There have been many of them. Leaving aside the theological dribble, it's the illustrations that can feel so right and yet be so wrong.
I remember being at a convention full of thousands of young people in the early nineties. We had Bobby Ferris' song , 'Don't Worry Be Happy' played for us. You know the one. Don't worry, be happy etc... After we all sang and whistled along with with the song we were told that Bobby Ferris, after making this song famous, killed himself. It was a powerful illustration of the unliveability of a 'no worries'-pollyanna attitude for people without God.
The illustration was brilliant - but it was not true at all!!!!! In fact Bobby Ferris is alive and well and still performing now.
Read the following http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/mcferrin.asp to find out more about how this world wide rumour perpetuated.
This has been pork pie #1 that I have heard in a sermon. I'm still haunted by how powerful the illustration was and yet how much bologne it was as well.
It was harder back then to verify the truth. We didn't have wikipedia. ;)
I'm sure we've heard plenty of porky pies in sermons now and then.
(nb. comments with names of offending preachers will be deleted).
6 comments:
... and if I haven't recalled the event properly then I have just told a big pork pie and still illustrated my point quite well.
This fits well with MJ's "Making ill-informed generalisations about culture/sociology from a knee-jerk conservative standpoint."
I put them in the same category: lack of love for the truth.
Well I'll be...
Until this moment, I believed that Bobby McFerrin was dead. And I too heard it in a sermon illustration at a conference as a teenager.
Couldn't have been the same conference though. You are way older than me.
:)
Hi Ben. I think you're right. The illustration was too 'believable' and 'cute' to be wrong. But - we're all imperfect.
Hi Liz. You are not that much younger than me - but yes - I probably was a leader on it. ;) I'm sure it was the same conference. Don't mention which one. ;)
or it could have been another conference that *passed on* the great illustration - as we do.
But Mike Brady did die of AIDS. THAT was true.
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