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ADS DURING AMERICA'S GREAT SUPER BOWL SPECTACLE: HOW FAR WILL THEY GO WITH THE OCCULT AND LUST?

If you want to see how far and up front darkness has become in Western culture, you might want to peruse the commercials for the Super Bowl, although if catching spiritual fleas is a concern, you also may not.

We're no experts, because we don't really tune in very much, but one can catch enough of it in the play of daily news flow, and every year, they seem to get more "in your face." This year, they may be particularly nefarious.

Nefarious means evil. Let's call them what they are.

Mercedes Benz promises that this Super Bowl Sunday, "something sinister" is coming. Its teaser has a whirl of leaves entering a New Orleans restaurant as a song about the devil plays.

There is, as always, before all else, sex. This is nothing new. Half-dressed women "grace" many pitches. Last year a woman poising lewdly in a car was selling hamburgers (Hardees). If it's hard to see the connection between food and nudity, apparently they have discovered a subconscious glitch.

For half-dressed they are -- from Pepsi to Toyota to Bud.

Do yourself a favor: don't watch.

Stop watching this stuff.

Basically, there are a bunch of women in underwear (there for our kids to see).

Oh, there are good ads. There are clever ones. There are ones that are harmless. And in the right vein, sports are okay. But if you want to see what Christ meant about the "world" (which of course He came to oppose), there is no better place than in television advertisements.

“Please allow me to introduce myself," says the song "Sympathy for the Devil" (in the Mercedes ad). "I'm a man of wealth and taste...”

And haste.

America's new great holiday?

Or a vivid demonstration of its spiral downward?

The materialism is breath-taking.

America is breath-taking. (So is a punch to the solar plexus.)

Some is just rap-weird (plus gay sex).

There has been a homosexual actor with a message in eye paint ("Feb 3 2013") promoting the game for CBS as a mockery of those biblical message that Tim Tebow wore in his eye paint (before the league disemboweled him).

"Go daddy!" they sing as a woman disrobes. In a second Mercedes ad, a model manages to turn washing a car into an obscenity. (Let's give CBS some credit; it did reject an ad from a hard-core pornographic website.)

"Something sinister is coming."

Excuse the descriptions.

America is very ill. We all live on "Jersey Shores." (Get ready for more Hurricane Sandys.)

Or just: have another chicken wing.

Go to it, gladiators!

One of the tamer ads promotes superstition (if not sex, throw in a little bit of the occult -- or lots of it, if you are Mercedes).

Meantime, Sports Illustrated's Super Bowl issue has a photo of two men kissing.

But try mentioning Jesus.

As one apparently Christian columnist (oh, so uptight) wrote:

"As an armchair social scientist, this is intriguing. I’ve become a little too old not to connect the dots — to interrelate the conspiracy theories. To understand, when you look at it, how everything ads up.

"Here we have a song, which extols the triumphs of Satan, as seen by the Rolling Stones. It is used to sell Mercedes Benz vehicles in an advertising campaign, which is hinging its big unveil on the Super Bowl. In terms of advertising, the Super Bowl is the showcase of all things at the heart of consumerism. The Super Bowl is the most watched television event in the world. It is ultimately how we project Western culture to the billions of people watching the game around the globe.

"I’m not saying it’s wrong to own a Mercedes Benz. Maybe it has been someone’s lifelong dream to own a Mercedes Benz. The hood ornaments alone were once treasured stolen booty for a generation of gangsters and gangster wannabes. I’m certain a person who owns a Mercedes Benz figures my view of the car they drive is my problem, not theirs.

"I wonder, however, if Mercedes Benz has a clue as to what the ultimate fallout might be of hammering 'Sympathy for the Devil' behind its iconic nameplate. Don’t forget, I’m not saying something about Mercedes Benz — Mercedes Benz is saying it. And it sounds like, 'Please allow me to introduce myself — I am Satan and I drive a Mercedes Benz...' Janis Joplin asked for the Lord to buy her a Mercedes Benz — as it turns out she should have asked the Devil."

If you're going to watch football, and we do on occasion, spend the ad time praying for everyone watching the game. It's a tremendous opportunity.

Airs?

Who is prince of the power of the air?

And so we are where we are, and it is as it is.

Get with it, right?

Ease up.

Go with the flow.

Correct?

Pizza?

Chips?

Earth to your highness, Mercedes: You can relax now.

Something sinister already is here.