Customer Loyalty
Customer Loyalty
Our loyalties reveal the kind of person we have chosen to become. To those who will care to notice, our secret thoughts, fears and loves will be laid bare because of what or who we choose to be faithful to and how loyal we remain.
All day long, entire companies spend entire fortunes to discover how to get that 'loyalty gland' to activate when I see their car, their beer, their clothes, their computers. "Oh", you say, 'I'm not affected by their talk and images." You aren't? It took years of pitiful football until I rejected the New Orleans Saints as my favorite football team. 10 painful years. But it took only one lie from my father for me to suspect every word he said after that. The first time I was given food poisoning by one of my aunt's Thanksgiving dishes, I swore off her food for good. Yet, how many times have I gotten a poor meal from a fast-food restaurant (which was neither fast nor food, ironically), and returned the next day to scarf down another gut-bomb of a meal? We are affected and don't you dare pretend we are not.
Given this, it is no crime to betray the preferential loyalties we have for certain foods, clothes, television shows, and the like. It rather demonstrates a strength of will, an ubermench mentality that is quite admirable. But this kind of flexible loyalty must be reserved for shoes and favorite colors. How many of you have been in the work place and someone you thought was your friend used you for traction on their way to the top You know the feelings that accompany such abuse - you feel cheap, used, discarded. That's because you were just like out of style wingtips. Welcome to the so-called 'real world', where people are dehumanized and you receive the loyalty usually reserved for a candy bar.
We act out our loyalties on several levels. The first I've already mentioned, the preferential loyalties. The second is your personal loyalty (Rom. 2:14-16). It is the most fundamental loyalty we have: to the truth. It is otherwise known as integrity. It is this basic loyalty that guides us through the pitfalls that loyalty to anyone but Christ creates. It is loyalty to the truth that sets you apart from the sea of relativists and happy humanists we swim with and against as we live in society. "Oh Lord, I love your Law!" said the Psalmist, and that is the cry of the man or woman who is loyal to the truth, to his or her ideals and principles that are rooted in the Scriptures.
The next way we act out our loyalty is familial. Christians are not alone in a basic commitment to faithfulness to your family members. Many other religions share this. While they fail to act on this innate value God has given them, they still try to be loyal to each other. I have seen some of the sickest families in the world be the most loyal, but without a fundamental commitment to being loyal to the truth, the selfish nature of their apparent loyalty shines through. They not only struggle with their selfish natures, but they have no blueprint by which to know how to truly honor their families. This is not true with believers. We have a witness from Scripture, both in story and precept, describing how to be faithful to our families.
As we live out our familial loyalties, both to our kinsman of the flesh and the Spirit, the world will stand in wonder. Often, it will not be the kind of wonder we would like. They only know the extremes of either having loyalties be synonymous with preferences on one hand, or on the other, with having loyalty be the same as a blind rubber-stamp on someone, no matter what their deeds. When we turn our brother in to the police for some immorality, we will be called traitors. When we allow an aged parent to live with us for 20 years, we will be called stupid and sentimental, told we need to give them "tough love." It is easier to live in one of these two extremes; that is why so many people do.
But what about loyalty to the authorities? While we debate the morality of the midwives in Exodus who saved the Jewish babies by a lie to their authorities, or we question Corrie Ten Boom's decision to hide Jews from the Nazi's murder squads, the answers may seem more or less easy. However, the question of loyalty to the truth (that is, God) versus our loyalty to the State will be tested. Acts 14:22 is clear that "Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" and historically, those tribulations have come from the top, from the kings and princes and presidents who sit in high places. When I refuse to allow a US flag in my church I will be viewed as a communist, even by most evangelicals. The Christian's zeal to have Christ and Christ alone be King of the church will bring dismay to some of the WW II generation, who have mingled God and country so severely that they long since lost the distinction. But when my country asks me to serve in a righteous war, I will rise to defend our liberty. Christians will again be scorned by many, calling us fools and baby-killers as they spin their pseudo-spiritual pacifist web. Such are the tensions in which those who value truth will find themselves.
Our loyalties reveal, for all the world to see, the kind of people we have chosen to become. For the Christian father, patriot, child, or mom, our commitment to the only permanent thing, the truth, is what will linger on the minds of those who stand and watch us. Even in the midst of the complexities a sinful world can leave us, let us leave them with no doubt of our commitment to the truth and the Truth giver.