Loyalty to Religion, Loyalty to God and Loyalty to Humanity

A person whose primary allegiance in life is to his or her religion may be the greatest enemy of both God and humanity. Of course, it is hard to tell when loyalty to religion overcomes loyalty to God and loyalty to humanity. One clear way to tell if someone is really more loyal to God than to his religion is if that person's loyalty to God carries with it a deep concern for humanity. Where one easily gives up concern for the life of other humans in the name of his or her religion, then I start wondering whether that religion is false (i.e., not loyal to God).

Jesus of Nazareth revealed the undisoluble unity between love for God and love for people. In the First Letter of John in the New Testament it is written: "If anyone says he loves God whom he cannot see, but does not love his neighbor whom he can see, then that one is a liar." Jesus' teaching expressed the heart of Jewish faith, and this core of Judaism has been witnessed to in the Jewish community for centuries. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself."

But, as with Judaism in the days of Jesus, so also with Christianity in the days following Jesus' days in Judea, the core of faith so often gets overcome with the secondary matters of religion. As Jesus said: "you tithe mint, dill and cumin, but neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice, love, and mercy." And, once religion loses its core, it can become a very ugly force in life.

Religion has always had the tendency to lead to division and condemnation among human beings, even where human beings seem to have risen to a high level or morality as the Pharisees had in Jesus' time. We see this tendency of the Catholic Church in the middle ages as well as the Puritans of New England in the early days of the American Colonies. But, religion has also shown a remarkable power to bring reconciliation between groups that had previously been divided (e.g., the Jews and Gentiles in Paul's early church groups).