WalMart's PR Campaign and the Question of Who Really Is Our God

Last year, WalMart hired a PR firm to suggest ways of improving its public image. Since then, the company has produced a bunch of TV commercials touting the benefits that WalMart stores allegedly bring to communities, particularly to those communities where they knock local merchants out of business with low prices. (Prices that are subsequently raised once the overmatched competitors have been forced out of existence.)

But the newest WalMart TV ad hits a real low in bad taste.

In the ad, a family tells about their harrowing accident. With their lives on the line, a WalMart manager happens along, like some discount retail version of the Good Samaritan, to provide help. That’s fine, even commendable.

But the clincher comes when the WalMart employee explains his act of kindness by saying, “At WalMart, we're taught to always do the right thing.”

So now we learn that WalMart isn’t just a retail busines and not just a corporation that does good things in the communities where it has stores.

No, WalMart is also a kind of religious society, a repository of communal virtue that instructs its disciples...er, associates...to always do the right thing. You know, things like saving families from certain impending death.

WalMart, it seems, is a sort of church, like the Baptists or Lutherans or Roman Catholics.

In fact, WalMart, by the logic of this ad, is a deity itself, imparting truth that leads to life, the kind of life that causes a humble store manager to become a roving, self-actualized saint.

One can almost imagine that in a subsequent ad, WalMart door greeters, joined by the price-cutting cartoon character, will chant, “Hallelu-WalMart! Amen and amen.”

Of course, as we adopt this new religion, WalMart’s execs, stockholders, and Sam Walton’s heirs want us all to become WalMartite adherents whose purchases make cash registers beep for all eternity.

WalMart's implicit portrayal of itself as a deity to be worshiped is different from the approach most advertising takes. The underlying messages of most ads are pretty simple: Buy this and you’ll be free, or self-sufficient, or strong, more alive, better, faster, younger, popular, attractive.

In a word, the advertisers claim that their products will make you a god, able to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous aging, soap scum, bad breath, interpersonal awkwardness, whatever. You’ll become deities.

On reading this, advertisers and consumers alike will reject such assertions as outrageous hyperbole. Rationally, of course, we all know that a product we buy at Kroger’s or online through e-bay won’t make us gods. We realize that whatever happiness or fulfillment they do manage to bring us will be fleeting, lasting only as long as the Oil of Olay tube or the DVD player’s warranty hold out, probably not as long as that.

But at an irrational, subconscious level, I’m not certain we’re so convinced of that. It seems to me that throughout much of our lives, we search for the sort of control, power, and immunity from pain that in our naivete, we associate with being God. (Or, in our humbler, less self-absorbed moments, what we associate with being lower-case gods.)

One summer Sunday at about noon when my son was in his mid-teens, he and I drove past a restaurant specializing in Buffalo Wings, beer, and big screen televisions tuned to the NFL. The parking lot was teeming with cars and my son, knowing that I was depressed because our worship attendance that day had been paltry, said, “That’s what you need to do, Dad. If you made people pay to come to church, the parking lot would be filled every week. The problem is that you give everything away free.”

My son was onto something. It makes us feel in control of our lives to think that the things we buy or sell or trade can bring us power, fulfillment, happiness, or life.

A big part of us recoils at the idea that things without price tags attached can really have any value. An item that comes to us free is something we can’t possess, manipulate, dominate, or control.

That’s the biggest problem that most people have with following the God the world meets in Jesus Christ.

It was certainly among the biggest problems I had with following Him back when I called myself an atheist.

God demands of those who really want follow Him to first of all, give up all pretense of being gods...of being in control over our lives and our worlds. God insists that we acknowledge that there is only one God and He deserves our highest allegiance.

Moses underscored this for the people of Israel centuries before Jesus’ birth:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your might .” (Deuternomy 6:4-5)

There’s no reason to contact Monster.com: The job of God has already been filled and there’s no need to find a replacement, whether the candidates are WalMart or us or anybody else.

God also demands that we stop trying to bargain our way to a higher place in life, whether at the local country club or church.

There’s nothing that you and I can do to earn God’s favor and the new life He gives for free. All you have to do is trust the God we meet in Jesus Christ and take His outstretched hand. Some key passages from the Bible, God’s authoritative truth source, tell us about this...

“For by grace [grace is a word that in this context, means God’s undeserved favor or charity] you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God---not the result of works, so that no one may boast...” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

“...if anyone is in Christ [that is, if anyone believes in Christ], there is a new creation; everything old has passed away;...everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ...” (Second Corinthians 5:17-18)

“...the righteousness of God has been disclosed,...the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified [counted right with God] by His grace as a free gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...” (Romans 3:21-24)

If you’ve read this far, you may be thinking: All this ranting from a WalMart ad, Mark? Have you taken leave of your senses?

Maybe I have. But as I see it, most advertising---whether aimed at portraying advertisers or consumers as gods---are designed to create, exagerrate, or appeal to our egos, our insecurities, or both. They want to convince us that buying their products will link us to a transcendant entity or will make us transcendant beings or shore up those parts of our lives where we doubt our transcendance.

In that sense, much advertising is no different from the pitch made by the serpent in the Garden of Eden in the Old Testament’s book of Genesis. There, Adam and Eve had a perfect life. They had a handle on the two facts from which happiness and balance comes to us in life: They knew that God was God and that they weren’t.

One day though, the serpent managed to appeal to both the egos and insecurities of Eve, telling her that if she just took a bite of the fruit God had told her to avoid, she would be like God. In the end, that was all it took for Eve and Adam to be convinced. The first ad campaign in human history was a success!

In this day and age, one of the greatest spiritual weapons we may have at our disposal is our remote control. When a commercial comes on, we can change channels or mute the TV.