Loyalty

This is Chris Hughes with the Christian Perspective Podcast with Chris Hughes, where we encourage our listeners to engage the culture with Jesus Christ. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds, so enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call The Masculine Journey. The Masculine Journey starts here now. Welcome to The Masculine Journey and we are a week closer to boot camp. Yeah, you know that happens every week. We become a week closer to boot camp and it's coming up in sometime November 18th through the 21st, and so we really need you to go register here pretty soon because slots are going to fill up and you don't want to miss it.

So please go register at masculinejourney.org. And I don't think we have any Eves this week. Robby, do we have any Eves this week that you're aware of?

He's shaking his head no, so that is a no. Robby is the Eve Meister. I don't know, we just, we give titles around here pretty liberally, but yeah, it's the Eve Meister. Okay.

Yeah, you go to that? Yeah, I am. All right, cool.

Andy, Andy, Danny, the other guy. What's our topic about today? This is your topic.

Won't you tell us a little bit about it? Well, to all our loyal listeners, our topic is loyalty this week. Oh, good. I'm talking about the contrast between times that either you've been disloyal or you're loyal to something and what kind of drives that, so.

Well, that's good. It's a topic that is pretty relevant. You know, we see society at times moving away from, you know, some of the character stuff that we've known of in the past. And so to revisit some of it and talk about the importance of integrity and loyalty and faithfulness and all those kinds of things are good because we don't really hear a whole lot about it anymore.

It's not really on the current TV shows very often, you know, that we find. And so, you know, I'm really looking forward to the show. And so you want to go ahead and tell us a little bit about the first clip? Just a little bit about the first clip? I've been scolded in my setup of clips. So you're going to get the salad, you won't get the beans. So the clip is from the Andy Griffith Show.

And what has happened is, is that Opie and some of his friends have pushed Andy's car in front of a fire hydrant and Barney being the loyal lawman to go write him a ticket. And the interchange is priceless, but it plays into what loyalty means in to an institution and to a human being. So that's the clip. Very good setup. Thank you. I've been practicing. Oh, just. All righty. All right. Raise your right hand. You promise to give me a fair trial?

I do. All right. Take your place. We'll just see if you can beat this rap now.

What do I do now? Call the court to order. Court's an order.

Now ask me. Ask me how I plead. How do you plead, your honor? Not your honor. How do you plead? Not guilty.

Not guilty? Ask me what I got to say for myself. Oh, what do you got to say for yourself? Well, your honor, well, your honor, I'm an honest man, an honest sheriff, right, your honor?

Yeah, that's right. Well, ask me to speak up. What? Ask me to speak up.

Oh, speak up! How long have we known one another, your honor? Well, I guess we've always gotten along pretty good all that time, right, your honor?

Yeah, that's right. We've served together as law officers and fished and hunted together as friends, right, your honor? Yeah, and I've enjoyed it. Do you think I'm an honest sheriff's office here? Yes.

Do you think I'm an honest man? Yeah. You ever know me to do anything outside the law? Well, no. I always live inside the law, is that right, your honor? That's right. How long have I been parking in front of this jail, your honor? Well, I... Did you ever know me to park in front of a fire plug? Well, no, not until... I say again, your honor, I'm an honest man and an honest sheriff, and I've been parking my car in front of this jail for more than five years now, right?

That's right. I couldn't possibly have parked in front of that fire plug knowing the law as I do. What do you think, huh? Could I have willfully and deliberately have committed such a violation?

Well, no, I... I say there is mischief going on here. A mischief? I say somebody deliberately pushed my car in front of that fire plug, making me, me, the innocent victim of circumstantial evidence. That's lawful. Oh, there is foul play afoot here, your honor. I say this whole thing is a travesty on justice. Hey! I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Not guilty! So, Danny, go ahead and talk to us a little bit about that. Well, Andy is playing into, obviously, if you're familiar with the show, and if you're not, you should be, Barney's emotionalism, but Andy's making the case that he's a loyal law-abiding citizen, he's a sheriff, and he's not operating outside the law.

And the interchange beforehand is, Barney told me he was going to haul him in, and he said he's already in, because he was already the justice of the peace. But in any case, it speaks to the loyalty of, obviously, their friendship and knowing one another as they do, and those kind of things. And I've had a lot of family stuff going on, and it's made me question some people's loyalty to things. But I think what has come out of it is me questioning my own loyalty to things, because we all love to talk about our loyalty to the faith sometimes. But when the chips are down, you find out truly who you are sometimes. And sometimes it's not a pretty picture, at least not in my house sometimes.

