This series is not a knock against commercialism as much as it is an exploration of the effects of the cultural language on how we think about the world and specifically how we think about God. Commercials are
simply an exchange of information about the availability of products and services. The idea of a commercial is, in my opinion, morally neutral. That said, I think you will be surprised at how much your thinking, and even your emotional well-being, is affected by advertising.

The average American encounters 3000 commercial messages each day. Whether this is a radio commercial, a magazine ad, a logo on the side of a coffee cup or a billboard we pass on the highway, these images and messages are designed to cause to you think of your life as incomplete, and desire the product they are selling to make your life complete again.

A standard formula used in many commercials is twofold: 1. To illicit a thought in the viewer that theirlife is not satisfactory and then 2. To convince the viewer their life could be made satisfactory with the introduction of said product. If you hear theses messages 3000 times per day, your brain becomes programmed to think in this pattern. Rather than being satisfied, a person begins to believe their life is lacking, whether it is actually lacking or not.

The idea is to convince you that you aren’t going to be happy unless you purchase something. And make no mistake, this is a powerful manipulative tool. Some experts have referred to advertising as the “relentless propaganda on behalf of goods in general.” R. Crisp argued in an article in the Journal of Business Ethics that advertising overrides a consumer’s autonomy of decision making in the creation of desires, correlating an unbreakable link between products and the fulfillment of stimulated desires.” In other words, advertising is designed to hijack your brain by dictating what you desire.

As I launch this series, I want to ask that you become aware of how much advertising you encounter in a day. At first, you’ll notice only some of it, but as you practice, you will quickly realize how 3000 encounters is certainly realistic.

What if part of your emotional well-being is affected by the messages of advertising? And while you certainly can’t get away from it, what if you could come to a theological understanding that would mitigate the affect of these messages? This is the point of this series.

Before my next post, try doing two things:

1. Pay attention to as many commercial messages as you can. Have a mental clicker (not really a counter, because you’ll lose count and quit) running at all times, and just say to yourself, that’s a commercial message, there’s a billboard, a logo, a magazine ad, a radio commercial, or a television spot. I think you’ll agree you are constantly being sold something.

2. Pay specific attention to how many times you hear “Are you tired of?” and “You deserve” kinds of messages. Some will be blatant, and some will not come out and say this, but will certainly make you feel it. An image of the shiny new car makes you tired of your old car. This is powerful conditioning. This is the kind of message that is making you feel like something is wrong with your life.

Now, don’t try to actually change the way you think or react. Psychologists have found awareness is more powerful than resistance. What that means is if you try to fight something, your brain resists change and fights against you. Instead, place no judgment on your findings. Simply note whether or not the commercial contains a manipulative message. Does it make you feel incomplete or inadequate? If so, make a mental note and move on.

Slowly, what will begin to happen is you will stop believing the commercials, and you will begin to be happier.  No kidding, it works.

In my next post, I’ll talk a little more about what commercials are doing to your brain, and throughout this series, I’ll be talking about how they affect your view of God, and cause you to misunderstand what He is doing in your life. The next post in this series will launch on Monday, and each new piece will launch on M/W/F, though there may be other blog entries in between. Thanks for your interest.

Thursday of this week this entire blog will change.

I will be launching the new blog with a series called Commercialism and Faith. Every few days I will drop a new entry, each building on the previous. In this series I’ll be talking about the affects of advertising on your brain, and how standard, North-American Christian theology is more informed by advertising than it is by any theologian or even the pages of scripture. The series might even be called “How Commercialism is Causing you to Hate God.” But I think that title might have been a stretch. When a new entry drops, I’ll be announcing it twice that day through twitter. If you’re not yet following me, sign up to follow @donmilleris. I hope you like the new site.

I walked out on Avatar. I thought it was a good movie, actually, I was just home for Christmas and made the mistake of going to see the 10:30PM showing. I walked out when the bad men were cutting down the giant tree. Don’t tell me what happened because I’ll probably rent it at some point. The part that I saw was a spectacle, to be sure, and I felt like I was on a ride at Disney.

Christoph Waltz was remarkable in Inglorius Basterds. He made everybody else in that movie look bad, I believe. He deserves an award for sure. And the screenplay was great, also. Nothing like gloating over the death of a few Nazi’s.

Like I said before, the surprise for me was the movie An Education. If Carey Mulligan gets the best actress award, I’ll have a little more respect for hollywood. Peter Sarsgaard, I thought, played the role of self-delusional serial crusher quite well. That and the film was literary and managed to go at it’s own pace with slight story-questions that only kept you interested because you liked the characters, especially Mulligan’s honest desire for romance. The movie is also a look at the expectations on young females in the 60’s, with a terrific subplot involving the lead characters father.

I chose The Hurt Locker as the best movie of the year because it pulled me in more than any of the other movies. The documentary-like drama keeps you on the edge of your seat while showing you the addiction certain characters have to war, specifically to disarming bombs. As films go, it might be our best look at what war is going to look like for the next few decades. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend giving it a try.

