Our church is watching Loiue Giglio DVDs week-by-week at the moment. I've missed most of these, but caught Indescribable last evening. Indescribable is a good word ... perhaps one of the few printable ones I have at my fingertips to sum it up.
I wasn't sure whether to write this review - I try not to be overly negative or critical here (no, really, I do try) - but, well, the experience has stuck in my mind so perhaps it does it justice to report it.
Giglio is a preacher/pastor in Atlanta, and evidently undertakes tours with an audio-visual presentation -this one is several years old now. Evidently he is at the heart of something called the Passion Movement which one reviewer on Amazon thought was hugely preferable to being associated with the emerging church. So I warmed to the idea immediately (well, I can try irony). I did Google around for his name beforehand, and found that the more reformed and fundamentalist souls distrust him - so I thought he had that at least in his favour.
Speaking to a huge, somewhat whipped-up, crowd, with a slick presentation didn't really endear him to me. Worse, well-known manipulative speaking techniques were used throughout - rather a lot of exuberant shouting, followed sharply by intimate whispered punchlines - which seemed a bit irresponsible to me (though, if you are a speaker, an easy trap to fall into, I admit). Combine this with speaking over a weird ethereal kind of music, while looking at pictures of constellations and galaxies, with a handful (really only a handful) of carefully-plucked scripture references, and doubtless you have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand.
The central thesis of Indescribable was that the universe is awfully big and complex, and that God made it all. Drawing on Isaiah 40 - he who called out the starry host and calls them each by name - juxtaposed with a saviour who knows us all (and the hairs on our heads, though I don't recall that verse being invoked), the Almighty's power, wisdom, strength - and personal love and compassion are estimated indescribable. An image of the saviour on the cross cuts across the pictures of galaxies (to be followed by a cross-shaped formation in the heavens) to bring the point home. The resurrection didn't get much of a look-in, but perhaps it was beside the point.
The breathless scientific presentation was largely inoffensive - the pictures were accompanied with an account of some of the big numbers which accompany astronomy, and frequent references to the speed of light - light issuing forth from the mouth of the creator. He declared himself a friend of science - and didn't make any gross mis-statements of fact that I noticed - but the sharpness of this was dimmed somewhat by a studied careful avoidance of offending the young earth creationists. The account of the numbers was big on distance numbers, short on time - the age of the universe didn't get a mention. To explore one without the other seems to border on the dishonest (it would be unfair to suggest that this was to protect sales - bearing with the weaker souls who cannot bear this would be the generous interpretation).
There are much better presenters of the cosmology stuff - Brian Cox springs to mind. He doesn't, of course, weave scripture references into his breathless wide-eyed commentary, but I don't think the awe-inspiring vision of the universe is particularly diminished by that. I didn't warm to Louie Giglio, and I rather doubt I shall join any of the other sessions our church is running.
