Following God Or The Advertisers?

We live in a society which is today increasingly
dominated by economic considerations. At national
level, political factors, aims and objectives are
frequently determined, or at least are severely
modified by domestic or international economic
forces.

What applies to an individual country applies,
probably with even greater force, to individual
corporations and firms.

The latter have always been, but today are even
more locked in fierce battles with rivals. In the
end those battles are for victory over YOUR mind.
You are the ultimate objective of all their
wheelings and dealings. Why ? Because you are the
one who BUYS. And whether you buy from them or not
is what determines their economic viability.

Mammon Or Messiah?
None of this would really matter were it not that
manufacturers, services providers and the like who
hire and pay advertisers are propagators of Mammon
(using that term as Jesus would have used it). In
other words, they have scant concern for Jesus as
Messiah. Rather, theirs are values of the world.
As John 15. 18, 19f tells us, God and the world are
at enmity. The reason? Worldly values are almost
always not on God's list of things that will benefit
us. Rather, they are on his list of values that
will take us from him.

Enticement
At the extremes, advertising can be completely
informative or entirely persuasive. There are
decreasing examples of the former and increasing
examples of the latter.

Moreover, the content of persuasive advertising
is more and more characterised by by two outstanding
features. The first is sex; the second is that,
especially on TV, the actual content is increasingly
irrelevant to the product acually being sold.
Indeed, the relationship between the two becomes
more and more obtuse.

This, in fact, seems to emphasise that advertisers
and advertising agencies have only one real objective:
to sell the product regardless of any other principles.
This is the reason for the observed higher role of
sex in advertising. Advertising professionals have
found that sex can be used to promote almost
anything.

The Language Advertisers Understand.
Every time we, as consumers, respond to adverts by
buying the product, we are in fact rewarding
advertising agencies and the manufacturers who
pay them and keep them in (very often) a highly
lucrative business.

These people understand only one language. that
language is the corrolation between advertising
expenditure and sales. This is the ONLY thing
they understand. It is the only relationship
which speaks to them.

The Implications For Christians
Whenever we buy a product or service (such as
insurance, a holiday, travel or credit card)
through advertising we are doing two things.

First, we are voting for more of the same
advertising. It does not matter whether we wanted
to or intended to. the inescapable fact is that
this is what we have done.

Secondly, regardless of how immoral or objectionsable
the advewrtising, we have supported it with the
only kind of support it can appreciate: our money.
it does not matter whether we wanted to or intended
to. the inescapable fact is that this is what we
have done.

The Consequences For Christians
The consequences are clear and obvious. No
Christian can in conscience buy products or services
which are being marketed through objectionable and
morally questionable methods. No Christian can
justify the purchase of goods and services which,
however good in themselves,are subject to marketing
techniques which offend against and undermine the
values and principles which Jesus, the Bible and the
Christian Church have set for us.
Each of us has the unavoidable responsibility of
first examining the pattern of our purchases in the
light of the methods by which they are marketed.
lollipops or cars, it makes no difference; and
secondly, to write to the producers and tell them
that we are refusing to buy and why.

Where retailers are concerned, the implication
relative to one product may result in a boycott
of that retailer.
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For example, in the UK Boots the Chemists have
chosen to sell "French Connection" products which
all carry their offensive set of initials.

The language in which we speak to stores like this
has to be not only clear but also carry the kind of
weight and consequence which will communicate our
objections.

In a society increasingly dominated by sex, secularism
and the destruction of Christian values, these are the
only effective responses available to us. If, that is,
we are to follow Jesus rather than the advertisers.