I should say I have not seen Precious. I would like to. I understand it is terrific and I picked Mo’Nique because I think she is going to win and I needed a mark in the win column. It’s cheating, I know, but you’ve done it too, haven’t you? Haven’t you? Here is another sentence so this paragraph looks okay next to the image on the left.

There are about twice as many nominations for best picture this year because the Academy is hoping to level the playing field. Nearly 40% of the ballots go to actors, who tend to chose smaller-budget films based on acting prowess. The greater number of nominees actually benefits Avatar’s chances at best picture. Some of the nominations are, in my opinion, ill-chosen. Up in the Air should not be in the running, I don’t think. So here are my picks (Click to make them huge!). If you go here, you can make your own picks using Yahoo. Have fun watching the Academy Awards!

Don

Each time I read the Bible I’m taken aback by how much we dilute the power of its stories with sentimentalism. The story of Noah and his Ark has been reduced to a Children’s story (a God-orchestrated massacre of all humanity) and the story of the Birth of Christ into a regal pageant complete with gifts and robed choirs of angels (A poor virgin and her new husband delivering a baby in a manger of a stable. Followed by an angry king slaughtering all children under two years old to try to kill off the Messiah.)

What I like about the Bible is it doesn’t clean up history. It isn’t a clean book, and God does not always look good (from our finite perspective) and yet it doesn’t hide or sell or bait and switch, it just tells the truth.

One of the problems with sentimentalizing the text is that we begin to sentimentalize our actual lives. We begin to think the Christian life should be free of hardship. We think God is going to navigate us around the hard things. But there is really nothing in scripture that should lead us to believe this. What God offers, instead, is to be with us, to not abandon us, even in the midst of our hardship.

Laying in bed this morning I was thinking about a difficult thing I have to do. It’s nothing compared to some of the stuff you might be dealing with, just a big job I have to complete. I remembered the scripture from Philippians 4: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I’ve said that verse to myself a thousand times, I am sure. But laying there, I realized something the verse didn’t say. It didn’t say “I can do all things through Christ who makes it easy.”

This paradigm shift is important because if we think God is going to take away our troubles, we assume there is something wrong with us if He doesn’t. We assume we did something bad, or that God doesn’t like us, or perhaps even God Himself isn’t good. To be sure, some of the hardships in our lives happen because we made bad decisions, but even in this we are given the grace of a God who is willing to discipline us in love and restore us. A careful understanding of Biblical stories reveals every hero goes through difficult trouble. Nobody is spared.

In an age where we are taught through commercialism there should be no struggles in life that the purchasing of a product won’t relieve, the Bible is incompatible. But the age of commercialism has let us down. Many have found their stuff has made life more meaningless. What we’ve forgotten is that every great story has to involve a difficult ambition, and must then travel through the land of conflict. The best stories have their protagonist wondering if they are going to make it. What scripture teaches us, then, is that God will be with us in that place, and will give us the strength to endure a hard thing.

Here’s to the courage to face conflict, the bonding benefit of hardships, and to living better stories.

After taking the course, you’ll find that structuring an essay or even a novel is much easier. You’ll intuitively know what is worth focussing on and what to simply let go of. The most important part of most literary projects is the story. That’s why guys like Stephen King sell so many books. James Patterson hardly writes any of his own books anymore, he simply outlines a story and sends the story to a writer. It sounds like cheating, but honestly, people really do read for the story. The text around the story is just furniture in a house. Building the house is most important. So if you’re a writer, give Into the Elements a try.

A portion of the proceeds from Into the Elements go to benefit The Mentoring Project.

To be fair, my friend is a very moral man. And to be even more fair, I am being judgmental, to some degree, not because I am saying he has a false God, (there is nothing judgmental about making an observation) but because I honestly respect him a little less. He seems spiritually and emotionally unhealthy.

The truth is, there is one judge, and God does not look around to your friends to ask their opinions.

We were designed so our identity would be affirmed in a relationship with God. In other words, my feelings of self worth do not come from within me, they come from an external source. That source was supposed to be God. But in the fall of man, that relationship was severed (it had to be as God could not mix or mingle with anything opposing him, not because He is a jerk, but because He actually defines what is good in the first place) and so after the fall, we continue to look for affirmation from an outside source, and that source is each other.

All you have to do is turn on your television to see this. People sing to get others to clap, they act, play sports, spend millions on plastic surgery and so on and so on. We learn from an early age that people will affirm us if we are funny or smart or submissive or controlling. Our entire personality developed because these dynamics are in play.

