“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 79
“A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame” (Prov. 13:5).
An important part of business is the practice of advertising and marketing. And for Christians, not only is it important to learn how to market what they are doing, but it is also important to learn how to stay far away from lying while they do so. Advertising is one of the hardest places in the world to stay honest-and Christians need to lead the way in doing it.
This is particularly important when it comes to those forms of lying that are so pervasive in our society that they have become part of the institutional structure. Sometimes Christians participate in these things thoughtlessly, with no intent to deceive, but thirty seconds of reflection should reveal that some form of deception is intended at some level. The fact that the deception is often entered into by the person buying doesn’t alter the fact that the deception lands somewhere. For example, why do stores price things at the “low, low price of $19.99”? It is because they don’t want someone to think that it was actually twenty bucks. If they actually wanted the one manning the cash register to practice making change, then they could price it at $20.17, but somehow they never do that. The purchaser enters into the deception when the store helps him avoid telling his wife that he spent twenty bucks on that.
Other forms of deception promise to hang the moon in ways completely unrelated to the product. I have in mind the after shave, or tortilla chips, or new Honda, or upscale coffee, that immediately result in blondes clustering around the sophisticate who made such a wise decision. What should Christians think about advertising this way? When it is attempted on them, they can think its funny. But can they market this way themselves? No, because they hate lying.