Christianity Uncensored: Temptation Uncensored

Series: Christianity Uncensored
Message #1: Temptation Uncensored
By: Jud Wilhite



Do you ever get tired of the spin? Do you ever feel like everywhere you go and everywhere you look somebody is trying to sell you something? They are trying to spin something one way. You are never getting the full story. Whether it’s media or politics, to them trying to sell you Thompson’s Individual Stringettes, to a brand new vacuum cleaner for $19.99 and you’ll never have to get carpet again in your life. You just feel like there is spin everywhere.



It even starts to get down to the language that we use. John Ortberg has noted how our language has changed a little bit over the last several years. For instance, when a company fires people now they no longer say, “You’re fired.” That would sound way too harsh. They no longer “down size” because that seems negative. Companies are now calling it “right sizing.” We are “right sizing” the whole thing. Guys are no longer “bald,” they are “follicly challenged” or “comb free” as one guy said. It’s no longer “road kill” – it’s “maladaptive compressed life forms,” or in some states in America that will remain unnamed, “road kill” is dinner. It’s no longer “used cars”– now it’s “pre-owned certified vehicles.” Somebody pre-owned it for you. They broke it in for you. It’s not really used. It affects our language.



I was reading last week about Ron Zeigler. He’s the White House Press Secretary during the Vietnam era. In the midst of this whole Vietnam press secretary thing he goes up and interacts with the reporters. He tells a statement that’s proved completely false that night. He comes back up the next day and they ask him about the statement he said, that was obviously a lie. He said, “That statement from yesterday is no longer operative.” I thought that was cool. That’s all you have to say anymore, “That’s no longer operative.” This is the statement for today. Can you imagine rolling that statement out to your spouse? You come home. You said you’d be home at 6:30 and now it’s 7:45. You didn’t call. What happened? Well, honey, those statements yesterday are no longer operative. When your kid says he’s doing great in school and he’s getting great grades and his teachers love him – then report cards come and he’s failing everything. You say, “What are you doing?” “Well mom, dad- those statements were no longer operative today.” We put this little spin on everything.



We see it on film and television as well. Reality TV – the big craze. Yet reality TV isn’t really reality TV. It’s still shot, edited, and spliced up to make a point and to get the basic themes of a story across. You can do an amazing amount with editing. We live in a culture where everything is edited, airbrushed, and cleaned up. You can do a lot with it. We took our video team and they took the feel good movie of the 1990s, Forrest Gump, and they went in to see what they could do if they created a trailer about Forrest Gump without changing any of the actual video footage. We just spliced it together in a different way. Here is what they came up with.



(VIDEO)



Okay, that’s spooky, isn’t it? That’s what a little background music, editing, and a new voice over can do for you. It’s amazing the kind of things that editing can actually do.



Do you ever just get tired of the spin? Do you ever