Slogans abound... you find them everywhere.  They are the company tag-lines that have come to be identified with certain products or brands.  There’s Nike’s catchphrase: Just do it!  Or MasterCard’s famous line: There are some things that money can’t buy; for everything else there’s MasterCard.  Even the confectionary makers have got in on the act.  M&M’s slogan is: Melts in your mouth; not in your hands.

Having just gone through another Federal election most Aussies are aware there are political slogans too.  There’s everything from the Australian Labour Party’s ‘A better Future’... to Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party with its ‘Save Australia – Freedom Forever’.  The Coalition ran with the slogan ‘Go for Growth’ while the Greens opted for ‘A Future for All of Us’.

Slogans are a nice catchy way of getting a message across.  Perhaps a political message; or maybe a message about a product!  The trouble is that slogans have their limitations.  Does Nike really want to encourage a criminal to act out his thoughts about an armed robbery?  Just do it?  Yeah, for sure!  Not!  The point is that a slogan isn’t much good unless there are certain clear principles and sound ideas that underlie that slogan.

Let me give you an example.   Christianity has its slogans too but our slogans also have their limitation.  A good Christian slogan is ‘Jesus Saves’.  But I once saw that slogan painted as graffiti on a huge boulder beside the highway: Jesus Saves.  But underneath it someone had added: ‘Which bank?’  To understand what we mean by ‘Jesus Saves’ we have to understand that we humans are objects of God’s anger because of our rebellious nature but Jesus came to rescue us from the condemnation that we rightly deserve.  So ‘Jesus Saves’ is more than just a slogan; it’s actually a wonderful reality.

I got to do some thinking about slogans during the recent election.  We had cause to contact one of the local candidates about an issue that had come up.  The response was most unsatisfying.  The slogan on the candidates advertising was clear but the policies behind the slogan were not.  My wife commented: “This candidate would seem to be missing a moral compass, no matter how appealing the election slogan.”

But there was another encounter with slogans during the election too.  I had put up my hand to help out the Australian Electoral Commission on polling day.  I was appointed to a polling place in a local educational institution.  We were allowed to use their canteen for our coffee and lunch breaks.  All around the inside of the canteen’s serveries slogans had been pasted to help the canteen staff, relate well to the students.  You know the kind of slogans I mean.  You also find them often as memes on social media.  “Do good to others and they’ll do good to you!”  “Relationships are built on trust”  “Sometimes you need to run away just to see who will come after you.”

I have no problems with these slogans per se.  In the Bible the book of Proverbs has many pithy sayings that would make excellent social media memes and that would look good on the inside of a canteen servery.  I guess my concern is the same concern that we had with the local election candidate.  These days are we tending to resort to slogans because we don’t want to think through principles and policies?  Or even worse: are we resorting to glib punch lines because we no longer have a moral compass?

It’s interesting that the Bible has both the slogans and the policies and principles.  The slogans you can find in the book of Proverbs, the policies and principles you find in the teachings of the prophets and apostles and especially in the teachings of Jesus.  If the slogan is: Jesus saves, then the principle is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God but Jesus took our penalty and reconciled us to God.

A concluding thought: If I worked in that canteen I would be tempted to put up a copy of the Ten Commandments next to all the slogans, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t stay up there for very long.

John Westendorp