Human loyalty too easily incorporates hate.

The question of loyalty lies deep in the human soul. Loyalty, at the end of the day, is a force potentially far more powerful than fear, than lust, than hatred, than contempt, than pride, than greed. So I believe, knowing man to be God’s image and thus that by nature the good is stronger in his lineaments’ design than the evil, for all that under the corrosion of sin evil is factually the stronger in most. Loyalty can drive a man to die triumphant; loyalty can lead a man to walk blind into death. So obviously loyalty is a question that appears wherever men’s relationships come down to death and blood and agony: in war, in politics, in the church, in the family.

We give our loyalty with varying intensity. We give it for self-sacrifice and for bravery; we give it for sentiment and self-satisfaction; we give it to ourselves by a proxy, and we give it to another wholeheartedly. The essence of this loyalty is to cleave to the other person, to stand besides them. Loyalty is a relationship of me to thee, of thee to another; loyalty is willingness to suffer for another because of the other’s identity.

This nature of loyalty leads us to an integral part of loyalty which leads to life: it has two sides, and it runs both ways. Loyalty to one who had no returning loyalty, no reciprocating relationship, may be right on occasion, when relationship requires it, but it also leads eventually and, save life’s end interposes, inevitably to betrayal. A government without loyalty to its citizenry will reward their loyalty’s self-sacrifice with a demand for more of their blood, more of their selves, until at last the citizenry’s endurance and loyalty scrapes away beneath the tyranny.

Loyalty, moreover, has an impulse to death in it, added by the sin of our souls. Loyalty is the willingness to suffer for another; sometimes, it means even the willingness to suffer because of another, by the hand of the other. A rebellious child will wreak much suffering upon his parents (Proverbs 19:13) before righteousness and justice demand the snapping of that bond (Deut. 21:18-21). While a relationship will eventually shatter beneath the weight of treachery (Deut. 24:1-4; Mark 10:1-12), there is a long road beforehand, where the treachery is not complete at the first. When the treachery starts, though, our loyalty’s sin-taint urges that loyalty’s course is silence, is excuse, is cheering for the good and ignoring the bad.

I’ve seen it in politics, where it’s eminently public. I’ve had flashes of it at points with my small loyalties to men I’ve learned from. I’ve read about the vice in fiction.

The course here urged is congenial to us, as it combines a denial of disaster with pleasant self-righteousness (albeit for some immediate loss of loyalty is more natural, for all it too is vice). We find what is good in the one we are loyal too, and we extol it. We excuse, ignore, or reconcile ourselves to the treachery; we work against those who point it out. Loyalty requires that we defend the one we are loyal too, after all, protecting him from assault and harm….

Except that a Christian knows reproof is the opposite of harm, when it is righteous reproof (Proverbs 15:31). ‘Loyalty’ has urged us to defend the other, but we are no longer defending him, when we ward away and refuse all reproof. No, we have begun to bear false witness against him (Ex. 20:13), denying the treachery and the sin. By ignoring the treachery, by disregarding the wrongdoing, by refusing to ourselves reprove him according to our ability, we levy a great treason against the one we proclaim loyalty to- and, “In all the long wars with the Dark Tower treason has ever been our greatest foe” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. II, Ch. 2).

Loyalty, Christian loyalty, must be a synonym to love. And what is love? It is to fulfil the law (Rom. 13:8-10). We love another, we are loyal to another, when we follow the law of God towards him (towards Him) from the heart. Loyalty thus requires reproof and correction, requires memory that no greater foe and traitor exists than the advisor who will levy no critique. Loyalty, too, ought to be reciprocal, and the traitor erodes all right he has to loyalty, erodes the fact of loyalty too, turning it too easily into mere subservience or quietude, turning it at last into enmity. In all these, of course, God is the superlative of perfect good, and we are to imitate that perfection (Eph. 5:1).

God bless.