the crowd and focus them on the message. Talks were finally crafted pieces of oratory designed to first elicit attention, then create an emotional connection with the listener, and finally take that listener where the speaker wanted them to go. We talked about how to do these things. We trained how to do these things. We made people say "YES!" to Jesus this way.

Now, almost all those that said ‘YES!" to Jesus as a result of that manipulation, have forgotten that commitment. Oh, they are nice enough people, upstanding well-behaved citizens, and some of them, absent that influence might not be so nice; but devoted disciples of Jesus Christ in large part they are not.

You see, there are some hallmarks of such emotional manipulation – the primary being that its effects are fleeting. A friend of mine once said that he remembered that he bought a ticket to see "Attack of the Clones" but forgot the movie as soon as it was over. If you watch that movie again you will see why. The movie does all the ‘right’ things to elicit an emotional response from you, but it is so disjointed and you connect so little with the characters that once the emotional stimulus is removed, the emotion fades, and leaves not a trace. In order for you to recall that emotion, there must be a more solid memory attached to it.

Such movies are like loveless sex – it feels good while it lasts, and then it is over and gone.

One of the reasons I "failed" as a Young Life staff person is that as I grew older I grew less and less willing to manipulate people into a response to Jesus, and grew more and more desirous of introducing them to a genuine relationship with Him. To put a crude analogy on it, I did not want to pimp for Jesus; I wanted to be His matchmaker.

As I have written about in this space many times, being a Christian is a broad and complex thing. It should saturate every aspect of our being and activity. It is emotional, but it is not an emotion. It changes my behavior, but it is far more than an act. Being a Christian is a transformation, a re-creation. Jesus tears us down so that He can completely rebuild us into something we never dreamed possible. It starts by saying "YES!" to Jesus, but it ends in a place so marvelous and so unexpected, and so unimaginable as to be beyond description.

When we manipulate people into a positive response to Jesus, we may get them to take the first step of the journey, but we have also prevented them from fully understanding it is a journey to a foreign land, and not just a trip to the corner store. That is why, so often, when the extent of the journey is revealed to them they turn around and head back to shore before it is too late, as so many that I worked with in Young Life have.

To continue with my cruder analogy, imagine a brothel, with all the usual brothel appeal. However, this is a brothel with a difference. Once you step inside, you find that the price of what you came in looking for is that you have to marry the woman, right then. I bet a lot of customers would turn around and walk back out the door. They came in looking for a thrill, instead they get a life time commitment.

So it is when we emotionally manipulate people into responding to Jesus. We are selling something cheap and thrilling and delivering something expensive and often difficult.

We, of course, approach selling Christianity in this way for the same reasons advertising goes this way – it produces excellent short-term results. That’s fine for a balance sheet, but when the stakes are someone’s eternal life, we are definitely talking long term outlook here.

We have simply got to find a better way to do this. I think this for two reasons. The first is that it is somewhat disingenuous to "sell" Christianity in this manner. It may not rise all the way to the level of a lie, but it certainly is telling only part of the story. Secondly, and far more importantly, people who have experienced this are likely never to look into Christianity again, or work to limit Christianity to just those first steps. This later option is what I think is happening in many churches.

I do not pretend to know how God will judge us for pursuing the "Christianity Lite." However, I am fairly certain it will not be met with a simple "Attaboy."

With Love,