[DOG POUND NOTES are simply random thoughts, ideas, and maxims that have occurred to me. I am totally convinced of the merit of some of them. Others may merely be food-for-thought or even outright Doggy Doo-Doo. I'll let you guess as to how I categorize each of them.]
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I recently found the following advertisement on a page at Biblegateway.com:
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No one should wonder why I usually refer to myself NOT as "a Christian" but as "a Maverick Christian".
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Just a couple days ago I wrote the following to a friend of mine:
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I have become a pretty anti-church guy. And I mean all churches. I have long thought the Catholic church was demonically infiltrated and infested. Today, I suspect that this had occurred right from the start. And furthermore, today, I feel that church is not the way most people are going to find God. The time is very, very short now -- 2029, give or take a year or two -- and I don't sense that God is doing most of His work through churches anymore. The Bible clearly tells us that the devil presents himself as an angel of light:
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...false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.
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I'll be the first to say that I am very far from perfect, but in my opinion, it is sad that Biblegateway.com would associate itself with an ad like that one above. In an article AT Biblegateway, one of their writers wrote:
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The command do not love the world demands that we reject those ways of life which do not lead us to God or to the practice of truth, justice, righteousness and love. While this sounds easy enough in theory, it is not easy in practice.
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Yeah, so we see. Can anyone imagine Jesus saying: "Invest like a woman because money is power"? Does anyone think that's an appropriate advertisement for a website that promotes an authentic Christian worldview?
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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Al Bondigas here. How embarrassing, coming from a Christian organization. No wonder so many people get fooled and misguided.
ReplyDeleteJUDGE AL ~
DeleteI use Biblegateway for my daily Bible readings on the days I'm at work. So, I appreciate the site. But that ad alone would be enough to dissuade me from easily adopting any theology I might find being promoted there. They have obviously been tainted by the money of "this world", and have not guarded their reputation, as they should have.
It always surprises and saddens me to see how easily so many people of "The Way" carelessly allow their reputations to be besmirched by associations with "this world" and its lost souls.
Once stained, one's good reputation / credibility is difficult, if not impossible, to regain.
No one's perfect (hence our need for a Sinless Savior), but heck, we are told by God to come out from among the people of "this world" and be separate. Why is that so hard for so many self-professed believers?
~ D-FensDogG
Stephen T. McCarthy Reviews...
I followed your link and didn't see the ad to which you referenced. I'm not sure in what form the ad appeared, but do you think it's possible that Bible Gateway has nothing to do with ad content, but the content is suggested from Cookies on a user's computer or whatever that tech jive is? I don't know how all this stuff works though. Maybe you should send something the Bible Gateway website in case they can filter the nature of ad content.
ReplyDeleteBut this is all just me theorizing about possibilities and stuff.
Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out
LEE ~
DeleteIt seems to me that the advertisements are presented by two different methods:
1) The website randomly generates the ads.
2) As you mentioned, cookies / your history of clicking on similar ads in the past influences which ads you will see.
This particular ad in question I saw pop up a couple times before I decided to copy it and post a blog bit about it. The odds were that YOU would not see it yourself until you had clicked through a number of Biblegateway pages.
{I've noticed that if you see an ad on a certain page, click to a new page, and then CLICK BACK AGAIN to the former page, that ad will not be the same. It will have been replaced by a new randomly generated ad.}
Some months ago I clicked on a Biblegateway ad about 'MyPillow'. Since that time, one or more new ads for 'MyPillow' appear every single time I go to Biblegateway. That's the cookies (computer history) specifically selecting certain related ads.
But since I had never clicked on any investment / woman-y stuffs anywhere before, the Ellevest.com ads were being shown to me in a purely random manner.
However, regardless of how the ads are presented, an ad like this one I've highlighted has no business being on a Biblical / Christian website. No matter how one slices it, Biblegateway is being negligent in not exercising more control over what sorts of things and ads are being promoted on its site. If it were just some pop culture or basic entertainment website, this wouldn't matter all that much. But when it's a site that presumably believes we should be in the world but not OF it, then much more attention to what shows up on its pages is certainly called for.
Someone in authority at Biblegateway should have to personally approve every single ad that is going to be seen by anyone on their website. But then again, maybe they HAVE.
Again, it's stuffs like this that has undoubtedly contributed to the general outlook today that Christianity is not much more than just another modern-day club.
It's no real wonder to me that most non-Christians don't take Christianity too seriously.
~ D-FensDogG
Stephen T. McCarthy Reviews...