According to Sam Carr, a content marketer at PPC Protect with ten years of digital experience, the average person encounters between 6,000 and 10,000 ads per day! That’s a huge increase from the estimated 500-1,600 ads per day in the 1970s. Technology is responsible for most of that increase from the days when we encountered ads primarily on television, in newspapers, in magazines, and on billboards. In 2019, Google is estimated to have earned over $134 billion in advertising revenue alone.
That’s a lot to keep up with – and, ultimately, more than any of us can keep up with. We create all kinds of filters that we hope will block out the ads we aren’t interested in, but still, who has either the time or mental capacity to keep us with such sensory overload?
But it brings up an important issue: whose voice are we listening to?
For several weeks, I’ve been doing some research and study in the Epistle of James. That is where we hear the words, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.” (James 1:19) That verse always reminds me of the adage, “We have two ears and one tongue – that’s not mere biology.” Recently, it dawned on me that, while I’m convinced we live in a world that needs much less speaking and way more listening, we should carefully think about which voices we give attention to.
Do you remember the temptation of Jesus stories that Matthew and Luke tell in their gospel accounts? (Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13; Mark 1:12, 13 mentions this story, but gives few details.) In rereading those accounts, I realized Jesus had to decide whether or not He should listen to Satan’s voice. My sense of the text tells me that Satan wanted Jesus to think he was speaking on behalf of God. In two of his moves, Satan frames his “message” in terms of “If you are the Son of God . . .” In the other one – showing Jesus the kingdoms of the world – he makes himself out to be the ultimate power of the universe.
Jesus, far too smart for Satan’s tricks, actually quotes Scripture – the authentic voice of God – back at Satan in each of the three situations. Satan gives up on Jesus for a bit at the end of these 40 days in the wilderness, where Jesus is preparing for what is to come as He fulfills God’s mission for His life.
Jesus chooses not to listen to a voice that wanted Him to think it was from God, and He chose to listen to an authentic word from God.
In the same way that we are bombarded with more advertising than any human can keep up with, we are also bombarded with a wide array of supposed “words from God” about everything from vaccines and the pandemic to presidential politics. Proof-texting the message of the Bible has never been more common!
I once heard Stanley Hauerwas say that the worst invention of the second millennium was the printing press. He went on to say that the printing press, coupled with the Reformation idea of the priesthood of all believers, has been the excuse for anyone and everyone to see themselves as a Bible scholar and publish books. No telling what Hauerwas would say today about the internet, social media and blogs!
I am far from a solution to the problem of sensory overload and have few ideas about how we can lessen the number of messages of all kinds we receive daily. But I am confident that we can learn from Jesus on this issue and work at distinguishing between messages that people want us to think are from God and messages that are authentically from God – either in Scripture itself, or a reasonably accurate interpretation and application of Scripture.
The Bible tells us in multiple ways that God is not a God of confusion, and He isn’t a God who lies. All around me, I seem to encounter all sorts of confusion in the form of conspiracy theories and all kinds of lies in the name of protesting something someone doesn’t like. That’s not the voice of God.
The answer to sensory overload? At least in part, it could be to pay attention to whose voice we are listening to.
Wye Huxford 