Why It’s Not About You!

You may resent what you're going to read if the title offends you.

Let's be honest, we have become a society absorbed in self, everything revolving around "me". I’m not talking about the “me generation” baby boomers, or the “generation me,” millennials. I’m referring to our culture today. We have come to a point where truth is replaced with my feelings, emotions, and opinions.

All we need to do is browse through our social media apps, and what do we see or read? Nearly everything pertains to “me.” Not just the images and postings of self, but the advertisements that cater to the individual.

Did you know American businesses, small and large, spent $297.7 billion on advertising for the year 2021? That’s $297,000,000,000 spent for you to buy products and services from businesses here in America. The population of America is roughly 332,000,000. American businesses spent around $894 in the year 2021, for you to buy their products. Granted these are all rough numbers.

Advertisers know what you want, they spend billions of dollars figuring out what you want to buy. Every day we submit our personal and private information on the world wide web and phone apps. This juicy information is deconstructed and analyzed with products and services created to fulfill that need.

Man has an appetite far greater than it can fill, and advertisers know it.

I am not saying businesses are wrong for advertising, because advertising is a way of doing business. It’s a way of getting a product or service out on the market with the hopes of a buyer. This practice of advertising has been around for thousands of years, in fact, just after the creation of man.

What’s hilarious is that we are suckers, and we will buy into anything that seems good to us.

Would you buy sand at the beach? Well, people buy sand at the beach all the time. Beach vendors purchase bulk quantities of bottled sand art, shipped from China, and resale them at the beach for a profit.

Did you ever notice how much packaging they use for the products you buy? The packaging of products is how they lure you into buying the product. I remember as a kid seeing the cool free toy pictured on cereal boxes. I would beg mom to buy the cereal, only to be duped into some cheap toy. It didn’t matter to me… I continued to want the toy in the cereal box, which meant more cereal boxes sold.

Did you know when God created the Garden of Eden it was perfect? Nothing needed to be changed, everything was in its place exactly where God wanted it to be. The whole system that God created worked perfectly. Adam and Even had all that they ever needed. They had each other, they were not short of food and they were given dominion over all of God’s creation. What more could they ask for?

For Adam and Eve, it was not enough.

Satan repackaged and relabeled what God created. Just like the vendor selling bottled sand at the beach. Throw in some color and glitter, and the sand looks much more appealing, but in the end, it’s sand.

Satan in his evil ways advertised God’s creation as not good enough, It could be better. Throw in the, you can live forever, you can enjoy greater pleasure, and you can be wise like God - and boom! Eve took the bait and Adam went along with it. (Genesis Chapter 3)

You see, we have all inherited the sin nature from Adam. We are all born into sin, it flows through our veins and our thoughts. I’m sorry to break the bad news. But, we are selfish and self-centered and nothing is more important than, you guessed it. You!

I’m not going to leave you hanging on a limb, God has a solution, a very simple solution to our problem. He loves us so much, He died for us and gave Himself for us, so we could have a personal relationship with Him. So personal it's like a marriage and like every marriage, it's not about you, but your spouse. (Ephesians 5:25-29)

So, why is it not about you? Because in the end, it’s about Jesus!