Whether it is the Amazing New Pro 2000 failing to measure up to ACME Co’s promotions, Rep Scott Grey breaking his campaign promises after your vote wins him the election, or the abandoned commitments made by your best friend or loved one, we have all felt the stinging betrayal of False Advertising.
These merchants of deception peddle their knock-off wares by making commitments that never measure up to the promises rendered in exchange for our money, power, or trust. Nevertheless, as sojourners to this world, we are ever in search of truth that will satisfy.
Often, in this quest, we inevitably turn to religion, only to be further disappointed by what we find lurking just beyond the doorways of the church; but should this be?
Who among you finds it reasonable to criticize the presence of the physically unfit within the walls of the local gym? Is not their attendance indicative of their own awareness and intent to improve the quality of their own life?
Or consider the man whose goal it is to strengthen his own health. He wanders the halls of the hospital’s terminal ward in search of a role model, only to leave discouraged and in doubt that such improved health is even possible.
Then why do some of us act so surprised when we find bad people inside the Church? If the Church receives sinners, isn’t that exactly what you would expect to find sitting in the pews or do you believe walking into McDonald’s somehow turns you into a hamburger by association?
If you find yourself in that predicament, do not blame yourself. You are as much a victim of False Advertising as the rest of us.
But just as there are knock-off Polystations, there are actual Playstations. Just as there are Scott Greys, there are Mother Theresas. And while there are many a Judas in the world, there are actual Jonathan’s who would go against Family and State to preserve your life.
The problem we all face in our quest is sorting through the junk to find the treasure. But the lull of False Advertising distracts us, and that is its modus operandi. A man was once seduced by the claims of a serpent that all the other fruit trees around him could not measure up to the value of the one tree denied to him. But after he was distracted from the plainly evident truth, he discovered that the power of this lie had utterly robbed him of the paradise he valued as well as the tree of life that would have kept him forever.
But if the Church truly contains the treasure we seek after, then why do so many within her walls live out lives in such blatant contradiction to the truth we desire for ourselves?
To answer that, let us consider an ancient story of a time when the Jews, having been freed by a powerful God, became lulled by False Advertising to remember fondly a time when they were still slaves, used and abused by their masters, such that even their own children were torn from their bosom, when their numbers became too great, and tossed into the Nile to feed the crocodiles. Such an obviously misguided perception is only possible by the beguiling power of False Advertising. And in that distraction they spoke a word that manifested itself in their midst when they accused their savior of bringing them out into the desert to die. Should we then be surprised that death suddenly came upon them in the form of vipers?
But their Savior was merciful and instructed Moses, their leader, to fashion a bronze serpent that would represent the poison they had brought upon themselves and to raise that bronze serpent upon a staff such that anyone who looked upon it would be healed.
Here is the catch. If they did not look at the serpent, this bronze serpent that would take away their poison, they would not be healed.
And in that fact the evil mystery is understood why many in the church are spiritually sick and dying. They come to the camp, but they fail to set their eyes upon the cross where the troubles that plague them were exchanged 2000 years earlier for the blessings that would restore them.
But those of us outside of the Church, who look in condemnation upon the misguided fools within the Church, are no better. For just as those in the Church set their eyes on something other than the cross, we set our eyes upon broken people, rather than the sacrifice, and in so doing, die inwardly from the truth lost in exchange for a lie.
Here is God’s truth: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
If the truth of peace, and not evil, of receiving a future and a hope appeal to you, then you will not find it anywhere else, not in any man, or in any teaching; no, not even in these ramblings. False Advertising has convinced many in the church that they can find that truth through the obedience of doing; if you want God’s promise, you must do this and you must do that, you must not do this and you must not do that. But the only obedience required by God is an obedience of faith: of believing. Setting your eyes upon Jesus Christ alone, not his apostles, not his preachers, not those who claim to be his followers, not on any of them.
Because if your eyes are set anywhere else, the truth will be robbed from you; the truth you have been searching this whole life for.
Change your mind today, choose to turn away from the False Advertisement that God is a lie, that God is out to harm you, or that He only wants to take from you, and choose instead to believe this truth:
God so loved you that He sent His only begotten son to die for you, that if you would only believe that he took upon himself the consequences of sin then you will inherit his place of right standing before God the Father as His own beloved child.
And those who turn their faith towards this truth discover that though the False Advertisements of the world still bite, their power is lost through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.