Silencing The Noise

Isaiah 55:1-13

 “Silencing the Noise”

28 February 2106 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            So, let’s play a little game of product recognition. I’ll say a slogan and you tell me what company used it as a tag line in their ads.

            Between Love and Madness lies obsession: Calvin Klein’s Obsession

            Breakfast of Champions: Wheaties

            Where’s the Beef: Wendy’s

            Eat Fresh: Subway

            Eat More Chikin: Chick Fil A

            Have it Your Way: Burger King

            Just Do it: Nike

            Maybe She’s Born with it, Maybe it’s …: Maybelline

            The Ultimate Driving Machine: BMW

            The Best a Man Can Get: Gillette

            We Answer to a Higher Authority: Hebrew National

            Where a Kid Can Be a Kid: Chuck E. Cheese

            There are some sources that say we are exposed to about 5,000 ads each day. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that we actually see that many ads each day, but rather we are in close proximity to advertising all around us. I found one study that agreed with that number but said that we only really see about 400 ads a day, and that of those we only really notice about 90 and are only affected by about a dozen ads a day.

           

            We live in a world that is driven by our purchasing power. The marketplace desperately wants our attention so that we can consume the goods they are hawking. Because our time is limited, they need to up the ante with the techniques and flashiness of the ads. How else can one compete with school, work, after school products, our desire to relax and travel, and all of the other places we feel we need to do to keep up with the Jones’ (Pun partially intended).

            Sometimes it seems as if the American Dream (if that ever was a real thing) has been completely taken over by a race to buy the next product that will solve all of our problems.

            George Carlin once said, “Advertising sells you things you don't need and can't afford, that are overpriced and don't work. And they do it by exploiting your fears and insecurities, and if you don't have any they'll be glad to give you a few by showing you a nice picture of a woman.”

Another comedian, Louis C.K. has said, “It seems like the better it gets, the more miserable people become. There’s never a technological advancement where people think, “Wow, we can finally do this!” … And I think a lot of it has to do with advertising. Americans have it constantly drilled into our heads that we deserve everything to be perfect all the time.”

Even Mark Twain, a king of one-liners, got in on the criticism writing in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

            Nor is this concern for advertising and the marketplace a new idea. A minister named Martin Dean Everett wrote in 1932, “It is impossible to understand the American public without taking into account the tremendous psychological effect of bringing up a generation of people in a daily environment of advertising. It is impossible to escape the advertising man; his sales talk assaults us in the morning newspaper, in the street car, with billboards along the highways, and in his shameless use of the radio. This means that from morning till night, in the midst of our work as in our recreation, we live constantly in an atmosphere of intellectual shoddiness. Every popular prejudice and vulgar conceit is played upon and pandered to in the interests of salesmanship. Everywhere material interests and herd opinion are strengthened to the loss of personal independence. The tendency is to think and speak for effect rather than out of one's inner life. There is a marked decline the ability to play with ideas, or to live the spiritual life for its own sake. Hence a decline in civilization of interest, humor and urbanity. Advertising tends to make mechanized barbarians of us all.”

            What does all this have to do with the Isaiah passage? Perhaps it’s that advertising has taken such a prominent voice that we actually start to believe in the false promises of Madison Avenue over the promises of God. This is powerfully stated by Simone Weil. “Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

            In the midst of the din of advertising, we tend to miss the still small voice of God speaking to us. The voice that truly leads us to water, sustenance, and truly living. (Play Video)

God isn’t in a religion of materialism, of pursuing the rat race, of not slowing down, of putting the market before others. A market-based religion will never have enough. The faith that Isaiah is calling us to is one that relies on God to fulfill our needs. Madison Avenue, despite how hard they try to convince us, can never fill our deepest needs.

But, Isaiah doesn’t just stop at telling us to focus on God for our needs and fulfillment. That would be too easy for a prophetic word. He goes another step and tells us that we should call on unknown nations and people and spread the Good News to them so they will run to God. God’s word won’t return empty from those places, but will accomplish God’s purpose not just in our lives but for the whole world. It is for this purpose that we have been glorified by God.

We live our lives surrounded by many people hawking snake oil to cure our woes. I don’t think any of our jobs or schools are compatible with becoming Luddites and ignoring the world. In fact, we’re called to be in the world for only in the world can we see the problems and become an effective light of Christ pointing people to a better reality. Let us work together and support each other to be amplifiers of the still small voice of God. Let us seek those holy moments around us and point others to them so that for just a moment, we all stop and see God at work above the noise. From those moments and whispers, we become more attuned to God all around us, allowing us to see God more and more each and every day. So let us go out from this place focused more on God and less on Madison Avenue so that the trees of the field will clap at the spreading of God’s light to the world.