Duty, Honor, Country & God 28 MAR 2013

Duty, Honor, Country & God: A post to enhance the cooperation of truthers & the community of believers.
Promises, vows, oaths—in other words commitments—tie in to our deepest desires & convictions. They are made to assure all involved that we will not abandon our obligation just because it conflicts with some momentary desire we happen to entertain. Personal commitments are made to each other & to excellence. The focus of a commitment is ennobling.

Commitment means being committed. Our word is a moral obligation. Yet, in spite of the appearance of permanency, upon second thought, there are often: foolish promises given, contracts under duress made, more important conflicting obligations demanding attention, as well as impossible oaths, all of which demand we reneg. Wisdom allows us to break a commitment to keep a greater moral obligation. (Examples: The rabbi’s allowed military fighting on the Sabbath to preserve life. Christ described a conflict of obligations when the good shepherd ignores 99 sheep to find a lost one…. A warped modern version of this is Asian parents who sell a child into slavery to pay family debts.)

Owe no man anything but love, the Word teaches us at RM 13:8. So let’s look at our obligation of love to our fellowman. First, a man can include love in his inner game without being a wimp. Military leaders who show they care for their men, often in return get deep loyalty & heartfelt motivation by their men to perform. Next, in a world fixed to disintegrate into chaos, love is the only dynamic reality which can hold it together. Indeed, God is love, & there is something divine in love. Generosity & goodwill generate community. Love spreads its healing like pond ripples. A single act of generosity has been known to totally change a person dramatically for the good. Without love, life is a barren emotional desert. Yet, cynical people take the new wine of love, & stuff it into their cynical old bottles of past problems. Americans are cautious around love, as if it were a slippery road that will crash them into a ditch.

The importance of generosity? Love motivates us to live. Generous people have generous kids. Most generous people had generous parents, while in other cases, the generous person was the recipient of generosity. Generosity invests in the future, by setting an example for others. In harsh conditions like a concentration camp, generosity has been the tool the giver used to preserve his humanity. (This is an example of the paradox of love & self-sacrifice…where in giving yourself away, you discover yourself!) Love also plays a role in determining the nature of an obligation, what will be lost by breaking the obligation. Our generosity may extend to self-sacrifice. We may need to sacrifice all rather than lose our souls. We may sacrifice all for a loved one. We may stand up to tyranny & thereby sacrifice all for mankind in general. That is what Christ willingly did out of love. A loving generosity & a habit of keeping commitments are tools to help us work together. As they said in the first Amer. revolution, if we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately. And as George W. Bush in an attempt to be profound stated, “If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.”