Pretense and Reality

I was offended by the silly, tasteless, and often senseless ads that set the stage for a recent Monday night football game on TV. Glitz, glamor, and brazen power, mixed with not a little sexual innuendo--all meant to arouse excitement in us for what was soon to come--actually turned me completely off. What in the world is all this about? Where is it leading? If the media is the message, we're in real trouble.

Samuel Miller, a wise mentor in a former generation, speaks directly to the issue: Advertising has become the religious expression of ... secularity. If manufacturing is about producing more things, then things must be justified, given value, their glory (or glance--the name for superficial glory) revealed. The advertiser becomes the poet in our culture. In his imagination the product becomes the most desirable thing on earth, filled with extraordinary fascination, potent with a magic capable of transforming drabness and dullness to ecstatic heights of success. If such a gadget can be possessed by any means, by painful denials and endless installments, then all the harrowing frustration of being just one more human being lost in the anonymous mass is transcended (Samuel Miller, The Dilemma of Modern Belief, Harper, 1963, p. 9).

More and more, it seems, we as human beings are "lost in the anonymous mass." Rather than truly turning to God, whose image in us lies buried under layers of insecurity caused by our doubts, rebellions, and self-concerns, we become pawns for cynical horse-traders in idolatry that don't give a damn for our souls.

Wretched men and women that we are, who will deliver us finally from this bondage to sin? One thing is for sure. It will not be advertisers for this or that, even so-called religious ones. Our help must come from God himself, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not limit God's only begotten Son this Advent and Christmas to a manger where you can manage and take care of him--re-creating him in your image and the false images of our culture.

Behold him also crucified on a cross, then buried, only be be raised on the third day and ascended into heaven. See him even now sitting at the right hand of the Father, who has given him all authority in heaven and on earth to re-create you before he comes again to judge the quick and the dead, separating finally his sheep from every false pretender to his glory.