To perceive that something is valuable, to connect ourselves to that thing, and then to stick with it when times get tough, is the virtue of loyalty. The value in being a friend, a member of a union or spiritual community, a citizen of a nation, derives in part from our agreement of loyalty. But when the object of our faithfulness betrays our values how do we balance the virtue of loyalty with the principle of right of conscience?
I’ve been spending this year examining the foundational issues of spirituality and seeing if I can come to some concluding thoughts about them before I retire at the end of June.
One of the spiritual topics I wanted to consider this year was virtue. How do we live? How do we live well? What characteristics of personality and behavior should we aspire to and develop in ourselves?
In December, I looked at the virtue of compassion, one of the four Divine Abodes of Buddhism, along with lovingkindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. I looked at the virtue of sacrifice when we marked the Veteran’s Day holiday in November.
You may remember in January that I looked at the virtue of courage. I used the example of the Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and the courage she demonstrated during the Presidential inauguration ceremonies when she spoke about the quality of mercy required from persons in positions of power with President Trump glaring at her from the front pew.
Courage, or fortitude, is one of the four cardinal virtues, along with prudence, justice, and temperance.
The traditional Christian list of seven virtues adds to those four Cardinal Virtues, three more designated as theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. In February, I looked at the virtue of hope, or optimism, which I believe is a distinctive quality of our Unitarian Universalist faith.
The virtue of loyalty, which I want to explore today, is an aspect of the theological virtue of faith. Loyalty has to do with faithfulness, trust. Loyalty stems from claiming identity with something larger than ourselves, which is the basis of all spirituality. Loyalty suppresses the personal ego, asking us to prioritize the demands of the larger something.
But loyalty can be problematic, too. In my sermon title, I called loyalty a delicate virtue, because loyalty requires careful handling. We can be loyal to a fault. We can be loyal to people or organizations that don’t deserve our loyalty, or betray it, or abuse it.
Jim and I recently spent a week in New York city. When we’re there we usually spend an afternoon or two visiting the museums on the upper East side: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Neue Gallerie, the Guggenheim, the Frick.
And one other destination we always visit on one of our museum days is the Brooks Brothers store at Madison and 86th Street.
You might know that I buy my clothes at Brooks Brothers. There’s a Brooks Brothers store in West Hollywood, too, but it’s a treat to visit the store in Manhattan. I’m loyal.
And I belong to their loyalty program. The same way I have an American Express card that earns me points for Hilton hotels, and an loyalty card with Ralph’s grocery store that directs donations here to the church. You probably belong to a handful of loyalty programs, too. Brands love loyal customers.
We would have stopped at Brooks Brothers even if I didn’t need to buy anything, but this trip, I had forgotten to pack a pocket square for my jacket, and because we were going to go to the opera that night, I didn’t want to appear undressed. So, on our Metropolitan museum day, we stopped at Brooks Brothers and I bought a pocket square.
The next day we came back to visit the Neue Gallerie and the Frick and as we walked down Madison Avenue we looked in the windows and stopped here and there. Along the way we passed the J. Crew Store, the store Jim is loyal to. So, we went in. Jim didn’t need anything, so we just looked around. But, in the downstairs suit shop, I was taken with a tie laid out on a table.
Like everything else: shirts, pants, socks, jackets, pocket squares, I buy my ties at Brooks Brothers. But this tie attracted me. Jim said he liked it, too. And in the spirit of being on vacation and indulging in small joys, I bought it.
I didn’t practice the virtue of temperance. I indulged myself in a harmless but unnecessary purchase just to satisfy my own pleasure. Not a mortal sin, but less than pure virtue.
And in buying a tie at the J. Crew store, instead of Brooks Brothers, I was disloyal.
Loyalty begins where all spirituality begins, with recognizing that we are not isolated individuals, but that we are connected to some good thing greater than ourselves. Something larger than ourselves, which also includes us. Something which supports us in making good, healthy lives for ourselves, and to which we contribute our lives as we help that larger thing achieve its larger goals.
