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The Important Quality of Loyalty
Trump Cabinet Picks
This last week President Trump started announcing his cabinet picks and what appears to be their most significant quality is loyalty. The average Trump voter, I would assess, agrees with the strategy. Choose loyal people. Definitely don’t select disloyal ones.
What about Abraham Lincoln? Didn’t he pick a team of rivals? Loyalty doesn’t mean pushover or doormat. It does mean among other things keeping the questions and challenges inside the room. Someone working for Trump knows his position. He should not join to undermine or cause factions.
Factiousness and Heresy
The Apostle Paul in his epistles deals harshly with factiousness. The word in the King James Version is “heretic,” which transliterates a Greek term, that speaks of a factious or divisive person. For a church, heresy diverts off the path of truth as established by the congregation; its doctrine. The New Testament warns against division again and again. This doesn’t mean challenges can’t be made, but loyalty is necessary.
When someone defects in the Bible, that defector left the group. The group coalesced around a particular belief and practice and a person ejects from the group. 1 John 2:19 describes someone who goes out from the assembly, because he was not of the assembly. He would have continued with the assembly if he was of it. By going out, he showed he never was of it.
The usages of heretic or heresy in the New Testament indicate a divisive person. He breaks with leadership just to break with leadership. The person is a trouble maker. He never joined with the idea that he would try to get along.
Whose Agenda
People are drawn in magnetic fashion to the power of the federal government. Booker T. Washington talked about this from his first visit to Washington, DC from Tuskegee, recorded in his biography, Up From Slavery. The White House is a blazing hot center of the political power of the United States of America. People want to burrow their way into this honey pot like ants at a picnic. They aren’t necessarily and probably there to serve the President and with him. They want to use this as an opportunity for their own agenda. That is not the idea of a team of rivals.
Donald Trump was clear about his agenda. He ran on it. The people saying they want to join him know good-well what he said and what he’s trying to accomplish. He is right to pick only those who will be loyal to him and his agenda.
For instance, Trump will bring up ideas that maybe have little merit. He suggests them and perhaps they are stupid ideas or thoughts. But he wants the freedom to talk about those, what sometimes people call “brainstorming.” Those around him tell him what they think. They say they don’t like it and it won’t work, giving their best arguments. Trump wants that. What he doesn’t want is to read about that episode in the paper or hear it in the national news on television that night or the next day.
Trump employees join especially in this present administration with full knowledge of what and who he is. None should expect to leave and write a tell all book for bookoo bucks. They are serving at his pleasure. If they join and find out that they don’t like it, that doesn’t mean leaving to undermine his agenda.
Disloyalty
In the recent campaign, the media and the Democrats used the statements of former Trump team members. They spoke against Trump themselves. John Kelly gave a personal story in which he claimed that Trump said that Hitler’s generals would have obeyed him. Kelly used that to harm his former boss. Mike Pence did the same on different occasions. In order to justify themselves, these men hit Trump. Maybe their feelings were hurt. They should have stayed loyal. If they were not going to remain loyal, then they shouldn’t have joined Trump in the first place.
When I use Kelly and Pence, as examples, and I don’ think they are equal (Kelly was worse), this is not saying they couldn’t disagree. Pence said he couldn’t employ a particular application of the U. S. Constitution. Fine. Do what you’ve got to do. But leave it there at least. I’m living 20 minutes from Columbus, Indiana, Pence’s hometown. Most are not happy with Pence there. It is the issue of loyalty.
Just as a related topic, what about the loyalty of Donald Trump? Maybe Trump himself isn’t loyal either. It’s not something I’ve seen, based on what I’m writing here. Trump follows his own principles of loyalty. He isn’t loyal to those who are disloyal to and remain disloyal to him. For his business and his goals, I understand it. How can you give a presidential job to a disloyal person? The disloyal people are poison to the administration. I get it.
The Same Thing for Church and Friends
As I did a search on my blog here, I didn’t find one post on loyalty. Someone couldn’t say that it is a pet subject for me. However, I believe in it. It’s a good trait for someone to have.
What I’m talking about with the new Trump administration, I would say the same of a church and those who are your friends. True friends will show loyalty. I can say that I’ve had several who called themselves my friend through my life who were disloyal to a great magnitude. Again, I’m not talking about remaining silent without saying anything. That’s not loyalty. What I do mean is someone who treats someone like a friend. That person will not then trash his “friend” to others, even many others. He won’t join in with others who will do the same.
A real friend, a loyal one, is someone who will be there for you when you’re down. What I’m describing goes along with what I’m saying about Donald Trump. I’ve had a few loyal friends through the years. Not many, but I have some and I’m thankful for them. I’m planting that flag of loyalty in the ground too. Above all of course, I want to be loyal to God and His Word.
My Acceptance of Hell
Hell is a common atheist argument, usually made with disdain. It’s even got a name, “The Problem of Hell.” You’ve got to say it in mocking tones, because scorn is part of the argument. It can be done in one statement something like this: “You’ve got to love God or else He’ll torture you in Hell.” Or, “If God is so insecure, that He needs everyone to love Him, or He’ll send them to Hell, I wouldn’t believe in Him even if He did exist.”
