Nike’s new ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick has proven quite controversial. The mere fact that Kaepernick is the face of the campaign has been enough for some people to claim they will boycott Nike. Others have proudly posted pictures of themselves wearing Nike shoes in solidarity with both Nike and Kaepernick. I just read that Tiger Woods called the Kaepernick ad “a beautiful spot.”
So what should we think of the Nike commercial? Specially, how should Christians respond to the Nike ad?
My basic problem with the commercial is that Nike and its recent ad campaign represent the spirit of this age. What is the spirit of this age? It is a self-exalting, self-glorifying ideology that you are your own god and the master of your own universe. There is nothing that you cannot accomplish. The god of this age is the self. And we find this god exalted throughout Nike’s ad campaigns. Whether they are telling you to “find your greatness” or that you are “unlimited,” they are preaching to you the god of self. Christians must recognize this as idolatry.
Even the religious language Nike uses should stand out. This language mimics the language of the Bible. The ad talks about “non-believers.” These “non-believers” might call your dreams crazy, but when they do so, they are really complimenting you for dreaming so big. But what do these “non-believers” not believe in? They don’t believe in you and your dreams. They don’t believe in the greatness within you.
The tag-line of the commercial also uses very religious language. “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Some have changed this to “Believe in God. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” But this one-word change shows that the content of our belief, or as we might say the object of our faith, matters. What are we believing in? What are we trusting in? Nike’s answer to this question is two-fold. In one sense, it doesn’t really matter. Just believe in something. There is no objective standard by which we can determine what each person should believe. So just believe. But really, Nike’s more persistent answer is that you should believe in you and what you can do. Believe in yourself and the greatness within you.
To be clear, Nike is preaching a hopeless message. There is no hope in believing in yourself. There is no hope in finding the greatness within you. Nike is setting people up for disappointment because they are encouraging people to worship and exalt themselves, a false god if there even was one. If we know anything about ourselves, we ought to know that we will let ourselves down. We will make mistakes. We will fall short. So to worship at the alter of me is a recipe for disaster on so many levels.
So is there something wrong with Nike’s new ad campaign? Sure. But there has been something wrong with Nike’s ad campaigns all along. They have been preaching a false religion with a false god of self for some time now. They are preaching the religion of you and your greatness. And they do this because they are representatives of the spirit of the age in which we live. They may say they are only trying to sell shoes, but they are also trying to sell us on a philosophy. And they hope we will buy into this philosophy by buying their shoes. In the same way that the prosperity preacher appeals to someone’s love of money to try to get them to hand over their money to the preacher, Nike is appealing to our love of ourselves in an attempt to get us to hand over our money to them.
So why does any of this matter for Christians? Should we really expect anything different from Nike? I don’t see why we should. For those intent on boycotting, we can come up with many other reasons to boycott Nike. In years past we were told to stop buying Nikes because of their use of sweatshops. I stopped buying Nike shoes over 2 decades ago because their high arches didn’t work well with my flat feet.
So how will I respond to this Nike commercial? I am far less concerned about who delivered the message than the message that was delivered. I am not going to burn the Nike shoes I just bought my kids a few weeks ago. And I will not worry about buying Nike shoes for them the next go round, if for no other reason that I am not sure that New Balance or Reebok or any other shoe company will offer a better message. But I will seek to guard my kids against the dangerous idolatry of self and the self-exaltation that is so prevalent in our culture and in Nike’s ads. And I will continue to pray that they turn away from self and to Christ crucified and raised from the dead.
The God of self offers us no hope. The only hope we have is to be found in that while we loved ourselves and worshipped ourselves, a mockery of the creator of the universe if there ever was one, that Christ died for ungodly idolators like me. So while Nike’s commercial may expose the hopeless idolatries of our age, Christians have the chance to proclaim the only place true hope can be found. As the song says, “Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame” (even if that frame is my own) “but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”
“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 (ESV)
A Family of Faith 