“Real Men” ad campaign fails to address real issues.
Before I get into this, one might wonder — as my own wife did — Why does Patrick care enough about this to blog about it? Well, the truth is, this article could have been a about any number of charities, good causes, or “let’s eradicate problem x” campaigns going on in the world. It just so happened that I was up earlier today, and caught an interview on CNN, and it struck me as a particularly good example to use in my blog.
The interview I happened to see was Piers Morgan talking to Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher about their video ad campaign, “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls.” If you are not familiar with this, visit their YouTube channel to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Go ahead, watch one or two right now. I’ll be here when you get back.
Let me begin by saying I admire and respect what they are trying to accomplish. Obviously, sex trafficking is a deplorable practice, and any efforts to stop it should be applauded and encouraged. Unfortunately, I’m not sure exactly what to applaud about their campaign, because it’s not super clear what they plan to do.
Don’t take my word for it. Visit the Foundation’s main site, and you will see a link for the “Action Center,” which one would assume is “the plan.” Step #1 (as in, the first thing you can do “to end child sex slavery”; see picture on the left) is to promote the video ads. I understand that these ads are meant to raise awareness, but as you will see, the ads themselves do very little toward that end.
So here’s the formula used in the video campaign: They try to use humor to talk about something serious. They get big-name, male celebrities to do mildly funny, stereotypical “manly” stuff (ironing a grilled cheese sandwich, punching a robot, buying new socks instead of washing), and then, in a complete non sequitur, tack on “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls,” followed by a shot of someone who is a real man (man’s photo) or prefers real men (woman’s photo), while some glamorous, big-name, female celebrity tacks on one last, guilt-ridden, peer-pressure tactic, “So and so is a real man, are you?”
Problem #1 – They aren’t really funny. Most, if not all the gimmicks have been done before (I mean, grilled cheese on an ironing board goes back to “Benny and Joon,” when people were still trying to figure out if they liked Johnny Depp or not, possibly earlier); and the ones that haven’t (or at least I wasn’t familiar with) are just plain odd: “Real Men are Distrustful of Robots”? What does that even mean? This, in itself, isn’t a huge problem, but it adds to the childish feel of the whole campaign.
Problem #2 – Because of the humor above, it appears that the ads aren’t serious. It feels like Kutcher is going to jump out any moment and say to the whole world, “Ha! You’ve been punked!” I’m not suggesting they aren’t being sincere, I’m saying that’s the vibe they give off. It is really hard to take their very serious subject very seriously because it doesn’t seem like they do.
Problem #3 – Do they really expect such a transparent peer pressure tactic to work? “David Spade is a real man…are you?” Honestly, people. When you take on something like sex slavery, you aren’t dealing with people that are sitting on the fence, guilt-ridden, and ready to cave in and repent because Jessica Biel wants them to be real men. Anyone that fits that description isn’t your real problem. The seasoned offenders, the predators and pimps, etc., already think they are real men by doing what they are doing; they derive their sense of manliness through the domination and degradation of others for money. Do they really expect a guy making $150,000-$200,000 a year from sex slavery is going to be swayed by a sort-of funny commercial with big-name celebs to sell it?
Problem #4 – Here’s the big problem: These ads fail to address the root of the issue. They are aimed at the end-user, the buyer, telling them they need to be “real men” and stop doing what they are doing. Am I wrong in thinking that by the time these kids are facing a buyer, quite a number of men (and women) have failed in their responsibilities towards these kids? This is why this campaign is so crucially wrong-headed.
Take one step away from the buyer, and you have a man who shouldn’t be selling girls;
one more step and you have a girl that shouldn’t even have access to this seedy underside of society;
another step and you have a family that should have protected and guarded that child against that underworld;
take one more step and you have men and women who are bringing children into the world with no plan to take responsibility for raising and protecting them;
yet another step back will reveal a society that teaches that responsible sex is wearing protection and making sure your partner is “the right one,” but not emphasizing true responsibility or morality.
