This simple advert (from Transport for London) is simple genius.
I’m sure there are all kinds of implications from this – from issues of racism to worldviews, to missing the wood for the trees. It is a parable for our times. It reminded me of that wonderful essay by C S Lewis, Fern Seeds & Elephants (in the book of the same name), in which he berates biblical scholars for being so focused on the minutiae of modernist biblical source criticism (the fern seeds) with its strongly anti-supernaturalist approach to the texts, while completely failing to see the extraordinary changed lives of those who encountered Jesus (the elephants)
PS you can tell that today is a sermon writing day – struggling to keep on the case, hence taking regular surf-out time
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Interesting t see that this was partly funded by Transport for London.
Of course if Boris is elected Mayor in May and cuts TfL’s advertising budget like he says he will, then adverts like this won’t be made, and then what will you have to blog about?
Or am I just missing the elephants for the fern seeds?
It may be just me, but I’ve been posted that essay before and I felt I was giving myself ‘soundness points’ on the cheap – rather like when I read Russel’s “Why I am not a Christian” in fact. It deals with yesterday’s questions and yesterday’s challenges to Christian orthodoxy. I don’t find many modernist, Bultmann-worshipping liberals any more, except perhaps in some of the murkier depths of SCM. Today, their place has been taken by postmodernist Radical Orthodoxy. This doesn’t have a problem with faith or with acting on faith but doesn’t like any faith that is too firm, or that claims either exclusivity or consequences for unbelievers.