The Stories of Our Lives

      I know I’m a little bit weird. But sometimes I enjoy commercials. I got this from a book on teaching logic that encouraged teachers to have children watch commercials and then consider the claims made to see how logical they are. Finding the fallacies and propaganda is somewhat fun to me.

      Just this week I picked up on a very interesting spin in teeth whitening commercials. One night I saw a commercial for a leading brand that put down another leading brand for dissolving. It showed a split screen; on one side was a woman putting the whitening strips on her teeth and the other showed a woman putting dissolving strips on. The announcer asked something like, “How is your whitening?” The woman with the strips that remained smiled brightly. The woman with the dissolvables said, “Mine’s already gone.” The moral: dissolving strips don’t stay on long enough to do any good, strips that remain work better.

      The next night I saw another commercial. This one was for the dissolving strips. It had a similar split screen. This time, the woman with dissolving strips was all excited because she could put on her strips and then leave. The one with the strips that had to be manually removed looked lonely, dejected and abandoned. She bemoaned the fact that she was shut up in her house whitening her teeth. The moral: strips that remain burden you, dissolving strips give you freedom.

      Same products, two different stories.

      Then I realized how much like our lives this is. Like the commercials spin the story to make their own product look good, how easily we can spin the stories of our lives to overlook  flaws and our needs for improvement.

      Perhaps this is why the Bible uses the phrase “Do not be deceived” repeatedly. Do not be deceived, unrighteousness will not enter the kingdom of heaven (I Corinthians 6:9). Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals (I Corinthians 15:33). Do not be deceived, we will reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7). Do not be deceived, every good gift comes from God (James 1:16-17).

      We naturally want to put our lives in the best light. Certainly, there are times for being pumped up and seeing what a good job we do at some things. However, growth means revealing what needs to be changed and changing it. There is only one way to do that. Be not deceived. We must not spin the stories of our lives, but look at our lives honestly. Let’s face it, we can’t propagandize our way into heaven. Spinning the story may work for selling teeth whitening systems. It doesn’t work for growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. Let’s make sure we are honest with ourselves. Only then will we grow without being deceived.

Edwin L. Crozier