The Hell argument against Theism sets the atheist up as morally superior to Bible believers and God Himself, justifying atheism. It could be a kind of dress rehearsal for an argument before God Himself at the final judgment. It could too serve as an emotional appeal to support a bankrupt position. Others will cheer this on.
Someone is judging in his judgment of Hell. What is this standard for judgment in a random world of matter and motion, atoms colliding with one another? How does someone put even two related thoughts together by a cosmic accident of naturalism? He doesn’t. How does naturalism cause the ability to provide a nuance of disdain? It doesn’t. The atheist mocking Hell borrows from theism by using words, which are abstract, nonmaterial ideas. He constructs a moral system to account for behavior that doesn’t exist in the arbitrary world of the naturalist.
Even so, Hell could at least feel difficult to defend in the world in which we live. The atheist frames it as though you enjoy the future pain and anguish. For that reason among others, people won’t talk about Hell. They call it perhaps eternal death or just eternal separation from God. Knowing how offensive it might sound, thinking it might just shut down a conversation, it’s given little mention, even though Jesus was the one who talked about it more than anyone. There is a Heaven. There is a Hell.
How some people have dealt with Hell is eliminating almost any opportunity for anyone to go there except for someone almost everyone thinks deserves it. Hitler comes to mind. A general audience might choose for a child molester or a serial killer. Almost everyone else goes to, you know, “a better place,” even if they don’t know what or where it is or why that person will go or should be going there. It’s not helpful to give someone false assurance related to Hell. Assigning someone to a better place, when he’s really on his way to Hell, hurts him in an eternal way.
I’ve titled this, my acceptance of Hell, because in a personal way, Hell is acceptable to me. There are general reasons for acceptability. The Bible teaches Hell. Jesus taught Hell. It is also taught in so many different ways. The opposition to Hell isn’t persuasive. It amounts to “I don’t want it” or “I don’t like it,” which is a version of rejection of justice for sin.
Here are my personal reasons for acceptance of Hell.
One, how bad we are.
People just don’t think they deserve Hell. This is very common. When I’m evangelizing, it’s the second greatest stumbling point. I ask, “Do you think you deserve Hell?” 90 plus percent answer, “No.” The idea here is the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. It’s way too severe, reflecting on the nature of God, His righteousness, and His justice. People do not think they’re bad enough to deserve Hell. That’s for very bad people, and few think they’re that bad.
I say I deserve Hell, and I accept that, because I do think I’m bad. How bad we are starts with the nature of God. The Bible compares us to God. I fall very far short of the glory of God. It’s not an accident. I also do the things offensive to God and then just don’t please God on a regular basis.
God created me for His purpose and not only do I not fulfill that, but I don’t want to do it. I want to serve myself. I can give many examples of this. Today at church, while someone was praying, I caught myself thinking about something else. I was thinking about something temporal and superficial and suddenly I awoke out of that trance, not even hearing what someone was praying. I’ve done that many times.
God’s judgment turns us over to our own lusts. Romans 1 uses the language of “gave them up” (vv. 24, 26, 28). God lets people have what they want. He lets them go. They’re getting what they want. They don’t want God. They don’t want what He wants. If you get that, it ends in Hell, because that path leads to where God isn’t. His love is absent from Hell. Where God isn’t, it’s a very terrible place. That’s how the Bible describes it. Hell is the final destination for those God gives up.
I think of this aspect too. In going my own way, I disobey, even ignore, the great command, to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. God loves me. No one is better to me than Him. It’s not even close, but I live for myself.
Two, it’s a necessary motivation.
Sin ruined man. It ruins men. Men easily live for themselves. They move from one lust to the next. This is all so strong, that Hell is a necessary impetus to reject that.
I know there’s all the positive too: Heaven, God’s goodness, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and the truth of the Bible. That’s all important. I still see Hell as necessary motivation in spite of all those good things, on the negative side. The flesh is that strong. Human desire is that strong.
You could call all that the world offers, what Jesus calls, gaining the whole world. Even if man doesn’t gain the whole world, the whole world is still out there offering its invitation. The eternal loss of a soul counteracts the lie of the world. It’s a nagging reality. Even if someone wants to block it out, it disquiets and afflicts.
When Jesus told the story of the rich man in Hell, someone sees a man who did have everything in his short lifetime, who would gladly give it all up for even a drop of water, while he’s in Hell. If there’s one thing he wants to do, even when he can’t escape Hell, it’s to get a warning to his brothers. This is a warning to all the living.
Hell is not over the top. Even with it, people still choose to go there with the knowledge of its existence. As severe as it is, it’s still not enough for a vast majority of people. Many atheists would rather mock Hell and God than receive the Lord, despite the reality of Hell.
Hell makes total sense to me personally for these two reasons.
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