That something larger than ourselves, need not be much larger than ourselves. Even stretching just a little beyond our own self can begin to open our spirituality.
A relationship with a beloved pet for instance, counts as something larger than ourselves. Who hasn’t lived for a dog or cat and felt their selfish ego soften and their life made better for the relationship? A pet gives your life purpose and meaning. You’re living for something more than just yourself. That’s spirituality.
The something greater than yourself might be a spouse, or your family, any relationship that both includes you and reaches beyond you. The something greater than yourself might be an organization whose goals you believe in and identify with. “I’m a Unitarian Universalist.” Or “I’m an American.” If you’re a Dodger fanatic, or a Taylor Swift “Swiftie”, you are connecting to a something larger than yourself which both includes you and reaches beyond you.
Humanists might ground their spirituality in shared humanity: a citizen of the world. Nature spirituality might feel connected to the Earth, perhaps conceived as a goddess. Theists name the something greater as God.
In that greater context, our lives have meaning. We’re living for something beyond our own desires and self-interest. Our lives matter, because the success of that something greater depends on us doing our part. We are responsible to something. We have something to do, a goal to orient our lives toward, and it’s a goal of substance, because we’re not just doing whatever we want for our own pleasure, but contributing my life to work toward a goal that serves the greater good. We make a bargain: my service of that larger thing, in exchange for the meaning and purpose I receive from that larger thing. It’s a good deal.
To seal the deal, to make the relationship real, whether it’s me and my dog, or my family, or my nation, or God, or Brooks Brothers, requires loyalty.
Without loyalty, that relationship is always contingent. If I can abandon the relationship at any time, as soon as it gets inconvenient or uncomfortable, then I’m still living for myself, not for the something larger than myself.
To receive the benefits of meaning and purpose, the relationship cannot be casual. We need to be in completely, dependable, faithful. To truly value the something larger than myself means to stick with it. To trust it. To honor it. And to say that the needs of that greater, deeper, broader, larger something, ought to take precedence over my personal, temporary, pleasure.
When two persons get married, for instance, they enter this kind of relationship. They make vows to each other by which they create a covenant of marriage that contains them both but also reaches beyond them. It is to the marriage that they are loyal, putting the health of the marriage above personal, temporary pleasure. They vow to honor the marriage, and in turn the marriage supports them when they need the security and comfort marriage provides.
Ideally, our loyal participation in something greater than ourselves should be a relationship of mutual benefit. I’m buoyed up by the support of that thing. It feels good to be part of a family, or a community, or a tribe. I have a place to turn to for solace or encouragement. I can work on bigger, more satisfying, and impactful projects because I have teammates.
And because I receive so much from my participation, I’m willing to give generously, even if that means getting up earlier than I prefer, or working harder than I want, or taking up a piece of the work that’s necessary but boring, or working behind the scenes instead of in the spotlight, or taking direction from someone who has a different idea of how best to achieve the shared goal. I’m willing to accept personal inconvenience and discomfort because my participation in this greater thing gives my life so much.
And for that reward, when times get challenging, I stay loyal. I stay connected, when I could walk away. I reject the temptation of the new, attractive thing. I keep sacrificing. I work a little harder. I trust the vision. I continue to give. I do what’s necessary. I’m forgiving of occasional lapses, and I work to set things right again. I’m faithful.
Loyalty makes it work. But loyalty can be difficult. Loyalty is a virtue because it challenges us to grow beyond our comfortable but narrow sense of self and expand into something larger. Unless we risk loyalty to something greater, then we’re still holding ourselves back, maintaining our primary allegiance to our own selves. We’re protecting ourselves from danger, but we’re also denying ourselves the greater gifts.
But this is where it gets scary, doesn’t it?
Because, if we give ourselves too much to that greater thing, we risk giving ourselves away entirely. And if that greater thing proves false, as people and institutions often do, we’re lost. What if that greater thing asks us to do something unethical? What if the greater thing asks us to give more than is healthy for us to give? What if we only discover later that the person or institution we gave ourselves to wasn’t what we thought it was? Or what if the greater thing, which was admirable when we first signed up, became corrupt over time, changed its goals, lost its way, or betrayed its core values?
