Do You Worship Chocolate or Coffee?

If it wasn’t for Magnums, ice cream would just be for kids. Thanks to their clever marketing, Streets were the first to make it acceptable for a grown up to walk down to the corner shop and fork over more than $2 for an ice cream. And it’s a good thing too, because as much as I love a Paddlepop, it’s got nothing over an Almond Magnum.

The Magnum adds have always been a bit provocative. Their previous ads have featured the Seven Deadly Sins and the temptation of Adam and Eve. Most of their ads could double for advertisments for phone sex lines. They’re not very subtle. And their current campaign isn’t going to change that. Do you worship Magnums? If you don’t, the current campaign is telling you that you should.

Are You A Worshipper?

We are a people who worship many things. We worship our lifestlyes, our possessions, our relationships, our sexuality, our televisions, our stomachs. Because of our sinful natures, we worship anything in this created world before we turn our eyes to the creator. Normally that worship is subtle. Normally we need to have our eyes opened to it. Your average non Christian on the street would deny that they worship anything. But they do. That’s why I was so surprised to go to the Magnum website. Because here, everyone is declaring what they worship. Not what they value, not what they enjoy, not what they love, but what they kneel down and worship. It’s an eye opener.

Go to the site and hover over each of the worshippers. People are in two camps – those who worship chocolate and those who worship coffee. See what other things these people admit to worshipping. I worship sex. I worship my iPhone. I worship my boyfriend or girlfriend. I worship alcohol. I worship parties. I worship World of Warcraft. I worship my family. I worship rock and roll. I worship my car. I worship shopping. I worship my cat. I worship myself.

Never have I seen people be so honest about what is at the centre of their lives. The things that they prioritise above all. The things that give their lives meaning and purpose. The things they can’t live with out. The things that they honour and obey. Our culture worships many things that aren’t God. And it’s getting to a point where we are proud of it. We are proud of our triviality. We are proud of our decadence. We are proud that we are living completely in the now without a care about what God thinks or what’s going to happen next. We shouldn’t be proud. We should be ashamed.

At the time of writing this, over 7,500 people have added their gods to this site. Over 7,500 people have declared what they worship. Some have claimed Jesus as their object of worship. They are in the minority.

When God rescued his people Israel from Egypt, he sat them down and gave them the Ten Commandments. A list of rules to follow if they wanted to live God’s way. What was the first Commandment? “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2-3) If you can’t follow this Commandment, give up on the next nine because you don’t stand a chance. Even when God was performing miracles in their presence, sending prophets and judges, defeating enemy nations on their behalf, giving them every thing they needed to survive, Israel stuffed it up. They turned towards other gods. They built idols and altars to these foreign gods. These gods who were nothing before the one true God who created all things. And they were punished for it.

We’re no better. We are commandment breakers. We openly and blatantly worship other gods. They may not be gods in the traditional sense, but we still bow down before them. Money, sex, family, ego – all these things, when put before God, are false gods. And it is incredibly disturbing how much we knowingly and purposefully worship these gods. As a culture, we are not worshipping in ignorance. We are not even worshipping in secret and shame. We are declaring our allegiance to sin and worshipping the created instead of the creator. Our society needs to hear the gospel of Jesus so very much. They need to hear that there will be a time of judgement, when God will call people to account for what they have done. The only means to escape the inevitable punishment is through the death and resurrection of Jesus. So who are you worshipping? Because your iPhone won’t spare you from God’s wrath.

What did I put down? What do I worship on the Magnum website? I worship the one true God who created all things – including chocolate.