power

Acura just recently began to advertise for their new sedan with a series of three commercial spots running during masculine-type programming (sports-center, etc.). (By the way, do you know why chicken coops have two doors? ...if they had four, they'd be a sedan!)

Anyway, I found myself sitting in my living room, watching the first of these commercials. It features a hand, blasting through a wooden board. The pronouncement was then made: "Strength is Power."

I of course, in my evangelical, pastoral way, immediately began to evaluate the merits of that statement. The contradiction between that simple sentence and the teachings of Jesus. "If one wishes to gain his life, he must lose it." And the summarized message of Paul: "Our attitudes should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but rather made himself nothing and became obedient." These characteristics: humility, servanthood, kenosis are not the world's defintion of power. They are the world's definition of weakness and timidity.

But in Christ, they are made powerful. In God, they are made victorious.

Later that evening, I saw the next ad. Now, really, this is a neat bit of filming: a bullet is seen in slow motion, traveling against a black background. As the bullet travels, a wine-bottle is seen coming onto the screen from right to left. The bullet appears to enter in the botten, barely making it into the narrow neck. I was left wondering, "Is it that bullet really in the bottle?" until the back shatters and splinters off and the bullet races through: "Precision is Power."

The same questions leap to mind, and I shook my head a little at the advertisement. Effective... but tainted with brokenness (Emery's From Crib to Coffin).

The third advertising scheme featured a diver, in perfect pike, hitting the water and swimming away. The tag caught me off guard:

Grace is Power.