This campaign simply doesn’t address those key issues. Their action plan, as I mentioned above, starts with promoting the videos. Step two is a rather vague goal: “end child sex slavery on the internet.” But of the three steps, it’s the only useful one in that talks about reporting sites that lead to human trafficking. Step three — get this — is “buy a t-shirt.” Wha–? I’m going to stop human trafficking by buying clothing? I realize it’s a fund-raiser, but it is raising funds for a foundation whose clear goals are muddied by an unclear plan.
Again, why do I even care about this? And why should you?
I’ll bottom-line it: I care because this is yet another glaring example of how non-biblical solutions to human problems fail to address root issues. Oh, I’m not doubting that Kutcher and Moore, with their millions of fans, will raise huge amounts of money, and that they will achieve a certain amount of good from this. But I have no doubt that the fundamental issue: human immorality, or sin, will not be addressed in a way that will bring lasting change.
We need to promote biblical teaching:
That establishes solid, healthy, companionship, including both physical and emotional intimacy, within a lifelong covenant called marriage. This teaches a healthy, godly view of sex, within the bounds God established. It leaves no ambiguity about whether there is an age at which prostitution becomes an acceptable life choice (as Ashton Kutcher clearly said to Piers Morgan).
That establishes the biblical roles of men and women, and teaches them how to be parents who recognize and own up to the full responsibility of raising and nurturing their children, which includes guarding their eyes, ears, hearts and minds from the evil that seeks to prey on them. This will also guard these children against becoming predators later themselves.
That establishes that true life change can and will only happen when one thing is true: when, through a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, our hearts are transformed to know and be in fellowship with our Creator God. When this happens, and only when this happens, we will see predators abandoning their hunt, prostitutes leaving the streets, pimps giving up their trade, and all of them experiencing the restoration and healing that only the God who created our souls can offer.
I don’t expect real answers from the likes of Kutcher and Moore. Anyone that has followed their acting careers will surmise that their moral compass is as iffy as Jack Sparrow’s (today must be a Depp day). But if you’re going to try to make lasting change, I would expect even them to come up with something better than “promote the ads, block the sites, buy a t-shirt.”
I sincerely hope that this foundation grows into something more productive, but I fear this is yet another campaign that treats symptoms and ignores the real disease. The cancer is sin. Sex trafficking is just an ugly sore on the surface. No amount of funny footage will make it go away; and a t-shirt won’t cover it for long.
Truly Happy People
(Leia este post em português.)
So many people want to be happy. Society will tell you a number of ways you can be truly happy, often with conflicting messages. One glaring example of this conflict is how many messages we read or hear about doing your own thing; you are the key to your own happiness; your way, right away, and other equally individualistic (selfish) messages; while at the same time we read or hear how much we need each other for things to really work. We can see the undertones of the most basic self/others axiom: “Do unto others as you would have them to do you” — the Golden Rule — and yet it has a considerably selfish twist, so it comes out sounding more like: “Do what you need to do to be happy; and oh, if you happen to be nice to someone — bonus!”
The Bible actually has quite a few straightforward formulas for happiness. In most translations they are kind of masked by the wording. The Hebrew word ‘esher and the Greek word makarios both convey the same idea: happiness. Because they are often used when speaking of happiness due to God’s favor, they are usually translated as “blessed” or “blessing.” I’m not saying this is incorrect; I’m suggesting that you read “blessed” in these contexts with an added factor — think “happiness”! Otherwise you will miss this important nuance when you read the word “blessed.” (Please note: this does not work for every instance of the word “bless” and its different forms in English, since the English term translates several words in both Hebrew and Greek. I am referring specifically to the two words above, both of which are translated bless in the examples below.)