But I know y'all are all saved and sanctified, and y'all don't worry about stuff like that. Stuff like that, but that's just kind of where this topic birthed out of, is looking at my own self and the things that I'm loyal to and why, and maybe not an obligation per se, because I'll hitch up to an obligation in a minute, which may be not so healthy. But the things that I need to be loyal to, and am I, and shoring those things up. Yeah, it's tough. I think that people, loyalty is a character trait, right?

It's something that people have. I don't know of anyone that I've ever met that's totally, completely disloyal, right? They're all about the betrayal all the time, other than the enemy, right?

Other than the evil one. I've never met a person that's that, and I've never met a person that has been loyal in every situation their whole entire life, right? So it's a character trait, meaning it can be grown. It can be nurtured. It can be fostered.

It can be moved into and make a decision. You know, maybe I've not been as loyal in the past as I want to be, but I have the choice starting now to be more loyal in the future. There was a company that we worked with in a company I was with in Indiana. It's called the Character First Institute, and it was really cool. They had defined 49 different character traits, right? And what they tell you is you have some element of all those, but some of them you're really, really strong at, and some of them you need to grow and nurture, right? And so that's one of the things that I've always kind of looked at as saying, okay, maybe in these situations, like with my kids, I try to always be loyal, but that doesn't mean I'm loyal in every other situation I'm in, right? And trying to grow that and have God help me grow that to where I can become more loyal along the way, if that makes any sense. And loyalty will look differently in different situations, like with your kids. Loyalty doesn't mean, oh, I just, whatever you do, little, you know, Jimmy or Sarah, whatever, you're, you know, you're just, well, wonderful.

You can do whatever you want to do. No, loyal to you means there is discipline. There is accountability. Also, there's all kinds of things that come along with that in maturity of loyalty, not just the simple, oh, I just, you know, you need to be loyal to me no matter what I ever do.

No, that's not loyalty. No, I would have thought you knew my kids' names by now. It's not Jimmy or Sarah. Thought we knew each other well enough.

I'll have to work on that. Robby, you have something you'd like to add? They put the mic in front of me. Oh, okay.

He must have known my clip will come in next. Yeah. So maybe that's the setup.

I think it is. So anyway, you know, when I heard the topic and actually coming off vacation, having a good time with God and I started to ponder the word because I know of several of you have mentioned, you know, that they heard that, that they were loyal as one of the names that they got from the, you know, a new name. And then I had noticed in walking with the, you know, Harold and Sam, we both heard that that when they were put in a situation of not being loyal, you could see it ripping their soul out. I mean, like it was, they were forced into situations where they felt like they were being disloyal and I won't go into that, but I will tell you that I watched how it tore them up and I began to process that, wow, this loyalty is something deeper than than I would have thought that this is the stuff that keeps people awake at night.

If they betray it, that it's something that's actually a deep part of their, um, who they are. And so I picked this clip from Star Trek because it's an opportunity we have to hear from Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk, but I, I would offer that you listen closely to, you know, the situation is Spock has saved the ship because, you know, he, it was ridiculous and required that he get radiation poisoning in order to save the ship. And so he's dying and Kurt's talking to him on the other side of a piece of glass as he's dying. And then later Kirk risks everything to go get him.

And so we're going to hear these conversations, but in the middle, you're going to hear a little transition, which is the classic Star Trek music. And you're going from a movie called the wrath of Khan, where Spock dies at the end to the next movie where, you know, they finally get Spock back through the miracle of movies and, but Spock doesn't have his memory. They've taken, you know, if you know, familiar with the series, the doctors had his essence and they put it back into Spock.

And so now he doesn't really know who he is, but once again, we see because of loyalty, that's something that's in him in spite of the fact that he doesn't have his memory at this point, but just take a listen to how Kurt also responds. Spock ship out of danger, yes, don't read just logical, the needs of the many outweigh your friend. All right, Jim, what about Spock?

Only time will answer. Kirk, I thank you. What you've done is what I have done. I had to do at what cost your ship, your son, if I hadn't tried, the cost would have been my soul. My father says that you have been my friend. You came back for me, you would have done the same for me.

Why would you do this? Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, I have been and ever shall be your friend. Yes, yes, Spock. Ship out of danger, you saved the ship, you saved us all, don't you remember, Jim, your name is Jim.

And Spock remembers and it goes on. We'll be back right after the break. Go register boot camp our way.

Go to masculinejourney.org and register today. Kernersville, North Carolina, 27285. Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you got to do is call and I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got a friend. Now, Andy, you picked that bump, right?

Yep, I got a little help on a search. But it, you know, as soon as I heard the song. Did you not know the song? I didn't know the song, but I hadn't thought, loyalty, what are we going to find on loyalty?

