Once upon a time, companies made products. Your local weaver gained a reputation for excellence, because you saw her clothes day after day on your aunt and your neighbor and your classmate, and you knew they were worthwhile. Population grew, industry had a revolution, and ever-growing companies had to find ways to convince people they didn’t know that their products were worth purchasing.
Along the way, someone had a stroke of genius, a light bulb moment. If I pay someone who has earned many people’s trust to say that my company’s products are good, I can sell a lot more products. I imagine that brilliant idea could have been a tough sell to that first bean-counting accountant. (You want me to spend money on someone who has nothing to do with our production? Huh?) But over time, it’s been proven to be cost effective. I pay x dollars to the pitch man, I receive y dollars in sales. The celebrity endorser served the company. The parasite latched on.
Now we have 15 year old basketball phenoms already thinking about their product endorsement plans. The celebrity has grown bigger than the products they are pitching, and something about our entire system has gone askew. More and more dollars go to marketing, less and less to producing actual products.
The pinnacle of role reversal came last week, as Nike rolled out an ad to resurrect the image of their billion dollar, disgraced pitch man, Tiger Woods.
Think about this for a minute. Nike, a company that makes shoes and golf clubs (among other things), developed, filmed, and paid for an ad solely designed to help the image of Tiger Woods. The company is supporting the endorser. Host serving parasite. Money that could have made shoes instead goes to helping Tiger’s image.
They have no choice. They have entire brands with Tiger’s name. Rather than the product being king and the celebrity propping it up, the celebrity has made the product and given it all its value. So Nike must save the celebrity.
Does anybody else think this is scary? This is the self-destruction to which our celebrity culture has been heading for quite some time.
On March 21, I went back to the first two chapters of Job. One of the biggest questions that comes from Job we haven’t addressed until now. What kind of God lets this kind of undeserved suffering to occur? Why would I serve a God like that? Here’s a link to how I think about some of those questions.
On March 14, I looked at what God finally said to Job. My first reaction was that I didn’t particularly like what God said-but the key truth is that God DID show up! I finished with a challenge. If you’ve never experienced God showing up in your life, have you joined Job in whining, complaining, kicking, screaming, demanding that God show up? Here’s a link.
Got a little behind on posting. On March 7, I looked at how Job’s friends responded to Job. What got them in trouble? How can we avoid the same mistakes when we have friends who are suffering? Here’s the link.
This past Sunday, I started a series on the book of Job. This is a difficult book, and I imagine I’ll be working hard to script these out…so I will probably be able to post each of these. I’m always interested in your comments and feedback.
This one is the introduction to the book, and focuses on the very first chapter of the book. Here’s a link…
There have been many times when I have gazed across the table at gray hair, at a face lined with care and years, and heard a variation of the following: “I pray for our country. I pray for our church. I can’t believe how things have changed, and can only hope that Jesus returns soon.” The recent history of our country is seen as a downward, slippery slope toward the abyss of hell.
I’ve been trying to remember the specifics that are given as evidence for this slide. There are some I agree with: the cheapening of the meaning of marriage; the reality that the average person sitting in a church today does not read her bible with the regularity of someone sitting in a church in the 1950′s; a culture of sensuality that mocks modesty and eschews any sense of boundary or discipline in its expression.
There are some I can’t claim as my own: the passionate pejoratives launched at piercings; the lack of perfunctory prayer in schools; the disdain launched at environmentalists, drums in worship, or at “soft” preachers who overemphasize the love of God.
Is my argument with the specifics, or is my argument with the assessment of the trajectory?
Tonight I listened to another graying man, his face lined with care and with years…almost 80 years, in fact. The surprise was hearing how he saw the world very differently. “This is the high point of my life. These are the best years of my life.”
And when you think of John Perkins’ life…son of a share cropper, denied rights and dignity as an African American growing up in Mississippi, older brother murdered by someone who was supposed to enforce the law, jailed for his protesting for civil rights…when you think of his life then, and his life now, there is no denying that as bad as the world is now, an African American is going to paint a different trajectory for our country. They may not like it now, but there is no nostalgia to turn back the hands of time.
