Who Is Really Blessed? A 9-Day Devotional from Skye JethaniSample

IF JESUS WAS SERIOUS . . .THEN OUR IMAGE ISN’T EVERYTHING.

JAY WALKER-SMITH, the president of a marketing firm, told CBS News in the 1970s that the average American was exposed to approximately five hundred ads each day. In 2006, he said it was likely as high as 5,000. We are bombarded by messages and images designed to make us discontent and envious. Some worry that an ad-saturated society will make us materialistic — more occupied with possessions than with God or people. That is certainly concerning, but there is another aspect to ads we don’t often consider.

In one way or another, most ads are about image — either the image of the brand being advertised or the image of the consumer the ad is targeting. In many cases, these two image identities are intertwined. While there is nothing inherently evil about marketing, absorbing thousands of image-focused ads each day can lead us to believe that our external image is all-important, and that what is beneath the surface and beyond the perception of a superficial culture is irrelevant. Simply put, ads make us think that it’s what’s on the outside that counts.

Long before social media marketing and algorithms, people in Jesus’ culture also fixated on their external image. Of course, a person’s image wasn’t about brands and possessions as much as religious practices and symbols of piety. Jesus, however, dismissed the importance of the external to emphasize the internal. In God’s kingdom, outward piety without inward purity is the definition of hypocrisy. This is why Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” He is more concerned with our internal posture toward God. If the heart is good, what we produce on the outside will be good as well. If our heart is wicked, no amount of image management on the outside will be enough to make us right with God.