And, you know, just talking about being, you know, a really consistent friend. But I don't know it. Some of the, go listen to it, some of the verses are really good. They go in deeper into that commitment or whatever, but had to play the chorus. That's familiar with everybody, but great song.

Yeah, yeah, I was thinking he's from North Carolina, you've probably heard it before. Yeah, we've got a theme going on here, don't we? Well, a little bit. We got a little bit of Spock in the middle of it. Yeah.

So Robby, other than ruining the wrath of Khan for all of our listeners out there, on the ending, no, that was a great, great merge of two clips. Tell us a little bit more about it. Well, you know, one of the really cool things I learned at bootcamp that I brought home as some way to apply what it was that I saw is that God is put inside of all of us for a glory, something that reflects him, and it's so bright and beautiful that it just grabs your attention. And in my walk in this time, I've noticed that one of those traits that he puts in certain individuals above, you know, that which everybody has loyalty, but there's certain people, like, to walk with them, you see the glory of God inside of them in loyalty that's that deep. And then what we just saw from what Captain Kirk said that, you know, I'll lose my soul if I didn't do this, and that you could see where clearly inside of Spock and the fact that he didn't have any memory whatsoever, he was still completely connected in something that's deeper than just friendship or that kind of thing. And it really has given me a chance to marvel and see God in other people. Just watching them struggle through, obviously, difficult situations that I knew, you know, what they were up against with family members and whatever, and watching that, how God knows that.

And so the result of that is not only do I get to see how cool people are, but then to think, wow, God's all that plus the, you know, so how cool is that? Yeah, you know, you think about what's the fruit of, you know, being loyal? Well, you know, when someone's loyal to me, you know, especially when I'm not sure if they're going to be, like, when they are, it gives me a lot of hope, not just hope in mankind, but, you know, hope that, okay, somebody is going to have my back, right?

And so the opposite also works, right? When you experience betrayal, you experience people that aren't loyal to you, you know, it gives the enemy a pretty good foothold, you know, and that's where he starts digging in. You know, there's always the assault after the assault, right?

And so that little thing that you're loyal with may not be a big deal to you, but it could be a world changer, at least in that moment for that other person. Yeah, and that wound is left behind. Yeah, you're avoiding a wound. Yeah, if you're not dealing with them, it's still a wound. Yeah. So it stays with you until you end up dealing with it, and if nobody ever tells you to go deal with it or you ever think you have to deal with it, you're just left with it, and they just keep piling on.

They don't stop coming. Yeah, because the enemy is, you know, really, really good at being a prosecutor, right? I mean, he's really good at building a case. Yeah, he's not Barney.

He's not Barney. No, it's guilty, guilty, guilty. There's no not guilty. Yeah, and here's more evidence of it.

Here's more evidence, and here's more evidence, right? And so, you know, those little things do tend to add up, right? And then we begin to wonder why do people have a distrust of everyone? Well, there's something in inherently in the human nature that if you wrote down your experience with 100 people, we use it with customers, you know, 99 customers, super customers, but the one that gave you the hard time, you remember their name, their address, their phone number, and everything.

It's just something about the unregenerated carnal nature that remembers the negative. Oh, absolutely. I still remember a client I built a home for in Indiana. I'm not going to say the name, obviously, but I remember him really well because I would probably still to this day if I walked in front of him, and I know God's grace is great, and he's got to work on me a whole bunch more, I would have to talk myself out of strangling this person. I really would because they were so hateful, and it wasn't that they were upset about their house.

Their house was fine. It was personal attacks. You know, I need to talk to somebody above you. You're just a peon, you know, that kind of stuff.

And, you know, and at some point I'm like, well, this peon's building your house. You might want to think about that statement. But no, it's just you do remember those things.

You know, and I've had lots of good clients, many, many, many good clients after that. But you do remember those negative impacts. Well, that's one of the hardest things to take is when people turn something from, okay, let's just be factual.

Let's just talk about this logically and start making personal attacks. Yeah. That's really just when you know everything's going to break down. You know what you need, you know, when you're really feeling down, you need a good dog, right, to be around, or at least a good dog movie. And we have some dog lovers in the room. And I just, you know, the fact that we even, we're on this topic last week of The Sage and, you know, we had a pointy ear example and then we bring back Spock this week. I'm like the other pointy ear example. It's like, there's a lot of wisdom in pointy eared people. I'm telling you, there's a lot of wisdom in them.

