My least favorite course back when I was working on my MBA at the U of MN was marketing. I never could figure out how to position a product so that it would sell. The question was always, should I make it upscale and sell it to fewer people at a higher price, or should I mass market something in plastic and make my profit on volume? I always picked wrong. I don’t think I ever worked harder and got nowhere in my life.
The easy part is picking a product. What you do is, you see a need that’s not being met, and you design a product to fill it. If it’s the only one, it’ll sell. The problem is, if there’s a real need, there’s always going to be more than one product competing for the attention of the consumer. That’s where I always got into trouble, with product differentiation.
Sometimes an entrepreneur has an idea for a product, but the consumer doesn’t think they need it. Then there’s an additional step in the process: you have to create a need, usually through advertising. Or you link your product with some other need, like status or popularity or success or power. The problem is that if the potential customer doesn’t have a need - whether you create it through advertising or they already feel it - it doesn’t matter how ingenious your idea may be, it’s not going to sell.
When I was taking evangelism in seminary, our prof divided the class up into teams to develop a new evangelistic tool sort of on the order of Bill Bright’s Four Spir-itual Laws. Anybody here familiar with those? Bill Bright was the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and he put together one of the clearest and simplest plans for sal-vation since Paul left Antioch for Gentile country. The laws go like this:
1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
2. Human beings are sinful and separated from God. Therefore, we cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.
3. Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for our sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.
4. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.
The only problem is, these laws presuppose that people think of God as personal, and won’t argue - or get defensive - when you claim that human beings are sinful. But in our culture, you can no longer take that for granted. Just like Billy Graham’s approach, offering peace with God. Far too many people don’t realize that they aren’t at peace with God. After all, they’re pretty good people, why should God have anything against them? Surely God grades on a curve!
No, you have to start where people are, with something they can tune into. They have to recognize that you’re talking about them.
And that was what Paul did, that long ago day in Athens. He had been walking around, doing the tourist thing, trying to get a feel for what made the people tick. And what he saw was spiritual hunger. One writer from the period estimated that there were as many as 30,000 different gods there in Athens. Makes you think of the spirituality shelves at Barnes and Noble, doesn’t it? Or the New Age book stores or web sites. There’s channeling and crystals, gurus and Gaia, Sophia and Wicca, a dozen different varieties of Buddhism and a million Hindu gods. I hear that in Southern California some people are trying to revitalize the Aztec religion. It’s a spiritual smorgasbord, and you can fill your plate with whatever pleases your palate.
But that doesn’t sound like spiritual hunger, does it? Not at first glance, at any rate. It looks more like spiritual overload. How does anyone decide? Is there any product differentiation? With so many to choose from, is there any point in even trying? They can do as I did - two years before I met Christ - I joined a Unitarian church in St. Paul. I had been raised Unitarian, but hadn’t attended in years. When they interviewed me for membership, they asked why I wanted to join. I said that although I didn’t believe that there were any answers to life’s most important questions, the questions themselves were important, and I wanted to be involved in exploring them.
I didn’t know it, but I was a living, breathing example of the central hunger of post-modernism. People no longer believe that there are any answers - but they know they are hungry for something.
The people in Paul’s Athens believed that all the gods were equally likely, but that everybody needed to identify with some spiritual reality. So they, too, could pick anything, and hey - if it worked for them, nobody cared one way or another. They were all equally true, and equally untrue. First century Athens was more like 21st century Amer-ican than most people have any idea. And so Paul’s experience and example are incredibly relevant.
Post modernism is, simply, the period after the modern era. The modern era began after the medieval era in the 1500’s, when intellectual energy moved from philosophy to technology. At the close of the modern era, the Enlightenment, the religions were humanism and science, which crowned reason king. Darwin disconnected man from God with evolution, Nietzsche severed God from man by proclaiming “God is dead.” People were sure of science. People were sure of progress. People were sure of the triumph of human reason.
But now things are different. In the postmodern age people are afraid of claims certainty. They no longer believe that science has all the answers, and they are especially wary of religions which - like science - have claimed too much and delivered either too little or too much of the wrong thing.
Postmodernists don’t believe in absolutes. Experience is subjective. According to Brian McLaren, in postmodernism “All beliefs are equally valid, unless you actually believe them.” And “all beliefs are equally valid except those that claim to be true.”
The Athenians were much like postmoderns today, as is evident by their uncertainty. “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” [Acts 17:21]
They had so many different altars and idols. The one that struck Paul was the one that said, “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.” It could also be translated, “TO THE GOD WE ARE UNCERTAIN OF.”
We must first speak the language of the people we are trying to convince (vv. 23b 29).
In the second half of verse 23, and the first word of verse 24, Paul said something that many Christians or pastors today wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. He said, “the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: God . . .” Whoa now! The worship of a Great Spirit whom they cannot name is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
Does this sound like something postmoderns conclude? Many people today say, “It doesn’t matter what religion you are. We all worship the same God.” We all know that’s not true. Allah is not the Triune God; Buddhism’s ultimate reality is impersonal oblivion; Judaism worships the Creator God, but lacks Jesus Christ. But all too many reject any ultimate power at all. Isn’t it better to start with belief – even with misdirected belief – than with unbelief? Doesn’t that create a point of contact that we can use to enter into a dialogue?
One of the only evangelistic tools presented in my seminary class which did not start with the 4 spiritual laws began with: “Is life nickel and diming you to death? Do you keep looking for new fixes and find out that they don’t work, or wear out, or have expensive side effects? Wouldn’t you love to have a lifetime guarantee?” Another called for people to apply for the MasterCard, which “opened doors you didn’t even know were there.” Where are the people you know at? What is the universal truth you can both agree on? Start there.
We have the world’s best product, one which everyone needs, whether they know it or not. Let’s learn how to get it out into the public view.
