Loyalty is one of those strange qualities that we generally think of as a virtue, although it can often be a vice. It all depends on our reasons for being loyal.
Far too often, people are loyal to the wrong causes and for the wrong reasons. I remember being unfairly dismissed (Well, almost dismissed; when I challenged it, I was reinstated.) from a job when I was quite young. Other workers in the office were very sympathetic with me in private, but when it came to standing up to the employer, not a word was said. As I said, I was quite young and naively idealistic, and so it was something of a shock to me that they would not be prepared to put their jobs on the line as well, in my defence. As it worked out, they would have been exonerated too when the ruling was reversed.
But that was before I realised that the primary focus of loyalty in today's world is to the system, or to those who can provide us with the most benefits. Even the people who are threatened with unfair dismissal will usually resign quietly instead, and then say only nice things about the offending employer, so that the next employer will not be shied away from hiring someone who is intolerant of a little injustice here and there.
We certainly saw that in our dealings with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia. People whom we had known closely for almost ten years just turned away and tried not to hear the chopping sound of the axe. One Friend said to us (quite honestly) that he had weighed it all up and he could not afford to lose the support of the Society by taking a stronger stand than what he had already taken for us. People were ready to believe whatever lies were being spread around, as long as they themselves could escape safely. It was loyalty at its worst.
But there is a good form of loyalty too. I see that in the majority of ex-members of the Jesus Christians. They disagreed with us on something and went their own way, but on the whole, they appreciated what they learned while with us, and they have mostly good things to say about their time with us. The same is true of friends and supporters, who stick up for us in situations where there is a lot of pressure to put us down. Are they hiding their true feelings? I don't think so. After all, we are not the sort of people who could ruin their reputations in retaliation if they did say harsh things about us. They have minor points of disagreement, but they choose not to publicise those.
We get quite offended, however, when someone has a disagreement with us and then uses the slightest little thing that they know about us in an effort to gain acceptance with people who oppose us. The little things are usually embellished into much bigger things, of course, but most of the time there is some element of truth in what they are saying, and so they use that little tidbit of information to build a bigger case. An example: I DID know about the microscope that a couple of our members stole from Deakin University so many years ago, and I did not report them; so it didn't take much to turn that into a story about me having instigated the robbery. And because one of the robbers was my own son, even my statement that I would tell the truth if questioned by the police was turned into a "threat of blackmail" against my son. I was damned if I did tell the truth and damned if I didn't.
People in the system are aware that virtually every husband or wife knows things about their partner that could cause embarrassment or hurt; but they have little respect for either party if they use that information to strike out at the other person. Children, too, know that their parents have often done things that they would rather not have broadcast to the rest of the world. Family loyalty usually calls on us to leave those skeletons in the closet... unless they are serious abuses or criminal actions. (Obviously people should not conspire to pervert justice by hiding evidence of genuine crimes.)
The words traitor and betrayal both relate to a friend using confidential information to hurt the one who trusted them. Judas did it with such a simple thing as where Jesus and his disciples would hide out at night... thus enabling the authorities to capture Jesus privately and quietly, away from the crowds who supported him.
There really are very few people in the world who are totally neutral. We will choose to overlook a lot of things in those people with whom we feel an affinity even though we might not be as forgiving with those whom we dislike. But we need to be constantly aware that we are prejudiced, and do what we can to compensate for it. And we need to be able to recognise that same tendency in people who pretend to be our friends until they can find something on which to hang us.
In any disagreement, all sides want some kind of loyalty from those around them. The real issue that we need to ask ourselves about this whole loyalty thing, however, is whether our loyalty is being used to promote truth, love, and faith, or whether it is being used to hurt and/or help others tear down and destroy. I have seen people reveal one side to our face and quite a different side when they think they are operating behind our backs. I know not to trust such people.
Perhaps the answer is to develop a loyalty to God, to truth, to love, which is able to critically analyse the things that our friends say, for flaws, and to do something similar with our enemies, except that we try just as hard to see some good in what they are saying instead.
I have wandered all over the place with this subject, but I will end pretty much where I started, which is saying that loyalty is neither a vice nor a virtue, but rather, it is a quality which can be used for either good or evil, depending on what it is that we are loyal to.