I think that's great. So in this clip that I picked, first place I went was, man, we haven't had anything from Lassie, you know, and we haven't heard from Lassie in a long time. So I wanted to go out and find something from Lassie. And I'm like, the only thing I learned is Timmy never fell in the well.

That's what I was like, what, that never happened? Because I wasn't, I didn't watch that many episodes of Lassie, but it's always like loyalty is Lassie to me. And I love dogs and Harold, you know, we're still kind of coming down off the high of The Sage last week. And so it's like still Harold and his dog are very, very close.

And so this movie here called Homeward Bound, the family is going to move, they leave to go scope out where they're going to move to, and they're going to come back and pick up the dogs and all this. But The Sage and this dog trio, because there's ends up being a basically an animal for every kid in the family. There's two boys and a girl, and there's two dogs and a cat. So the oldest boy has the oldest dog, the middle child, which is a boy has the new dog, which is kind of rambunctious and wild and trying to find himself. And then there's the cat who's spent many years with the daughter. And so the older dog says, oh, we got to go find the family because there's something wrong here.

Something, something's bad is going to happen. So they take off across all this wilderness and the family comes back. The pets aren't there. The pets aren't there, they go and make the move.

And they're in their new house. And this clip is the end scene where the dogs and the cat finally make it on their adventure through all kinds of wild adventures. And it's just a wonderful movie.

If you love animals, it'd be great to go watch if you haven't seen it. But this is the end scene where they finally come home. And the cat has pointed ears. I just wanted that in there.

Yeah, but it's a cat. We'll just keep playing. Peter, I'm worried about you. So Peter, you're OK. Oh, I'm so happy about you all the time. I miss you, Peter.

And I love you. It was Shadow's victory, really. His belief was the thing that got us through. And in that moment, I saw the years lift from him. He was a puppy again, reunited with his best friend. As we turn to go inside the house, a strange new feeling came over me. I had a family. And I had found out that sacrifice and friendship and even love were more than just the mushy stuff.

At last, for the first time in my life, I was home. So Shadow had that loyalty. Chance in this whole big adventure learned it.

So he's like, wow, I really appreciate. And now I'm going to be loyal to the boy that he was closest with, because he was basically the chance of the dog that was kind of like the orphan. It was like, I don't really belong in this family. I don't have a family on my own. I'm my own person.

I'm going to be on my own and kind of came in to finally be a family member at the end. And not only with because they became a family of animals, the three, the two dogs and the cat, those three on that adventure, they came together and it kind of showed him when he got there, the love that they had for him and that they came running up over the hill at the end of the story. It was just, oh, there's way more to life than just me being in this for me.

Yeah. And it was weird hearing Michael J. Fox's voice in there. And then Sally Field had played the cat. I went ahead and looked up who played the older dog, but it was Shadow. Yeah, it was Don Ameche, an actor.

And I thought that's who it was, but I went to look it up. It was towards the end of his career in movies. And so he was doing voiceover, but it's a really good family movie.

It's well done, it has some great actors in it and it's got a great story. Yeah. I just knew with the animal lovers we have in here, we've got different stories we like to play with each other with, but I thought we'd continue some of that theme because again, most of us, especially with dogs, we always talked about loyalty, but a lot of us have great cats as well that love and that's where if Jim was here, he'd be talking all about that.

Yeah, I would still question it. I do. And that's the hard part for me is now my daughter has a cat that is just awesome. I'm like, oh my gosh, am I trying to like cats? No, I'm sure there's some awesome cats out there.

I really am. I'm sure there are some. Some. I found one. It's a percentage.

I don't know if that's a single digit percentage or a high percentage, but it's a percentage. You know, because I've been around a cool cat in the past, but yeah. Anyway, you are a cool cat. Thank you.

That's me. So loyalty, right? I guess the opposite of that would be betrayal would be one way or, you know, disloyal, you know, obviously using the same word and putting diss in front of it probably makes it, you know, be part of it. But it's something that is at the end of the day, you have to just decide if I only have my word when I leave, when I leave this place, right? When I leave this earth, that the people are really going to have memories about me is going to be about who I was when the chips were down, who I was when they needed me.

Right? And that's what loyalty is really about. It's being there when you say you're going to be there. It's being there when people need you. It's being there even when they haven't asked you, right? Loyalty is vital, right? And at the end of the day, wouldn't it be really kind of cool, honestly, if they put on your tombstone, this was the most loyal person I ever knew, you know, how cool would that be just to have something like that on there that, you know, that they could say that about you? Because obviously you're in the image of Jesus who is the most loyal person there was. And we're going to talk about that in the next show. Go listen to Masculine Journey podcast on the after hours, and we'll talk to you next week.