GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 3:11
The Medium and the Message
The United States recently acknowledged the death of President Jimmy Carter. During the 1976 campaign for the presidency, Governor Jimmy Carter had hundreds of requests for interviews—press secretary Jody Powell said he had over 700 interview requests. Based on a previous commitment, however, Powell arranged for journalist and author Robert Scheer to sit with Carter for a long, no-holds-barred interview in November 1976, most of it taking place at Carter’s home in Plains, Georgia. At the very end of the interview, as Scheer was leaving Carter’s home, he asked Carter one last seemingly casual question about how his religious beliefs would affect his presidential decisions. In a long monologue, Carter made the statement that he had looked at “a woman with lust in his heart,” for which he confessed and felt that God had forgiven him. Playboy magazine published Scheer’s interview. I read the long, often intense, interview (online :-)). The presidential candidate’s interview published in Playboy magazine created quite a kerfuffle during the 1976 campaign.
St. Mark said that as Jesus was ministering to a large crowd of people on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, “And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him and were crying out and saying, ‘You are the Son of God.’” (3:11) The Aramaic Bible in Plain English renders this verse, “And those who had plagues from foul spirits, when they saw him, they were falling down and they were crying out and they were saying, ‘You are the Son of God!’” And the Lamsa Bible renders it, “And those who were afflicted with unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried saying, ‘You are indeed the Son of God.’” Mark’s word “crying out” (krazo) is an onomatopoeic word, sounding like a croak or shriek of a raven.
In the crowd around Jesus, there were those who sought to get close enough to touch him; they were pressing toward Jesus. Others were throwing themselves on the ground before him screeching or screaming out, “You are the Son of God.” Their statement was essentially correct, but given for the wrong purpose. It is possible that the evil voices were trying to identify themselves with him, or identify him with themselves, as if to say, “Look, you’re one of us. See how we fall before you.”
Playboy magazine published Candidate Jimmy Carter’s interview with Robert Scheer in the November 1976 edition just days before the election, and it nearly torpedoed his campaign. Carter’s interview was frank and insightful, but the medium was questionable. The shrieks and croaks of evil-spirited individuals on the Galilean shore were theologically correct, but the medium was wrong. The medium through which a message is communicated has a significant impact on how the message is perceived, understood, and experienced.
Directory