As I entered Munich Central Station on my journey to church, I looked outside the train window. I was paying close attention to fashion billboards, like the ones promoting designer brands like Louis Vuitton and Chanel, for a particular project of mine. I was focused on analyzing the storytelling of advertisements across Europe, accessing their messaging, strategy, and tactics. I was entering the advertising industry, and here I began to visualize both ethical challenges and joyful opportunities that awaited me.
Many of England’s skincare ads told women they couldn’t leave the house without a perfected look. France’s McDonald’s ads magnified French stereotypes propagated in the Netflix series Emily in Paris. Austria’s Under Armour print ads presented women as though they were a singular body type. These European advertisements — along with the choir of the 10,000 daily worldwide advertisements I’ve encountered everywhere from my Minneapolis commute to international airports — portrayed distinct, false narratives of romantic relationships, body image, status, and perfection. It was in this series of moments that I realized the immense responsibility advertisers hold and how, as a Christian in the industry, I have a duty to lean into the theological truth of the imago Dei as I carry out my role in God’s grand story.
To articulate advertising’s dramatic influence on American society, Jean Kilbourne leaned on late sociologist George Gerbner’s timeless perspective:
For the first time in human history, most of the stories about people, life, and values are told not by parents, schools, churches, or others in the community that have something to tell, but by a group of distant conglomerates that have something to sell.
Advertising as an industry has grown into one that often objectifies humans as commodities. The value of humanity originates from a prized identity as the imago Dei, “living statuettes,” and “royal” sons and daughters of God, as scholar Catherine McDowell says. But the story the world of buying and selling tells about humanity is different. And it can’t quite get it right.
Consumerism tells a blatant lie: You will find true satisfaction here. It’s marked by contractual, fleeting relationships between consumers and brands, and an idolized depiction of worldly fulfillments has cast consumers in a storyline they were never created to star in. The story consumerism fails to tell is a better one: Jesus’s new covenant story of agape love, reconciliation, and renewal. The new covenant story contributes to the flourishing of all humankind and is marked by unfathomable sacrifice. On the other hand, Tim Kasser explains in The High Cost of Materialism, the meta-script of advertising finds its way into consumers’ worldviews and manufactures both needs and wants that fill their earthly treasure chests, but lead to the grave.
Consumers Were Made for More
C.S. Lewis often spoke of the German word, Sehnsucht: humanity’s endless desire and longing to find true fulfillment in this lifetime. The advertising industry may try to repress this relentless longing with the momentary hopes of today and the thrills of tomorrow. This succumbs to a reality that mirrors the state of idolatry reflected in Paul’s Areopagus Address in Acts 17:16–34, where the people of Rome — who filled nearly every crevice of the city with graven images — had an idol devoted to an “unknown God” and failed to revere the Lord as their Creator (see Acts 17:22–23). The marketplace today embodies ancient Rome’s reputation of being a place with many ideas, discussion and idols, a hunger and thirst for something consumers can’t quite put into words.
Gregory Beale poses a profound view of idolatry that speaks to the current, relentless age of consumerism, writing: “What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.” Born to steward their God-given gifts as the imago Dei, humanity was created to only worship and commune with the living God. Advertising unchecked turns consumers away from the narrow path — away from picking up their own cross daily and engaging in sanctification — and toward counterfeit gods that lose all power and dominion in the face of the rightful king (see Col 3:1; Matt 7:13–14, 16:24; Isa 40:22).
The work of advertising, however, does not always need to stand in opposition to the calling of a Christian life and can be used to broadcast the creativity of the great artist.
To combat the story of consumerism, advertisers must first uphold the consumer’s identity as the image of the triune God and locate their own place in the bigger story, the biblical meta-narrative. The work of the righteous yields eternal impact and contends for the welfare of the imago Dei — and is full of “rescue, equity, and restoration,” Amy Sherman writes in Kingdom Calling. This is a vision of a city that rejects individualism, materialism, and neoliberalism. A vision like this may be deemed as a far-away dream or myth to society, but those who know that the rightful king has come, and is coming again, faithfully agree to partner with Jesus.
The grand narrative of Scripture challenges the story of the United States’ consumer culture and must be winsomely retold by the church today, as Michael W. Goheen explains in his article “The Urgency of Reading the Bible as One Story.” It is the church that understands the man-made, counterfeit gods of consumerism fail to satisfy the human heart and curate a consumer identity that leaves all humanity thirsty for true living water — water that truly satisfies one’s soul.
Here, advertisers should commit to helping consumers reclaim their identity and focus their attention on uncovering their valuable place in the biblical meta-narrative. This is not a call for Christians to abandon the market altogether; rather, it’s a call for the church and for those who labor in this industry to see their work as a part of a biblical meta-narrative displayed innovatively to consumers through storytelling, Michael Cafferky argues in his article “Integration through Narrative” in the Journal of Biblical Integration in Business. The power of story has long ignited the flame of the early church and strengthened the collective body of Christ. The power of storytelling rests in its ability to transcend cross-cultural barriers, light torches of unity in times of division, and characterize one’s life with defining purpose. It begins with the imago Dei. From there, Christians in industry — even in advertising — can begin to envision a redemptive and God-honoring vision of their work that calls humanity back to the garden, where they are first called to steward their resources with excellence.
