Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Manipulating Mercy?



Naked Pastor posted this video the other day and some of his uncomfortable thoughts about it. He believes that it in some way is "marketing compassion." I liked it, but he felt something wrong in that it took slick marketing by a handsome guy in a suit to awaken people's compassion. Shouldn't we already feel it? I guess we should. We should naturally care about the downtrodden, hurt, weak, and poor. I hear what he's saying. But sadly we often forget or marginalize them and maybe we need a "hook" to reawaken our hearts. What do you think of the video? I suppose this kind of video (or say a World Vision/Compassion Canada TV commercial showing starving children) is an attempt at "manipulating" a compassionate response out of people. Is it wrong if the motive is good? Where are the boundaries (if any)? These are the questions going through my mind today.

May Light increase!

3 comments:

Dave Carrol said...

it made the rounds in my mind too. I love it actually. Blogged about it today... i'd be curious your thoughts about where my mind ended up

http://bigearcreations.blogspot.com/2008/09/taking-random-out-of-random-acts-of.html

Jay Boaz said...

Whenever a video is made about a topic, regardless of what that topic is, you are presenting a viewpoint that you wish your viewers to agree with. If I do a video about how much fun volleyball is, I am marketing the game to the viewer, no matter what style I may choose to shoot the video in. I wouldn't make a video about volleyball being fun if I didn't want others to watch it and share my opinion.

Michele said...

I think sometimes that people don't realize what they would really be missing if they were not healthy. All that business guy did was put blindness in perspective for passers by. I thought it was great! If people could see things from that perspective more often, I wonder if we'd be more grateful for what we have and more compassionate to those who don't have those things.