Saturday 14 February 2015

The Joy of Tithing - Say "Cheese"!

But do they send their money to Spanky?
It's always amused me that certain fundamentalist publications promote their "mom and apple pie" image through carefully chosen photographs in their publications. You know the sort of thing, happy, smiling families promoting the joy of tithing.

The latest issue of Tomorrow's World illustrates the point. The focus for January-February is, yup, you guessed it, tithing. Now this isn't the easiest of sells. Rod "Spanky" Meredith hits the usual proof texts hard, but how do you put a positive spin on an article of this kind? The answer seems to be to find a nice, attractive family who smile and are obviously overjoyed to shell out to the cause.

So where do you go to find a photogenic family of this sort? Good teeth, nicely dressed, one kid of each gender. You'd think there'd be lots of real life families in the Living Church of God to choose from, right? And you'd obviously expect the smiling subjects to be a member family, right?

Well, it ain't necessarily so. The nice people who appear on the cover of the current TW, and reappear as deliriously happy tithers on the inside, come to you courtesy of shutterstock.com (see the small print at the bottom of page 33). They could be Anglicans, Adventists or Atheists, who knows? Do they tithe? Again, who knows? Are they even a family group rather than just playing the part for the camera? Quite possibly not. And it's highly unlikely any of them would want to help finance Meredith. Could all this then be just a tiny bit deceptive?

We do expect people in TV ads to be paid actors or models. But there's a difference between a high demand sect and a toothpaste brand.

Isn't there?

Tomorrow's World (along with similar publications) is all about pushing the distinctive doctrines of its publisher. It isn't an objective source of news, information and commentary; its a glorified advertising mailer. Which is fine, just as long as you know that.

5 comments:

  1. It does seem deceptive, but then when you are attempting to deceive people into a false church, anything goes.

    A non-ACOG church I've recently attended uses their own members for the photo ops in the publications. These are people who are known to the rest of the congregation, and they are often asked questions verifying whatever points might have been made in articles.

    BB

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  2. Oh, and look, Brian Williams got suspended without pay from NBC because he lied and practiced deception.

    Why shouldn't the leaders within the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia be treated the same.

    Except.

    Except.

    Permanent suspension without pay. You know, when the congregation didn't pay the Apostle Paul, he went out and got a real job.

    Not that most of them would even begin to know how....

    My experience: The happiest families I've seen in real life are atheists.

    Maybe?

    Thank God for shutterstock.com. [I use PhotoDune and Billion Photos instead, thanks!]

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  3. They are happy and smiling because they don't tithe.

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  4. A happily grinning family sitting side by side reading the same paper at the same time...on the edge of a cliff. Yeah, that's something you see everyday! I must have done my tithing wrong, because all it ever got me was in debt up to my eyeballs.

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