In the examples below, the word “blessed” could be translated “Oh, the happiness of the one who…” or “How exceedingly happy is the one that…” My point here isn’t to change the words you read, but to add the implied “happiness” factor into these verses. God is saying, “Here’s what can make you truly happy people!” Consider this: God didn’t just create us, He also created our ability to experience happiness. That makes Him rather an authority on the subject, so it’s worth stopping and seeing what He says.
God says that there is happiness in store for the person:
- Who doesn’t associate or listen to ungodly people, but delights constantly in God’s Word. (Psa. 1:1-2)
- Who doesn’t hide personal sin, and experiences God’s forgiving grace. (Psa. 32:1-2)
- Who is one of God’s chosen people. (This verse is specifically about Israel, but we know that the New Testament believers also have a similar “chosen people” status; cf. 1 Pet. 2:9) (Psa. 33:12)
- Who experiences God and finds shelter in Him. (Psa. 34:8)
- Who trusts God and doesn’t look for help among the ungodly. (Psa. 40:4)
- Who cares for the needs of the poor (includes a promise of deliverance in times of trouble). (Psa. 41:1)
- Who is chosen by God, and allowed to live in His presence. (Psa. 65:4)
- Who find strength in God, and desires to be in His presence. (Psa. 84:5)
- Who trusts in God as sovereign ruler of all. (Psa. 84:12)
- Who worships God, experiencing His favor. (Psa. 89:15)
- Who is instructed by God. (Psa. 94:12)
- Who delights in obeying God (keeping His commands). (Psa. 112:1)
- Who is an obedient, loyal follower of God (keeping His commands). (Psa. 128:1)
- Who listens to wisdom continually. (Prov. 8:34)
- Whose priorities are God’s priorities: who is poor, yet godly; sorrowful, but expectant of God’s comfort; meek; hungry and thirsty for righteousness; merciful; pure in heart; a peacemaker; persecuted and falsely accused for His sake. (Matt. 5:3-11; cf. Luke 6:20-22)
- Who is not offended by Jesus Christ (contextually, accepting His claims as Messiah). (Matt. 11:6; Luke 7:23)
- Who works diligently with or without the master’s presence (spiritual application of diligence in serving God until Christ’s return). (Matt. 24:46; Luke 12:43)
- Who places giving above receiving. (Acts 20:35)
- Whose sins are forgiven by grace through faith, not works (quotes Psa. 32:1-2). (Rom. 4:8)
- Who endures various kinds of troubles (includes promise of crown of life reward). (James 1:12)
- Who is alert and ready for the second coming of Christ. (Rev. 16:15)
- Who keeps the words prophesied in Revelation. (Rev. 22:7)
This is not an exhaustive list, but hits the majority of the references. If you analyze who God deems as happy, you will come to the conclusion that
A truly happy person
believes in God (of the Bible),
believes and loves His Word,
believes in His Son,
trusts His provision,
believes in His salvation (and forgiveness),
obeys His commands,
and follows His priorities.
As condensed as this list, it can be condensed even more. If you take a step back and understand the entirety of God’s revelation to man, it could be said that true happiness comes from understanding your place in the existence God made for His glory. That is why God could sum up all of what He has to say to man in two simple statements:
Love God
Love others
Do so, and you will truly be “blessed” — I mean, happy.
“Where is God when…?”
(Leia este post em português.)
It is a question that is asked every time tragedy strikes, no matter what the scale. It is asked when thousands die, or when one baby fails to take its first breath. It can be accompanied by the other common questions, “Why, God?” or “How can a loving God allow…?” It is a heart-cry, a desperate plea for something that might give us our bearings in the confusion of our grief. To some it is an honest, God-seeking question, and ends in the comfort of God through an understanding of His Word. To many, unfortunately, it is an accusing, God-hating question, and ends in the despair that comes from turning from the only One that can make any part of our existence make sense.
