What we fear controls us. Satan knows this and so do marketers. And while the story here features a company using fear to save lives, the more frequent use of fear is to control people for less noble purposes.
A good bit of marketing does not merely target our needs but also our fears. Thus many commercials begin their appeal by subtly indicating that we are not pretty enough, or not popular enough, or that we might have bad breath, or that we haven’t really lived and will not reach our potential unless we use “Product X.” If we do not have or use “Product X” we are inadequate; our life is a failure and others will surpass us or look and be more successful than we are. Other commercials warn us of every disease, calamity, or possible trouble. Then after inciting these fears, they offer to sell us medicines, insurance, alarm systems, or financial securities.
Of themselves, these sorts of appeals are not evil, but they do show how effective fear is in motivating and even controlling us. Companies spend billions on these commercials because they know that they work.
Satan, too, uses fear to control us—especially the fear of rejection. Most of us have a natural desire to get along with others and to avoid unnecessary conflict. But given our fallen nature, we have this desire to a great fault. The desperate desire to fit in and be approved is one of the deepest wounds in the human heart. So pervasive is this sinful drive of fear that I have often wondered why it isn’t the “Eighth Deadly Sin.” As a sinful drive, this fear leads us to countless other sins.
So much do we fear rejection and not being popular that we will sin in very serious ways in order to gain the approval of others and the world. Young girls will give away their bodies to mere boyfriends in order to be approved. Young men will join gangs and get in all sorts of trouble to be approved and accepted. People will spend enormous amounts of money buying things they cannot really afford just to impress people they do not even really know or like. People will walk up to a group engaged in very ugly gossip or unchaste conversation and join right in just to gain entrance to the group. People will dress and act immodestly, even if it’s uncomfortable, just because “everyone else is doing it” and they feel they must also in order to be accepted and approved.
The list could go on but you get the point. What we fear controls us.
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