CBS’ Super Bowl Advertising Dilemma :: Who Draws the Lines, Anyway?

It’s that time again.  The time where advertisers roll up their sleeves to deliver the most creative, effective and long-lasting ad campaigns of the year.  The time where we, as consumers, get to sit back and enjoy the simple pleasure of being entertained while subconsciously being swayed towards buying into a product or idea.  The time where thirty seconds of publicity dons a net worth of $3 million dollars for the cable company responsible for airing one of the most highly-rated events on television each year.

The Super Bowl.

And while fans and general spectators anticipate the game with different levels of urgency, the consensus question among most American citizens in the next few weeks will be, “So, where are you watching the game?”

You know it.  I know it.  Just about everyone knows it.  The Super Bowl is a big deal.  And what largely-publicized event can occur without a few disputes and dramas present?

Watching The Today Show this morning, my attention was nabbed the moment the subject of Super Bowl advertising came up.  On the show with Kathie Lee was a man by the name of Donny Deutsch, and the two of them were discussing a dispute that has evolved in the last few days concerning CBS, a commercial with Tim Tebow that voices a Pro-Life message, and a commercial from mancrunch.com advertising an all-male dating service.  Check the video after the break.  Particularly from 2:15 to 5:45…  

I’m hoping you didn’t pay too much attention to those first couple minutes and stopped the video around 5:45.  That show can be awful sometimes!  =)

The reason this particular segment really caught my attention, though, was near the end of the Super Bowl section (at about 5:00), they began asking some real serious questions.  And I’m not sure whether they really understood the scope of those questions or not.  If you listen, you hear almost a helpless cry for someone to answer the petition:  Who draws the lines?  Who’s right is it to draw those lines?

And in a society marked by a slow and steady distancing from a sovereign God, that question truly becomes both desperate and unanswerable.  And that’s a shame.

You see, without a just, moral, and perfectly righteous Creator, we don’t have a moral compass at all.  That’s not to say we don’t have the innate ability to do good things or help others or make decisions that benefit society, but we don’t do it on our own.  The Bible tells us that God made us in His own image (Genesis 1:27).  We have His fingerprints all over us.  The things we choose to do and not to do are based on a sense of morality that we neither invented nor perfected.  That morality comes directly from our Father.  It’s His goodness in us.  And when we decidedly distance ourselves from Him, we distance ourselves from true righteousness and justice.  We try to draw lines to determine what’s right and wrong, based solely on reason and logic, negating the source of our morality.  When that happens, everything becomes relative.   What’s good for me isn’t for you and vice-versa.  And inevitably, we find ourselves able to justify any means simply for the ends.

That’s a scary place to be.  It’s frightening to think that we could condone basically anything based on a sliding scale of right and wrong.  Lives get destroyed because we don’t want to step on toes.  We don’t want draw hard lines.  We don’t want to offend anyone, even at the risk of lives lost.

This is a huge, debatable, messy conversation to have, but it’s worth having.  What do you think about this?  Who draws the lines?  Is it about standing up for what we believe is right or what God says is right?  Who’s the enforcer?  When do we have to step up and realize that our wrongful actions that go directly against what God instructs only bring about chaos and destruction in our lives?  When do we stop blaming God for having so many rules and start seeing His laws and decrees as life-giving and life-saving?  What will it take for us to see Jesus, not as a political stepping-stone, but as the source of true life?  The centerpiece of our morality?  The reason we have any good in us at all?

And on, and on, and on.  A hundred more questions that cause a thousand more.

What are your answers?  What are your questions?

I covet them both…

Related posts:

1. Super Bowl Ads 2010 :: Should We Advertise Jesus?
2. 2000 And Counting :: What We Can All Learn From UK’s Historic Acheivement