In the wake of yet another world tragedy, people are asking this question, and the others like it. And there is an answer–a biblical answer–to these questions. But before getting to it, consider how bad the situation truly is:
Statistically, in the days since March 11, 2011, more people have died worldwide than the highest estimated number of deaths resulting from the earthquake that hit Japan. How many more? According to the CIA World Factbook, on average, roughly 150,000 people die worldwide each day. That’s almost 2 people each second. At the time of this writing, the highest estimates of deaths resulting from Japan’s quake and tsunami were around 10,000. Take the number of days since the quake on March 11 and multiply them by 150,000, and then compare. The numbers are staggering.
Please do not misunderstand. The point here is not to downplay the tragedy in Japan, but to get a clearer picture of the global tragedy that occurs daily. In my lifetime there have been numbers of tragedies, with relatively low numbers dying in airplane crashes and similar accidents, to the higher numbers of deaths resulting from terrorist attacks, to the insanely high numbers brought on by natural disasters. And yet even the highest numbers rarely touch the average daily death rate of 150,000.
The connection between these grim statistics and the original question, where is God when all this is going on, is this: we tend to ask about God’s whereabouts when an inexplicably large number of people’s lives are taken in one event and its aftermath. The truth is, if we understand the horribly fatal condition we call life, we should be asking about Him all the time.
God is not afraid of the question. In fact, He expects it. And He has already answered it, too.
So where was God when the earthquake hit Japan?
The short answer is: where He has always been.
I know the answer is simple, and perhaps simplistic, but I will explain.
First, we should understand a little about why bad things happen in the first place, before we will look at what the Bible says about God’s involvement in all of it. The first two chapters of Job give us an excellent summary of the bad things that can happen to people. In one chain of events, Job lost:
- five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, that were stolen by Sabeans, who also killed his servants (1:14-15);
- seven thousand sheep and more servants, that were all consumed by “fire of God” from heaven (v. 16);
- three thousand camels, that were stolen by Chaldeans, who also killed his servants (v. 17);
- all his ten of his children by a “great wind” that destroyed the house they were in (vv. 18-19);
- his health (2:7-8);
- and his wife’s support (vv. 9-10).
Job’s life was changed in a series of disastrous events which covered most of what I have come to consider the “bad things that can happen to me” list:
Things that happen as a result of man’s sinful actions. Since we are all sinners, we do sinful things (Rom. 3:10, 23). From petty annoyances to brutal violence, we are capable of inflicting massive amounts of grief on one another. Things that fall in this category: neglect, abuse, any manner of violence (which includes terrorist acts), bullying, browbeating, backbiting, and so on. Sabeans and Chaldeans stealing your stuff falls under this, as does a wife that tells you to “curse God and die.”
Things that happen as a result of sin’s curse on the natural world. When Adam sinned, it wasn’t just mankind that suffered for it. All of nature was placed under a curse (Gen. 3). Our chaotic weather and natural world is a result of this. Further chaos was added when our world experience the cataclysmic, worldwide Flood as a punishment for great sinful acts of the first category in Noah’s day (Gen. 6ff). Romans 8:18-24 even explains how creation both suffers (Paul compares it to birth pains) because of sin’s curse, and looks hopefully toward the day that it will be delivered from the corruption. This category would include all the natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and the like, but also sickness and birth defects which demonstrate sin’s curse on the natural order of things. In Job’s story we see the great wind (and possibly the “fire of God,” depending on what it was, exactly) and Job’s illness as this sort of thing.
