Thirty years ago or so, cigarette smoking was socially
accepted. It was a cultural norm. It was considered cool, hip and edgy.
How well is it marketed today? How socially normative and culturally
embraced is smoking in 2015?
In thirty short years, Cigarettes went from a social status symbol
to social vilification.
How did it happen?
A group of savvy and highly creative individuals got
together and formed the Truth Project. An activism-centric organization
promoting a powerful new way of marketing it’s “anti smoking” messaging. It
didn’t attack smokers. It went after the EFFECTS of smoking on those that
smoked.
It didn’t attack flesh and blood. It rallied for flesh and
blood by exposing how cigarette consumption was causing disease, addiction and
death.
The Truth Project didn’t battle against flesh and blood.
They went to war FOR flesh and blood…
The church should take notice. After all, the idea
originated centuries earlier:
“For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against
the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.” Ephesians 6:12, CSB
In Not Flesh and Blood, author David W Litwin posits that
the church needs to embark on a massive Truth Project. The world is suffering
from far more than the effects of nicotine. People are hurting. Lost. Addicted.
Hopeless.
But instead of attacking people for their actions, we must
begin addressing, exposing and providing solutions for the outcomes of these
actions. Not Flesh and Blood is a powerful manifesto as to how the church can
create a cultural shift by going to battle for people, and not against them.
While the real villians remained cloaked to the masses, the church has fixed
its crosshairs on those made in God’s image. It time for a change.
Make no mistake; the church is on the losing end of the
cultural war. Its messaging has gone from being a cultural standard to a
cultural aggravation.
But just like the Truth Project, a shift in approach and an
empathetic concern for those that are suffering and affected can turn the tide
of public opinion, and offer transformation, liberation, and greater formation
of the Kingdom of Heaven on the earth.
Excerpts:
"The church needs to embark on a massive Truth Project. It need not continue to tell the culture what it is doing is wrong. It needs to unveil how what the culture is doing is dangerous. Spiritually dangerous? Certainly. But also physically, psychologically, socially, and generationally dangerous as well."
"A post-Christian culture isn’t first going to change it ways because of spiritual outcomes. Why would it? When the Christian God has been removed from nearly every aspect of the formative development years of a child, what reference does that adult have to the ways of God?"
"As the church, we’re thinking too small. Instead of recognizing the power of our worldview to the world, we too often keep it contained inside of ourselves. Rather than exposing and healing humanity from its outcomes, we continue attacking humanity for its actions. The world continues to suffer, and the only worldview capable of exposing these strategies is pushed further and further to the fringes."
"We can proclaim from the rooftops that alarming statistics of disease, addiction, alcoholism, depression and anxiety, STDs, etc., are not just the unconnected result of certain actions; they are the intent of these actions. God desires prosperity for humanity, his greatest creation. The enemy seeks to destroy that creation. He seeks to destroy that prosperity. And we can see the interplay of both desires through the outcomes of our actions."