What does loyalty to God entail? This vexing virtue is essential to every relationship we have that matters -- it is the bond that holds together love, friendship, family, community and faith. But because we have so many loyalties, they are always coming into conflict with one another. It's bad enough having to choose whether, as E.M. Forster put it, to betray one's country or one's friend. But how much worse if one of the loyalties in conflict is one's fidelity to God. Can we ever be willing to choose a human loyalty over that owed to God?
Medieval monk Thomas of Kempis and Mahatma Gandhi came from very different faiths and lived in very different times. But both argued that friendship was a threat to the relationship we have with God. The problem is loyalty. If you have good friends, you have obligations to them, and those obligations may entail standing with them even if they are in the wrong. (Mark Twain called this the true office of friendship, because after all, anyone can stand with you when you're in the right.) But supporting a wrong can obviously put us at odds with God. If your only friend is Jesus, says Thomas of Kempis, you won't be put in that jam: "The trust you place in men is a total loss," he writes, but by contrast, God's love "is loyal and lasts." Gandhi renounced friendship and its entanglements this way: "I am of the opinion that all exclusive intimacies are to be avoided," he wrote in his autobiography. "He who would be friends with God must remain alone."
Goodness knows there are many who have, contrary to Thomas of Kempis' advice, put their trust in men and suffered for it. Abandoned by King Henry VIII, whom he had worked for so faithfully, Cardinal Wolsey famously said, "Had I but served my God as diligently as I have served my king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs."
And yet, as attractive a moral strategy as it may be to always put God first, does loyalty to God really mean casting aside every other commitment we have? George Orwell thought that is a monumental moral cop-out. He recognized that though it is "unquestionably true" that "through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrongdoing," running that risk is the price of love and friendship, without which life would be pretty thin gruel. "The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty," Orwell wrote, criticizing Gandhi's renunciation of friendship. We have to be prepared, he argued "to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals."
There's also reason to be wary of those who claim that loyalty to God trumps all other considerations. Thinking that our everyday human loyalties have no weight can be a very slippery slope. Anwar al-Awlaki -- the American-born Muslim preacher who gave guidance and encouragement to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- calls for American Muslims to attack America saying their only proper loyalty is to their religion: "How can you have loyalty to a government that is leading the war against Islam and Muslims?"
And of course cult leaders take this to the nth degree, demanding that all ties to old families and friends be cut so that the only loyalty one recognizes is to the god-like religious charlatan leading the cult.
St. Paul, by contrast, believed that the loyalties we have to friends and family were essential to building our ability to love God. Tutoring his disciple Timothy in the basics of the apostle business, he argued that those who didn't have human loyalties to hearth and home would be incapable of commitment to God: "if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."
I think Paul was on the right path. Even though our human loyalties may risk coming into conflict with commitment to God, the day-to-day practice of fidelity that comes from being true to family, friends and all those we love is essential to knowing how to bring that same fidelity into our relationship with God.
We may well find ourselves caught in conflicts of loyalty -- family vs. friends vs. country vs. God -- but unless we're ready to cut ourselves off from life and do the hermit routine, we have to be prepared to deal with those conflicts, navigate our way through them. And declaring up-front that loyalty to God is the only commitment worth keeping may not be the best way to do it.
Eric Felten: "Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue" | The Diane Rehm Show ...
"He did not preach. Neither did he chide me to follow any pronouncements or insist upon the importance of faith. But he showed me through his love the universe anew, vibrant with life and with a subtle brilliance that stemmed from an unknown and unseen source. He was to me an avatar manifesting in all of his humanity the divine basis of life itself. Oh Satya, it is such a friend that you must seek. I will try to introduce him to you."
In the Shadows: Tales of Ashik
Ashik Jaya
The problem is that life is all full of messy emotions that make it really hard to apply the clear dictates cleanly.
When we have friends and family that require us to be loyal to them, it should always be made clear to them that if a conflict comes up, God’s standard will always be the touchstone. This does not negate support, love, and all the other things that may be given to that person. Bailing out your teen out of problems does not mean you are loyal to his badness but it means that you are loyal to a person that you want to thrive. So, I think that loyalty can be shown to God, to friends and family but only to the degree that the loyalty provided does not violate your own standards that you are loyal to.
We all have had childhood or school friends, maybe we went out drinking or doing drugs together for fun. After a while our paths diverged, with our careers and relationships. They became overwhelmned by their addiction, causing problems in their life and work. While ours continued on a temporate and ethical manner (call it God if you like).
Growing is a way of learning, and as we reach different levels we will meet new likeminded people in that category who are able to have a healthy relationship. Those that fell to addiction were sort of held back a grade, and it is possible that they could see the light, whether on their own or through support groups, and get their lives together so that they can earn a living and support themselves.
It is important that people follow their own path, unique like finger prints. Others can hold us back and be a detriment to us reacing our full potential. I think of so many marriages, where the happy couple who had so much in common, have grown apart and become unhappy because the other is no longer similar.
It is best for our souls to follow God. God being: love, peace, discipline, charity etc., there will be soul mates brought into our lives that mentor and care about us, but when we graduate 7th grade, next year, we are expected to enter 8th grade.
But then along came Jesus and his rules against divorce. My friend put his loyalty to his god ahead of his love for his developing family, and, to make a long story short, they ended up splitting up - she wasn't going back to her ex, but they simply couldn't maintain that "sinful" relationship.
I tried to argue that they should stay together for the benefit of the child, whose emergence from her shell was breathtaking. But no, god wanted them to obey the rules, and after all, he does work in mysterious ways.
Nobody since then will ever been able to tell me that religion is harmless at the very worst.
You do know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not written by the apostles who witnessed Jeshua's ministry right? In fact the original writings along with two or three generations of copies were destroyed and no longer exist. What we have been left with, is copies of copies; originally written by authors we know nothing about who obviously never met Jeshua... and you have built you entire belief system on this?
It strikes me that an all powerful God would have ensured his all important message of salvation was not so thin on proof and reliability. Nicole, i hope someday that you begin to question your indoctrination. I'm sorry that those around you took advantage of your impressionable youth. Use the logic and intelligence you were born with and do not be afraid to look for other truths.
Im going to dissapoint you, it doesnt work.
if god exists, his/her priorities are severely screwed up. he/she needs to get their holy butts to a pediatric cancer floor and do some good by stopping the suffering these kids go through. when one survives, it's claimed as a miracle; when one dies it is 'god's will'.
nope, folks. the truth is we are all there is and need to care for one another. shite happens. neither gods nor demons are involved. it is what it is.
Therefore being Dis-Loyal to God would entail doing things a Decent Loving Family should Despise. That is what is being asked here. So just naturally if you aree asked to be Disloyal to God do any of thewe vile things, you tell them NO, in no uncertain terms.
Unlike the correlation between religious fervor and incoherence, morality and "god" can be separated.