Things that happen as a result of supernatural action. We are not alone in this world. There is a whole spiritual realm that can, in a very real way, affect our daily existence. God Himself chooses, at times, to act in the world He created. He is seen in Scripture to act miraculously, which is when He alters the natural order of what He created, i.e. works contrary to the laws that He established. Picture the plagues in Egypt (Ex. 7-12). He can act providentially, in which case He operates within the natural laws He established, but shapes events to result in something purposeful. My favorite example of this is the way He worked through many generations of men so that at the appointed time Jesus would be born to the fulfillment of all the prophecies told about Him. God can do this to both benefit mankind, or to judge sin. In addition to God, there are the angels: powerful, spiritual beings that God created, that capable of altering natural law to perform amazing feats (ex. the one angel that killed 70,000 Israelites with a pestilence in 2 Sam. 24). Satan and his host of demons are angels who work against God and His people (the story of Job). Neither Satan nor His angels are God’s equals, for they are created as well, but when allowed to act, they demonstrate all the power God has granted angels. In Job’s story, we see where the first two categories can be manipulated by a supernatural being. God allowed Satan to act, using the actions of sinful men and the events of the natural world to inflict harm on Job. (Technically, this means that they weren’t in the first two categories, but were a subset of this third category, but I think you get the idea.)
Things that happen as a consequence of individual sin. This is what Job’s friends said Job was going through. They interpreted all the events of chapters one and two as acts of God against sin in Job’s life, not knowing that it was precisely because of Job’s righteousness that he was undergoing those problems. While it wasn’t Job’s case, individual sin has its consequences. When we sin, we set off a chain of events that will have consequences. Some are pretty dire. When the consequences come, we shouldn’t ask ourselves, “Why does God allow this to happen to me?”, since clearly we did it to ourselves. I am not even talking about judgment from God. That’s category three. For example, let’s say you sin against man by driving under with a blood alcohol level that exceeds the legal limit, as well as breaking the speed limit. In doing so, you are also sinning against God by a) surrendering control of your body to a substance (Eph. 5:18); and b) by failing to obey the civil authority God placed in your life (Rom. 13:1-6). Consequences from this could range from fines and jail time, a wreck that hurt or killed you, a wreck that hurt or killed others, and so on. Consequences of individual sin can be short-lived, or life-altering.
The reason it is important to make these distinctions is not necessarily to find out why something happened, but more so to understand how our sin-cursed world functions. The danger is to see individual sin as the cause of anything bad, i.e., God is judging these people with a natural disaster; the 9/11 attacks were a judgement against sin in America; I can’t walk today because I was sinning against God and He crippled me; etc. We must distinguish between consequences of individual sin and repercussions from man’s original sin and its curse of the natural order of creation. It is important to learn is that we won’t always know why something happened, and that’s okay. The important part is to respond biblically to our circumstances. Job didn’t get all the background story, at least not to our knowledge. He still responded biblically (for most of the story).
We could use Japan’s earthquake as an example, or, not so long ago, Haiti’s. Why did it happen? I don’t know. What possible explanations do we have?
It was either
God judging some national sin (which, unless He reveals this as a reason, we won’t know),
or
God allowing Satan to inflict destruction using natural disasters (for reasons He only knows),
or
God allowing a natural disaster resulting from the disorder at work in a sin-cursed natural world (the most likely option),
or
some other option I haven’t considered.
The bottom line is, we don’t know. What do we know? We know that God is still in control (that’s why He is involved in some way in each option), and that He loves us (John 3:16), and wants to us to be reconciled with Him (2 Pet. 3:9). We know that all His children involved in that disaster will see Him working through their circumstances to bring about His plan and ultimately good for them (Rom. 8:28). We know that we should love the Japanese (and the Haitians), and pray for them, and help them materially as we are able. We know that tomorrow, or the next day, another disaster will hit somewhere, or another bomb will go off, or another war will start (things in Libya started while I was working on this post), and people will once again ask, “Where is God?”
And as an average of 150,000 of us die each day, I pray that more and more people ask, in a soul-wrenching, heart cry, “Where is God!?”
And in response, God’s children need to be ready with the answer, and in love, we need to tell them what God is saying in His Word, ”I am right where I have always been. I haven’t changed… Here is my Son, who died to bring you back to Me. You’ve been away long enough. Come back to me.”
(As I was finishing this post, my wife told me that just about an hour ago Japan was hit with a 7.1 earthquake, which only goes to prove what I was saying about “another disaster” hitting somewhere. Any doubts about where God is? Read this post again.)
