Dear folks looking for a little class action:

I saw an article yesterday (yes, this is a Monday Musing even though it’s being distributed on a Tuesday) which said that people are suing fast food franchises because the food advertised bears little resemblance to the food actually served. Anyone pulling out of the drive-through and reaching into the bag knows exactly what the pending court battle is all about. Very few fast-food items deliver the mouth-watering quality promised by the menu pictures posted just a few hundred feet behind you. I’m not sure, however, if I approve of a litigious response to the bait-and-switch sadness of unmet expectations; but pulling into a parking space and walking the meal in to the manager to complain about the uncentered pickle seems like too much trouble. It also risks having you look like a jerk on social media video when someone records you complaining that the fries in your box are nothing but tiny little shards of potato rather than the long luxurious strips in the picture.

Dani used to buy a couple of Happy Meals for herself and the dog, which they would share in the park. One time, when she opened the wrappers, there was no meat between the buns. That day they both ate vegetarian (poor puppy). I let the manager know the next time I was in the same shop, and he told me I was making the whole thing up just to make him look bad in front of the other customers. Since I was wearing my clerical collar, I figured I would drop the whole issue and not point out that he was looking bad in front of the other customers without any help from me, but I digress.

This lawsuit thing got me musing about other places where the customer in the advertisement in no way reflects the experience of the consumer in real life. As you may know, Dani was on Keytruda; that was until she had whopping bad side effects. According to the commercials, we’re supposed to be opening a craft store, she’s supposed to be throwing pots and I am supposed to be building shelves for the fabric selection, while happy customers come into our shop and remark about how she looks like she never even thought of having cancer. In the evening, we’re supposed to retire to our massive, immaculately manicured back yard to share white wine and charcuterie trays with extremely good-looking couples who smile too much and make riveting eye contact. It hasn’t happened. Of course, at the end of the commercials, the good folks at Merck Pharmaceutical do mention their product could kill you, but that’s only a mild distraction when the promise is a perfectly chilled dry chardonnay.

From time to time, I look at church websites and see similar obfuscation. Outrageously happy people raptured in praise, entranced in fellowship, deep in prayer, sincere in compassion. I react like Seinfeld: “Who are these people?” On more than one occasion I’ve seen that their webmaster failed to remove the electronic watermark from the stock photos lifted onto the webpage. I’m somewhat relieved—this isn’t the fellowship of Keytruda; this is the church of Getty Images. It’s like the friend of mine in college who left the sample photos in the picture frames he purchased and would tell people they were really his family and girlfriend.

Because this is the “Minister’s Monday Musing,” I’m tempted to go all religious here in the fifth paragraph by saying something about how we attempt to curate the images of who we are and what we do. Social media has made us all marketing executives of our lives, like food photographers trying to make this week’s special burger look both delicious and healthy. But even that has a certain artifice; the pastor who can make sardonic references to popular culture somehow appear to be spiritually insightful.

No, today (yesterday, actually) I just wanted to let you know I’m signing on to the class action suit. I’m hoping Dani’s missing meat-in-the-burger incident will help us put a down payment on a really amazing craft store, or at least cover the cost of some decent chardonnay.

Musing over the dissonance between what was implied and what is delivered, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor