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What a difference a few days make.  Pray for Australia no longer the cry of each morning. No longer the red-smoke-haze and imminence of death-and-danger our news media courts (because we love to drool over it).

Now Harry and Meghan and all the Royal turmoil – all the “disquiet” from the Palace! Now an innocent plane load of people – shot down by a sovereign enemy nation allegedly.   Oh – and tucked away in a quiet news corner: “Residents stranded as fires escalate.”  Hello burning Australia.  Thought for a minute that all was okay with you again …  and something else not top of the news today …

I find Greta Thunberg grates like many politicians grate.

A face and voice and words that grate.  I am not sure why.  Politicians come with an assumed self-serving greed and a need for popularity.  So their words are syrupy and cloying mostly.  Whereas Greta comes with a PR-enhanced-backstory.  A story that loves images of her shaming the enemy politicians.

On reflection it might be the media-packaging through which we see her that grates.  The media-news-storyboard.  The “created-human-story” that draws us in (allegedly).   Which makes her “newsworthy” … makes her our new “David” against our embedded “Goliath” of political institution.

There’s no such thing as bad news – unless it’s not being on the news at all.

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In the UK we have another tradition.

The media “bumps into” some “innocent nobody” (like Greta) and media-story-boards them.  Fetes them – builds them – grows them – makes them newsworthy – makes them a political and/or social “somebody”.  Idolises them (so we will as well) – and then tires of them.  Usually because this “nobody” comes to believe they really are a “somebody” … is no longer grateful-malleable of their “media creators”.  It is the “We made we can destroy you” theory in toxic tabloid action.

Along with the amused-detached observation from us tabloid-buying-readers that “Those who sell their soul to the devil … and all that.”

Greta has been created for the public eye.  She is riding the crest as all media creations do.  As all politicians do.  Except the media-story-boarding makes her one of them – no longer one of us.  A price worth paying until the inevitable “Those who sell their soul to the devil … and all that.”

What has this to do with anything?

Only this – a writing by a religious activist: “How do we help millennials who no longer see a need for God?”

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We seem to have a need to make things happen (faith and religion and believers no different to the “lost world”) … to find people to save … to serve God (particularly when God is doing okay) … like millennials.

Who drink less … spend less on material stuff … focus on experience … drive fewer cars … fly fewer planes … recycle more … seem to have more time for those around them … are connected to this planet in ways we don’t give them credit for being connected … but who – despite all that – obviously need to believe as we believe.

Need to spend some of their disposable income in our direction. Give some of their boundless energy to volunteering for our ministries. They are a resource to be tapped for God saved. They must be – or else they’d all be in church already.

Another ology ism and “fad-theology” in the making I reckon.

Like all the fad-theologies we keep on media-story-boarding from “nobody verses” to  “somebody beliefs” … like men rule-women serve but are both equal in the eyes of God (honest) … like God will make you rich if you invest your wealth with us (because God loves you) … like the earth is only a few thousand years old (despite all the evidence to the contrary) … like the earth will be extinguished … or cleansed of non-believers … or become The Garden again … or whatever end-times one prefers – which means “I am okay but you are not” (which is the Best Example of “unconditional love” in the Best Tradition of “Biblical Correctness” ever) … along with all the other fad-theologies (whose weird terminology I can’t remember).

By this they will know …

We make the bible of Love so complicated.  Make a God of Love so complicated.  Make living with Love on this planet so complicated.  We all spend all our time making Love so damn complicated.  And on reflection …

It is “that” which REALLY grates.

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