Rejecting Narratives of Consumer Culture
As consumers wake each morning and interact with thousands of advertisements, they are invited to partake in a litany of stories. Stories of contractional romance, unattainable beauty, and pointless fame lead humanity to approach God in the style of consumerism. However, Goheen clarifies, “It is not that way with the biblical story; we are to remain in its world, find the meaning of our life there, and fit our lives into its narrative structure.”
Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew offer an approachable way for us to understand the biblical narrative in The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. The comprehensive content and story of Scripture, they say, can be intricately outlined by a Shakespearean play framework, suggested by N.T. Wright in Jesus and the Victory of God. In this framework, believers are called to enter the stage and actively perform each scene of Scripture — five critical scenes of the biblical story that all build to Jesus’ act of reconciling the world back to God through the power of the new covenant.
The Shakespearean model, Bartholomew and Goheen note, emphasizes that an ancient script has been recovered and originally consisted of six main acts, but the Shakespearean actors are only given around five and a half basic acts of the story. The Shakespearean actors are now instructed to absorb every word of the text, which involves writing it in their hearts and envisioning themselves going head-first into the complexities of the play. This way, they can ensure that they are equipped to personally enact the final fifth act. Likewise, then, in order to enact the final fifth act, believers are called to shake the dust off their Bibles.
The final two scenes of the biblical meta-narrative, Jesus’s ministry of reconciliation and the great commission of the church, involve grasping the true joy of one’s salvation, living with hopeful expectation of Jesus’s return, and bringing heaven to earth as disciples of Jesus (Heb 12:2; Matt 24:36, 28:16–20; Rom 8:24–25).
Christians at work are to lead with a distinct, eternal perspective that builds anticipation for Jesus’s ministry of reconciliation — reconciliation that thoughtfully integrates authentic stories that promote connection, inspiration, and transparency. To do this, Christians are to live into each scene of the biblical meta-narrative and creatively act out the final scene with “innovation and consistency,” Goheen argues. The enactment of this final scene involves a wholehearted devotion to restoring what sin has corrupted.
At Center Stage: the imago Dei
Returning to the creation narrative in Genesis 1:27, the paintbrush is in God’s hand as he designs his most beloved creation: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Humans: the only creation to bear the image of the triune God and a direct representation of his rule over the cosmos. To summarize the beauty of this passage, God begins to portray His creative heart in His creation as he specifically designs humanity in his tselem — the Hebrew word for image — and děmût — the Hebrew word for likeness. Every breath among humanity is evidence of his all-surpassing power.
What if every marketing campaign, social media caption and sales pitch was conducted through this lens and truly celebrated the image of humanity that God declared as “very good” at the beginning of time?
A prominent example of this coming to life both in past and present include 2004 Dove’s Real Beauty campaign that worked to redefine what culture deems as beautiful through including real, unphotoshopped models of all body shapes, ethnicities, and age in a series of marketing initiatives. This campaign was a catalyst for Dove, leading the brand to later debunk the photoshop process in another commercial and pledge to never utilize AI to replace or portray women. Advertisers are to celebrate the work of God, reminding consumers of the image they bear.
3 Questions for Advertisers
Entering the stage to enact the missing and final piece of the biblical narrative, Christians are called to co-rule with God as they manifest his presence. A theology of work, Sherman argues, is central to humanity’s identity as the imago Dei. Every work offered unto the Lord has an eternal, lasting impact. Christians are to actively represent his kingdom through transforming the garden of Eden into a city. A city where, for an advertiser, the vitality, livelihood, and vibrancy of all humankind is uplifted in each campaign. This means that every act of ethical advertising can be a fragrant offering to the Father, contending for the needs and welfare of his creation, a praise that moves to heaven’s grand song.
As advertisers contemplate a covenantal approach to their work, I propose that the following questions be priority:
- Will the act of exchange between the consumer and the brand be led with empathy, compassion, and love, contributing to the overall flourishing of society?
- Does this campaign see consumers through the lens of the imago Dei, as “living statuettes” and royal representatives of the living God?
- Is this campaign’s message or story driven by the purposes described in the complete biblical meta-narrative, such as “innovation and consistency,” with the ultimate goal of making a kingdom impact and restoring the biblical vision of the Garden of Eden that expands beyond the garden gates?
There is no better time than now to view advertising as a distinct vocation and calling. The biblical notion of reconciliation communicates a powerful act of “mutually beneficial” exchange that can be illustrated in a normative practice of contending for the well-being of the buyers, maintaining ethical standards, and marketing products and services that enhance consumers’ lives. More specifically, David Hagenbuck in “Marketing as a Christian Vocation,” frames the great exchange of value within advertising as one that replaces an object for one of higher worth to contribute to the welfare and livelihood of all humankind.
A primary way to live into my Chirstian calling is to add to God’s redemptive beauty. Consumers’ souls crave soul-deep beauty — one that brings them to their knees in surrender, meets them in their midnight hour, and finds its footing in the Messiah. Every day, consumers will experience both the brokenness and gift of advertising.
My prayer is that Christian advertisers would create work that beckons the prodigal back home, showcases the vast beauty of God who has no end and invites them to feast at a grand table — a table where all humanity can return to Eden and rejoice in the creativity of a great King.