Only Jesus: Don’t Be Deceived | Colossians 2:8-15
Did you watch the Superbowl? It was the highest rated Superbowl in history with over 202.4 million viewers; up 7% from last year. Advertisers paid $7 million per 30 second commercial. (Door Dash Deal) It made me think about: how many advertisements does an average person see each day? A study by USC found: “People see roughly 5,000 ads per day. There are 5.3 trillion display ads shown online every year. On average, children see 20,000 thirty-second commercials each year. Adults see an average of 2 million of those on a yearly basis.” John Mark Comer writes, “With the rise of social media empires and their spooky digital algorithms, these powerful forces now have direct access to our flows of consciousness every time we slide our thumbs across our phones. What we are led to believe are just ads, news links, retweets, and random digital flotsam are, in reality, mass behavior modification techniques intentionally designed to influence how we think, feel, believe, shop, vote, and live. To quote the tech philosopher Jaron Lanier, “What might once have been called advertising must now be understood as continuous behavior modification on a titanic scale.” What seems to be cool, cute, funny, and entertaining is shaping and conforming us to manipulate and control us. Scary thoughts but real thoughts. Reality is that believers are being shaped by the world more than we are shaping the world.
Paul is writing to a young, growing church who had remarkable faith, love and hope in the gospel, and he is trying to “vaccinate” them from culture of counterfeit spirituality around them. There were those who wanted to manipulate and influence them for evil. The heart of Paul’s letter is a call for believers to continue to “walk in Christ, rooted, grounded and established in the gospel and overflowing with gratitude.” We must never get over who Jesus is and what He has done for us. Paul is now specifically talking about the kinds of counterfeit spirituality and how to deal with it. Paul is warning us not to be captured by the foolishness of the world but be captivated by the fullness of Jesus Christ.