That said, in Christian circles, the whole game gets confusing. Christians rightly affirm Godliness, theological accuracy, Biblical literacy, morality and zeal. So the Christian learns from an early age that if he has these characteristics, a jury of his peers will affirm him. And as well they should. But the problem comes when the opinion of the jury replaces the redemption we find in God. I once confronted this same friend about a wrong he had committed, and he became intense and angry. To him, I was threatening his very survival, his ace card (morality and righteousness) in the game. If his redemption would have come from Christ, he could see himself more objectively. But instead, he was a slave to the jury of peers.

This morning I was reading in Matthew, going back over the account of the birth of Christ. I just loved how God did not seem to care what religious people thought of Him, or, for that matter, His own children. The scriptures say Mary became pregnant while engaged, but not married to, Joseph. Now this happened because Mary needed to be a virgin, to fulfill prophecy but also that the birth would be a true miracle and an unquestionable seed from God Himself. That said, though, she was, in todays language, a knocked up unwed woman. Even Joseph wanted out of the whole situation. And he wanted out because he was a righteous man, who bowed to a jury of his peers. It took an angel of the Lord to talk Joseph into going through with the wedding.

So my question to you is, are you a slave to a jury of your peers? Do you always have to explain why you are right? How much do you care what religious people think of you? When somebody else is wrong, do you jump in quickly to tell them so, making yourself feel righteous? My answer to these questions is yes, I do. Doesn’t that stink?

This is all a question of motives, I realize. Nobody is condoning sin, or saying to revolt against religious people. That said, I think we would be a bit more emotionally stable to understand self-righteousness gets us nowhere, and the jury of our peers is neither an accurate or authoritative judge. It really is a waste of your time to defend yourself to anybody but God Himself. And it’s even more of a waste of time to claim any defense other than Christ crucified.

Imagine the time and energy we would save if we actually believed this to be true.

I actually do use one piece of cool equipment when I write. I don’t use it all the time, but I use it lots. It’s a kitchen timer. And I thought maybe passing along my use of it as a writing tip might be appreciated.

What do I use my kitchen timer for, other than for ready-bake cookies? I use it to focus. And maybe you can use it to focus, too.

When I have two or three writing assignments (as I do today) I just make a list, then pick one, then set my little timer for an hour or twenty minutes or whatever amount of time that specific assignment will cost me. And then, while the timer is ticking away on my desk, I don’t let myself do anything else. I don’t answer the phone, I don’t work on other projects, I don’t bake cookies, I just focus on that specific writing assignment. When the timer goes off, I decide whether I want to keep working on it, or move on. Most of the time, the assignment is done before the timer goes off (without the timer, I’d have gotten distracted and it wouldn’t have been completed). It’s a simple tool, but it works.

Without my timer, I get distracted, and it’s hard for me to prioritize my time. My mind works more like a junk drawer than a to-do list. But with the timer, I give myself permission to let other things slide, at least until that bell rings. I give myself permission to focus on one thing for a limited amount of time, and knock it out.

Rock Stars can talk about amps and pick-ups all they want, but show me a rock star with a sick kitchen timer like mine and maybe I will be impressed.

What is The Mentoring Project?

The Mentoring Project is a non-profit organization working to create hundreds of thousands of relationships just like the one between Bil and Shawn. We do this by partnering with churches to create a small, localized mentoring program. Churches either run the program independently, or utilize their men’s ministry or college ministry to run a mentoring branch. Right now, we are working with nine churches in Portland, Oregon. When we start a new program, we provide extensive mentor training that involves not just the mentors, but the entire church. The pastor preaches a sermon that launches the initiative, and from there we do extensive training. We partner with Big Brothers and Big Sisters (unless the church wants to use a different program, or simply mentor kids from within their church) to trim down the existing waiting list most cities have for a male mentor. In Portland, there is a 1000 kid waiting list for a Big Brother. We hope to work through that waiting list soon, and work with churches to sustain those relationships, then branch out to other cities until we are a national recruitment and training organization, not reinventing the wheel, but feeding existing and working programs.

We believe the government is large because the church has been too small. We believe fatherless boys are the lead domino affecting a number of social problems including crime, teen drop out rates, unwanted pregnancy and abortion, and eventually divorce rates. We talk openly at our board meetings about the most economically efficient way to shut down as many as 15% of American prisons within a single generation through one-on-one relationships with young, fatherless men. We believe there is only one institution that can turn back the tide on dysfunctional families, and that institution is the church.

Young kids with positive male role models have something to live for, somebody who is proud of them, somebody who cares about their well-being, a mature role model and example, and are much less likely to find trouble.

You can join us in turning the heart of the church to the fatherless generation by supporting a mentor here. We think we can change the world one relationship at a time, and change one kids world today. Thanks for being a role model for all of us, Bil.

You can learn much more about The Mentoring Project here.

(I’ll be traveling this week, so will most likely leave this post up as I won’t be able to create a new one from the road. Would you mind telling your friends about this post? Simply use the Facebook and Twitter icons below to spread the word. Every bit of exposure helps. Thanks so much!)