Leaders make bad decisions. Nations act against their ideals. Well-meaning people make terrible mistakes. Evil people deliberately deceive and manipulate others for their own purposes. A great corporation gets new management, and the brand no longer stands for what it used to. Institutions shift as they respond to new contexts, maybe in positive direction but maybe in negative directions.
So the delicate balance that makes loyalty a delicate virtue is the task of giving ourselves fully, because that’s how we receive the benefit, but keeping our back against an escape hatch we can open in case of emergency.
But that’s impossible. You can’t be fully in and also keep one foot out the exit door. If loyalty requires an escape plan in case it goes wrong, then can we really call loyalty a virtue?
It’s no virtue to be loyal to a corrupt institution. It’s no virtue to loyally carry out the orders of a despot. It’s no virtue to destroy yourself or be willing to destroy others out of loyalty to a lie.
In cases like those, the virtuous act is to be disloyal.
But, in those cases, to abandon the corrupt institution, to disobey the despot, to testify to the the truth, to defend the good, and the right, and the healthy, and the holy, is simply to demonstrate our loyalty to something even greater. It’s precisely our loyalty to something greater than a falliable leader, or a human institution that makes us take the exit.
I said last week that I intended to end this year with these three Sundays in May talking about the biggest spiritual issue: God. And this discussion of loyalty has brought us there.
Discerning the proper object of our loyalty raises the theological issues of idolatry. Idolatry is the sin of giving ourselves to something other than, and by definition less than, the true God. Idolatry is running after false gods. Think of the Israelites worshipping a golden calf on the valley floor while Moses is up on the side of the mountain receiving the ten commandments.
Idolatry comes in many forms. There are many false gods. Worshipping money. Worshipping youth or physical beauty. Worshipping power. Worshipping fame. And there are the false gods that are good but not enough to create the full life we deserve: a false god of security, the false god of feeling needed, the false good of pleasure.
Idolatry is the sin Emerson was warning us against when he said, “it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. False gods are everywhere, constantly tempting us away from the true path to lives of health and joy, constantly showing us paths that lead to dead ends, constantly deceiving us into accepting less and lying to us that it’s the best.
The true God, whether you name it God, or simply conceive it as the highest, the best, the most, the greatest, the transcendent good, and true, and beautiful, should be the true object of our worship, and the true receiver of our loyalty.
We sang in our opening hymn:
Be thou my vision, O God of my heart;
naught be all else to me, save that thou art.
Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true word;
thou my best shelter, thou my high tower.
Riches I heed not, nor world’s empty praise,
thou and thou only, first in my heart,
Sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.
If we stay loyal to that highest good, then sometimes we will need to betray our lesser loyalties. Leave the relationship that has become tixic. Leave the organization which asks us to do what we know is wrong. Criticize and attempt to correct the system which has become corrupt, but leave it if it won’t change. Buy a tie at J. Crew instead of Brooks Brothers, because loyalty to beauty is more virtuous than loyalty to a brand.
Although there are numerous examples in the news these past few years of misplaced loyalty, instances where loyalty has led people astray, turned folks to institutions and people that are clearly false gods, I think that the greater danger in our current American culture, is not too much loyalty, but too little. We are too protective of our individuality, and too easily willing to give up on the attachments we do form when they become inconvenient or ask for too much sacrifice.
Too much loyalty leads to tyranny. Too little loyalty leads to loneliness and isolation. There are deep pits on either side of the virtue of loyalty, which means finding the delicate balance is essential.
I pray that this church might be a help to you in finding that balance. In the words of Vincent B. Silliman: “Let religion be to us security because of its truth and beauty, and because of the enduring worth and power of the loyalties which it engenders; Let it be to us hope and purpose, and a discovering of opportunities to express our best through daily tasks: Religion, uniting us with all that is admirable in human beings everywhere; Holding before our eyes a prospect of the better life for humankind, which each may help to make actual.