I still haven’t answered for myself which trajectory I believe the world is on. But Dr. Perkins’ words tonight remind me that it’s a privilege to have lived a life that is able to complain about tattoos and music in church.
May we work for justice. May we join God’s work in the world. It may mean that today’s oppressed people, in the next generation, might have the freedom to complain about trivial things, too. But I’m willing to take that risk.
In the last 24 hours, I have had deep conversations with 5 different people, and intriguing online interactions with 3 more. Deeply grateful.
Not that anyone asked, or that I have any qualifications to make such decisions, but if I were the Newberg High track coach, I would put Maddie and MK in the 400, Emily and MK in the 800, Emily and Talli in the 1500, and Talli and Anna in the 3000.
I have yet to figure out why my most hectic and tiring days are sometimes also the days with the most explosions of ideas.
Compartmentalization. We do too much of it.
How might I do a better job of naming where each individual “thing” at church fits into the overarching whole, without becoming hugely guilty of the aforementioned compartmentalization?
I did not model good self talk tonight at one particular point, and I was overheard. Drat.
My respect for a particular college student grew today.
Maybe tomorrow I will tackle writing prompt #2. But now to bed.
They were doing it again, chugging down the same track they had a thousand times before. Not really a train track… more like the track worn in their avocado green shag carpet, the path beaten down between the bedroom and the couch in the living room. Flattened by repeated use.
He had opened the first salvo, triggered by her bags of stuff on the kitchen table. First, his sigh; then her indignant “What?”; then his exasperated “Nothing.” And now…now it was her turn to say, “Well it must be something…”
But somehow, she just wasn’t in the mood today. Not in the mood for him to blast her “free-spending shopaholism”, not in the mood to hit back about his cheapskate ways that were the reason they still had worn out shag carpet, among other things. Who else still had a microwave with a dial instead of a keypad? How many other wives started their car with a screwdriver, and prayed that there wouldn’t be rain, since the windshield wiper was held on with twist ties?
No wonder she found comfort at the mall.
Breaking away from their well-worn script brought interesting results this time. His face lost its exasperation and softened with a smile. “I took care of dinner tonight,” he said.
Intriguing. She could see he thought of this as a grand gesture, prepared perhaps as his crowning argument against his perpetual penny-pinching. As he never cooked, this surprisingly must have meant he was going to take her to dinner. But wait. He hadn’t said, “I’m taking you to dinner;” he’d said, “I took care of dinner tonight.” What exactly did that-
Ding Dong.
Unbelievable. Delivery. What a man she had married, a real sweep-you-off-your-feet Romeo. Chinese, she guessed, or…
“Pasquale’s Pizza. Here’s your order.”
“Just a minute,” he said, “let me get the coupon.”
Of course he has a coupon, she thought.
He grinned at her as he passed, grabbed the coupon for a $13.99 large pizza, and handed the delivery girl a $10 and a $5. She rolled her eyes and turned to go.
My husband, she thought; last of the big tippers.
“Ahem,” he said. The delivery girl turned, her nose ring glinting in the porch light. “My change?” he said.
“You…you actually want the dollar back?”
“My change is $1.01, with the coupon.”
The delivery girl looked at him, looked at his wife, first in shock, then, yes, there’s no other word for it…she looked at his wife with pity. A crisp one dollar bill changed hands, and the delivery girl left. She texted three people before she left the driveway… “ur nt gonna believe dis”.
The train was leaving the station after all.
“You couldn’t let her keep one dollar? One dollar? You stiff her completely on a tip for one dollar?!? I cannot fathom what in the world you think in that head of yours. I have never met ANYONE like-“
“That’s what’s wrong with you! You throw money around like no one I’ve ever seen. Do these bags of crap really make you feel better? Do they?”
“WHO IS SO CHEAP THEY ASK SOME PIERCED TEENAGE DELIVERY DRIVER FOR A DOLLAR IN CHANGE? How can you do that and live with yourself?”
He grabbed the ends of the dollar bill, pulling them apart quickly, making a snapping sound. “It’s MY dollar! I’m careful with my money! Once you get your hands on it, it’ll be gone.”
And now that you have YOUR hands on it, she thought, who knows if it will ever see the light of day again?
April 12, 2010 
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