Religion & Liberty Online

Seinfeld Sounds Like a Prophet in Skewering Materialism

Jerry-Seinfeld-Clio-Speech-2-700x450Out of all the passages in the Bible, I suspect the advertiser’s least favorite verse is Isaiah 55:2: “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?”

Advertising — like most other forms of marketing — can serve a noble and necessary function. But even most ad executives will admit that much of what they do is intended to fuel our desire to spend money on things we don’t really need and which cannot satisfy us.

Yet even knowing this truth we seem to never tire of hearing about the latest and greatest products and services. As the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes, “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. . . Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? (v. 1:8,10).

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is neither a preacher nor a prophet. But when the advertising industry recently gave him their highest award, he satirically skewered advertising-fueled materialism in a manner that is almost Biblical.

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).