On the Subject of Loyalty

Loyalty. It's a virtue, is it not? But what if our loyalty clashes with other virtue such as fairness, justice, or honesty? We are expected to be loyal to our blood relatives, to our benefactor, to our leader, to our country, and etc. It is very difficult to be disloyal to someone we love and respect. The Mas Selamat (click here for the story) case is an example.

While it is easy for people to condemn the family who harbored him, it is understandable that the instinct to protect the one you love and respect is difficult to fight. I have seen personally how loyalty caused people to justify wrongdoing, to protect the offender, to cover up the offense, and to brush off the offensive behavior as something one off and insignificant.

Blind loyalty to a spiritual leader often is the crux of many church division. Often there are factions within the church. Each factions are loyalists to each opposing leaderships. This shouldn't be happening in a church if our loyalty is directed appropriately to the Lord instead of to a leader.

True Lies

A lie repeated three times become truth to the listener. It is dangerous to say a lie. When that lie is repeated by another person, then another person, the lies gained credibility. This is often how character assassination is done. Something unfounded, unconfirmed, an allegation at best become the fact of the matter just because the message managed to be repeated unverified by several people. When lies come from leaders, be it leader of a political parties, an organization, a clan, or even a church, it is easily accepted as truth. It is very important to always verify your source even if it is from someone you respected and revered. People, even leaders are human after all. So, what are we to do?

• Always hold judgement in the absence of verifiable evidence.
• Strongly voice your concern over accepting allegation as truth especially when it concern someone's reputation. By staying silent, we are passively giving credibility to the lies.
• If the allegation is important to you, go directly to the person. There is always two side of the story.