At first glance, the exhortation by the Oregon-based corporate behemoth seems rather harmless and innocuous. In fact, give it a quick perusal while you're busy making dinner, paying bills online, or toying around with your favorite smartphone app and the entreaty comes across as downright positive, affirming, and motivating. After all, we all believe in something, don't we? Who of us wants to be viewed as merely coasting through life with no sense of conviction or creed to help us navigate a world that all too often proves itself to be morally and ethically rudderless?
Notwithstanding the aesthetic significance of this advertising shibboleth as a successful marketing ploy or motivational axiom, what I find most concerning is the fundamental question the statement inherently begets. That is, should believing in "something," regardless of its veracity or legitimacy, be considered a virtue in and of itself (as Nike® seems to think)?
In Scripture, the word 'believe' first appears in Gen. 45:26. It is the Hebrew verb 'aman and denotes having a firm and settled assurance in that which has been established as objectively true. During His first trial before Pontius Pilate, Jesus declared, "I have come into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice (Jn. 18:37)", to which Pilate retorted, "What is truth (Jn. 18:38)?"
