"You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."
Exodus 20:17

One of the keys to avoiding sin is avoiding temptation. As many have long observed, Eve’s first mistake that lead to eating the forbidden fruit was hanging around the tree. Since she knew God had said not to eat of that tree, it would have been wise not to go near it or listen to the “snake.”

There are similar “trees” of covetousness. Advertising is not inherently bad. It is how those selling goods and providing services let people know of their businesses that can be bad. Advertising has changed in my lifetime. I remember when advertisements were about informing potential customers or clients about the quality and price of products or services.

Advertising has drifted. Much advertising now tempts us to be discontent with what we have, beckoning us to join the beautiful people who have what we do not have (and often cannot afford without going into debt!).

A fair share of advertising features “snakes” telling us to sample fruit from trees we do not need and cannot afford. We might be wise to beware of the tempter and not spend too much time looking at advertising—which is not easy, since in our digital age, ads are flashed before our eyes practically nonstop.

Since we cannot escape advertising altogether, let us at least be aware of our tendencies to be discontent and to covet, asking the Lord to grant us grace to resist temptation.