1 - 29 - 18 Loyalty and Opportunity (Part One) (4 minutes)

This is going to be kind of a football blurb.

A lot of people feel loyalty to sports teams. Whether they’ve played for them, rooted for them, or just been around them. Most fanbases are purely geographical, and people who are fans of teams outside their geographic area are often scorned as traitors (hopefully and usually lightheartedly), which I guess makes a little bit of sense and I’ve done it before (Brent Dunn).

But you got to really dig into it, why are you loyal? Why should you be loyal to something?

I think the concept of loyalty runs very close with duty. Loyalty is the feeling that you owe allegiance. That you ought to support this group or person. Let’s think about some of the reasons people do that, and which ones really hold up under scrutiny.

There’s the geographic argument for loyalty. You should be loyal to the people that live near you because odds are you’ll need each other soon enough. And no matter how much good faith you have with people in Denver, it’s pretty ridiculous to ask even your best friend to fly to Tampa to help you move. You’d think you’d see this type of loyalty fading as transportation becomes easier, but people are actually moving less (oh yeah I’ve got sources) so it’s ironically growing from the 20^th into the 21^st century (or at least it should be, people are likely just less loyal overall now).

As an argument for loyalty goes, you’ve got to acknowledge that it’s purely practical. There is absolutely no morality behind this kind of loyalty. This is the kind of loyalty people from Michigan have for Michigan or Michigan State football (for the most part).

Involvement loyalty. This is the other big motivator of college sports fans. They feel somehow connected to a team (regardless of how connected they actually are) because they have something in common, i.e. went to that school. I think this is a little bit stronger than geography because you probably have something in common with these people. Whether you went to school in East Lansing, or you’re both ruggers, or you both speak Spanish.

This one can have a little bit of moral ground to it if it’s something you’re really proud of (i.e. military friends), but it’s often mostly pretty practical.

The second to last one I can think of this morning is tied for the strongest in my book and that’s moral loyalty. This is the loyalty you have to a group or person because you think it’s simply the right thing, you admire their mission, etc. I’d like to think this is one of my main motivating loyalties for the Church, hopefully not just involvement.

This is the one that will piss people off the most. If they don’t share your moral compass, they might have a hard time understanding why you’re quitting something with them you’ve done for years (or months) to pursue something else. A big part of the reason I quit rugby initially was because I had a moral loyalty to excellence, I wanted to challenge myself more. The main reason I quit football was an even greater moral loyalty to proper prioritization and living a balanced life.

Because moral loyalty is based on an abstract idea, and often has a lot to do with the kind of person you want to be, it’s often the hardest to defend when you’re leaving a group for it. It’s the one most often seen as being disloyal or a quitter. (Unless of course you're leaving for an uncompelling reason like laziness.)

The last one, which I think is just as strong but obviously less moral than moral loyalty, is investment loyalty. A lot of people confuse involvement loyalty for investment loyalty, but they’re profoundly different in the way you’ve been treated.

If you attended a university and paid full price, your professors were kind to you, and you were involved in some nice clubs, that’s involvement. If you got a scholarship, your professors mentored you, and you met lifelong friends in meaningful activities, that’s investment.

Think about whether the organization you’re thinking of impoverished itself in any way to benefit you. My real mentors (my parents, Father Wayne, Coach Sparks, Coach Coop, etc ad nauseum) have all made some definite sacrifice in their life that bettered me without enriching themselves. You really need to evaluate this question when you’re considering whether you owe an organization your loyalty.

And when I say owe I mean owe. It’s fine if you decide to carry on with something even if loyalty doesn’t compel you but recognizing where you're under an obligation to continue is a key point in making good decisions (and not blaming other people for decisions you regret).

Another prominent reason I left football was because I had no investment loyalty. I didn’t feel that anyone there had gone out of their way to try to improve me as a football player, let alone a man.

Another thing is exterior expectations.

You can’t let anyone besides you and God define what success looks like within your life. I think we all get caught up in trying to do the best thing instead of the right thing. My version was trying to be a CS major while playing D1 football. Turns out, I only wanted to do that stuff because it looked really good. I don’t regret it at all. I’ve learned so much about myself in the past year it’s insane, but it wasn’t what I was meant to do.

I’m a better athlete now than I was when I was on the football team. I’m twenty pounds lighter but about 200 pounds stronger (3 lift total). A lot of people got the perception I was giving up on serious athletics when I quit the football team. I was giving up on wasting my time. I was giving up on being undervalued. I was giving up on not being invested in.

You’ve really got to examine why you’re doing the things you’re doing. What are the obligations you feel? Are they valid? How are you evaluating your options? By the world’s standards, or by God’s standards?

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Read part two here