False Advertising

The TV News was recounting one horrific tragedy after another—bombs, explosions, floods, deaths, fear, loss, and suffering. In the middle of all this, they break for a commercial. A local tanning salon ad comes up with the following slogan: “Get what you want out of life.” This falsehood, that a tan will get you what you want out of life, was easily evident against the backdrop of the harsh reality being shown on the News. For one thing, many of the people who live in some of the poorest nations are ‘tanned’, and they aren’t all getting what they want out of life!

Misrepresentations often go unnoticed, especially when presented against pleasant backdrops. Take, for example, the commercial for Cuties—which are marketed as an easy-to-peel, small, seedless orange. Their TV ads portray cute toddlers eating little oranges with the following slogan: “Kids love cuties, because Cuties are made for kids.”  Many varieties of seedless fruit are derived from mutations caused by irradiation. According to a New York Times article, “Many researchers around the world are irradiating citrus. Scientists also are breeding new seedless varieties, mainly by hybridizing trees with three sets of chromosomes rather than the normal two. That genetic imbalance causes the fruits to be seedless.”  (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/dining/14seed.html?pagewanted=print )

Why do we fall for these false advertisements? The above two commercials are just minor examples of the misconceptions we buy into. We are presented with hundreds of fallacies daily. At first, most of us tolerate these misrepresentations and view them as harmless. Then we accept them as the new normal. Then, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, we decide that the fruit looks good, consume these products ourselves, and pass it on to our families. We propagate these lies, spreading them by word of mouth and by example, thus inadvertently becoming proponents of these deceptions.

We need to examine every idea and belief carefully before we give it any room in our lives. What starts off as tolerance may eventually turn us into practitioners. So, we need to be able to differentiate between what is true and false. We have access to this gift of discernment through the Holy Spirit.  

“Do not stifle the Holy Spirit.  Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.  Stay away from every kind of evil.” (1 Thess. 19-22 MSG)