Understanding Bowl Commercials Not Easy

Okay, I watched the Super Bowl.  And I took in all those commercials.  To be honest, I thought there were really a number of duds this year.  I kept on saying, “They spent $3 million for that!”  I will say that the beaver was my favorite however.

I admit that a number of the ads went over my head.  I found myself saying, “I don’t get it!”  And it was evident that many of the products being hawked were for people in a different season of life than me.

On Monday morning, I read a very interesting article.  It began to help me understand what had just happened.  The article, written by Stuart Elliott of the New York Times called “Super Bowl Ads Mine Decades of Americana,” claimed that you need a PhD in American culture to follow all the ads.  Elliott said that these ads mined six decades of American culture.  You had to have a working knowledge of pop icons, TV shows, history, and political leaders just to name a few.  No wonder I felt a little clueless at times.

But there was a silver lining for me.  I’m not just a student of the Bible; I love the Bible. And at times, I’m reminded that it can be a pretty deep book.  Different historical contexts, languages, literary genres, and life situations are all presented in the sixty-six books.  Sometimes, I worry that people, swimming in a pretty much Biblically illiterate culture, will be overwhelmed.

Fear not!  If people can invest enough time in Americana to understand Super Bowl commercials, they DO have the bandwidth to dig in and understand the Bible.  Yup, it takes time.  Yup, it takes “soaking in it.”  Yup, it is not necessarily easy.  In fact, it is probably easier to simply go with the cultural flow to understand who Eminem is.  But I came away with the firm conviction that it is possible for people to love not just the words of the Bible, but all of the nuance, history, and depth underneath it.

Let me give an example.  Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in John 3:14 saying, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” Jesus was telling Nicodemus about inheriting eternal life. In his words preceding this, he spoke of being “born again.”  And in the words immediately after this, he gives this infamous John 3:16 which is held up on signs at sporting events.  But what about this bronze serpent?

This is a reference in the Old Testament found in Numbers 21:9.  Wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites had grown impatient with God and Moses.  So God allowed snakes to come and bite them for their disobedience!  But the people quickly confessed their sin and ask for the removal of the snakes.  So God commanded Moses to make a bronze snake and place it on a pole.  People were told to look at the snake, “When anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.”  Think about the medical emblem and hypocratic oath that doctors take, but that is another bunny trail.

Can you see how much is going on here that the casual reader would miss? Can you glimpse the depth and even enjoy that there is so much going on?  Super Bowl commercial watchers, you have the tools!

I will not give up this dream.  That once again, the Bible will rise to the spot in our land where it is not just tolerated but cherished.

There is the old saying that the Bible is “shallow enough at its edges that a child may drink safely and deep enough for greatest intellect to be submersed.”  May we feel joy to enter the safe end, but feel the challenge to swim to deeper water.