Damn the Facts, The Enemy is Nigh!
As an unofficial sequel to my post on the theme of fear underlying the patriotic celebration at Sunday's 4th of July service at our church, today's post is on a popular video which was shown at yesterday's service (July 11th) as a part of Soul-Winning Sunday. Although the guest pastor only showed the first 2 minutes of the video (where they mentioned Islamic Immigration) it rattled me to my core. I wasn't rattled because I had considered converting to Islam a few years ago but because I knew exactly where the film was going (In fact I had recognized the film 30 seconds into the presentation.).
This video has received over 12 million views since it's posting over a year ago. Since then there have been several sites, including good ole' Snopes.com, which have covered the erroneous and exaggerated statistics presented in the film. I'm not a statistician but a lot of those numbers seem abnormally high. BBC radio did a report on this video last year debunking some of the inflated statistics on their More or Less programme.
The guest pastor at our church stopped the film 2 minutes in and invited the congregation to view the rest of it during the evening service. Of course I highly doubt he would correct the misconceptions if someone were to bring it to his attention (which I plan to). Why? Because it reinforces their fear of the Other and makes for good propaganda (there was a massive crowd at the altar call). I have no problem with spreading the gospel but it should be done without fear tactics. The Good News is no longer good when it lacks love. When the Good News is used to distinguish Us vs. Them the gospel becomes a battle cry rather than a welcoming embrace.
New Year. Final Post.
10 years ago
2 comments:
Prepare to be the recipient of anger - which is usually the case when you contradict someone's irrationality.
I've written the David Wood Ministries a respectful email yesterday afternoon and I'm patiently awaiting their response. It was short but all I asked was that they research their material before using it as propaganda to win souls. I'm fine with them spreading the gospel but not with fear propaganda (although, the entire concept of Hell is fear propaganda so I guess my efforts may be useless). I'll post the response if and when I receive one.
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