Commercials and Coveting

Here is a quote by Richard Winters that our pastor used in his sermon on Sunday...

What does the advertising industry do to you? It wants its endless commercials and catalogs to breed in you dissatisfaction and discontent with your house, your car, your body, your clothes -- in other words, to stimulate in you a desire for more than you have. In old-fashioned biblical language it inspires you to covet. It promised you satisfaction, peace, meaning and happiness, but only if you get your needs met now.
The entertainment industry -- movies, videos, sports, commercials, television shows -- elbows its way into your home. All your needs can be met, at least for a while: Hungry? Order a pizza. Bored? Rent a video. Lustful? . . . And for a while these things make us feel alive and satisfied, but soon the same desires resurface. Thomas Aquinas would have said that such people suffer from "a roaming unrest of spirit."
It is estimated that by the age of twenty many young people have seen well over one million commercials. From advertisements, says Phipher, children learn "that they are the most important person in the universe, that impulses should not be denied, that pain should not be tolerated and that the cure for any kind of pain is a product. They learn a weird mix of dissatisfaction and entitlement. With the messages of ads, we are socializing children to be self-centered, impulsive and addicted."