Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website GlobalServants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Loyalty is the very fabric of community.
Without loyalty, community shreds.
Hello, I'm Mark Rutland and this is the Leader's Notebook.
This is the next in a series of podcasts I'm doing based on my book called Character Matters. I'll be teaching in this whole series on the various virtues, character traits that make a nation great, the absence of which destroy a nation's culture and conscience.
Today I'll be teaching on loyalty and I hope you'll stay tuned for it. At the end of this podcast someone is going to tell you how you can receive a copy of Character Matters. I want you to have this book, but I also want you to participate in Global Servants ministry, keeping young girls from sex traffic. We have homes in Southeast Asia and West Africa.
Each of them are called the the House of Grace.
We are saving little girls for big destinies.
I'm inviting you at the end of this broadcast to go online make a contribution to Global Servants. For any amount, of course. I hope you'll make it as generous as possible, but for any amount. Make a contribution and I'll have my office send you a copy of Character Matters. I want you to have this book and I invite you, urge you to to also take part in helping us save little girls for big destinies.
Now, as I said, loyalty is the very fabric of community.
Devoid of basic trust, in some kind of mutuality of commitment, relationships simply cannot prosper without loyalty. Father and son will live as hated strangers. Families will disintegrate. Culture will become bestial.
Only invented taboos and fearsome superstitions can restrain such a murderous society from utter criminality.
When loyalty is lost, the fabric of relationship unravels.
Even the disloyal depend on someone else's loyalty. The philandering husband will bitterly resent his accountant's embezzlement.
The bribed politician howls over his wife's adultery.
The issue is not merely hypocrisy. It is a failure to comprehend the very nature of the virtue of loyalty.
No one can translate into relationships a virtue that is fundamentally misunderstood. No society can expect loyalty to anchor its relationships. Once treachery becomes admirable.
The seams of community are ripped asunder when treachery becomes an acquired virtue, an admired virtue, and a virtue that is acted upon with societal approbation.
In a society thus brutalized, no one's safe family ties mean little.
Friendship means even less.
Life without loyalty is fragile. It's terrifying. It's a jungle of betrayal.
If loyalty is understood only in terms of isolated relationships, disillusionment and bitterness are inescapable. And they're inevitable.
That is to say, a disloyal man is disloyal in his character rather than in respect to some particular relationship.
The prevailing wisdom of contemporary society contends that marital loyalty is irrelevant to job performance.
Quite the contrary.
A man is not simply disloyal to his wife, he is disloyal. The wise employer will reason if he will be disloyal to his wife, why should I expect loyalty to to me and this company?
The president of a certain company finally reduced the candidates for a certain opening to two final applicants.
Both were very good, well educated, plenty of resume.
In fact, it grieved him not to hire them both.
At dinner following the interview, the CEO analyzed the eager young hopefuls across from him. Do you mind if I ask a question now? One of the young men asked. My wife advised me to get a clear reading on one point, and I really trust her counsel.
The CEO totally ignored the question. Instead, he seized the moment to test the other candidate. What about you? Did your wife send you off with any questions in hand?
Hardly, the young man scoffed.
She wouldn't even know what to ask.
The old businessman chuckled conspiratorially and leaned closer, hoping to draw the young man out. No head for business, huh?
No head for much of anything, the young man said. A classic beauty from Boston, as they say. The porch light is on but nobody is home.
As the two men shared the joke, the boss noticed that the other applicant sipped his coffee and ignored the jest.
And your wife? The employer asked that candidate.
What about her? Does she always tell you what to ask?
The young man answered. She certainly doesn't control me, if that's what you mean. She is very bright, and I trust her advice in many areas of life. She's really a wonderful person. I wish you could get to know her.
In that one moment, the CEO knew he had his man.
Someone who will mock his own wife was not for him.
Loyalty was clearly in the character of the man he hired, and character was what he wanted.
The moral and social consequence of venerating the wicked are substantial and incredibly short sighted beyond words.
Loyalty is not a matter of Trading off one does not gain six points for voting a straight ticket, then lose three for company disloyalty, finishing at a good solid plus three.
Efforts to isolate or compartmentalize loyalty from the professional aspect of life are misguided and dangerous. A man does not simply act disloyally in some particular area of his life unrelated to the rest.
A person is either loyal or they're not.
Loyalty is the willingness, because of relational commitment, to deflect praise, admiration and success onto another.
This loyalty may well be at great personal expense, but it will edify and bless its object.
Loyalty never usurps authority. It refuses to accept inappropriate love or praise that might and should properly exalt another.
Loyalty is the glue that holds relationships together. It makes families functional and it makes armies victorious.
Loyalty is the fabric of society. Without loyalty, no enlisted man can dare to hope that his general cares whether he lives or dies.
And no captain can expect an inconvenient order to be obeyed.
Without loyalty, marriage becomes a competitive minefield.
Companies become dangerously paranoid and ruthless. Power politics will turn bishops into Machiavellian princes.
Loyalty is the basic element that validates and cements relationships.
If husbands are disloyal to their wives, if children are disloyal to their parents, parents to children, employees to employers, there is no secure relationship and the fabric of community soon unravels.
A particularly ironic confusion arises from a society's general disregard for the virtue of loyalty.
We have contracted an inability to prioritize our loyalties. That is to say, confusion in society results from failure to establish appropriate levels of loyalty.
Not all loyalties are created equal.
Spheres of loyalty will often conflict with weakness, and instability in character will be the result of failures to distinguish levels of loyalty and to resolve this inner conflict.
James 1:8 says it this way. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Only by working downward from the ultimate loyalty in one's life can this dissonance be avoided.
We have to first establish the non negotiable, which can never be denied. The tension is eased in that way at descending levels. Once I know what my ultimate loyalty is, all loyalties downward from that are more easily resolved.
Let me give you an example. A woman came to me for counseling claiming that her husband was ordering her to engage in prostitution.
He was not a Christian, but he knew she was.
He made this perverted demand by exploiting her convictions.
He was the head of the household and she must be loyal to him.
She evidently had accepted some kind of strong legalistic teaching that convinced her that no matter what her husband said no matter what he ordered her to do, she had to submit to him. As the head of their household.
This Christian woman was actually considering acceding to his demands.
She was deceived by confused loyalties combined with a false sense of submission.
By allowing a secondary loyalty, that is the one to her husband, to supersede her ultimate loyalty, that is the one to Jesus, she nearly entered into serious immorality.
Her unsaved husband was using her slavish misunderstanding of Scripture to manipulate her into doing what he wanted.
Another woman with whom I once counseled was awaiting her criminal trial for embezzlement. She had gotten involved with a man who was heavily in debt. He pleaded with her to get some money from him so he would not go to prison. She embezzled a substantial amount of money from her job at the bank to help him, fully intending to repay it.
The scandal of her arrest was a bitter shock to her church and to her family.
When I asked her how she could have fallen for such a tired old line as his, she responded she had no idea she was right. She had no idea. She rationalized her disloyalty to God and to her employer by hiding behind loyalty to a man. And, by the way, not much of a man at that.
For the married, loyalty to spouse is second only to loyalty to God. A marriage can struggle along, wracked by bitterness and unforgiveness. But once the cracks of disloyalty appear, only the grace of God can save it.
My wife and I have counseled with many couples whose marriages have been shaken by extramarital affairs. We try to bring them to the point of being honest with each other about the adultery. In so doing, we have found that husbands and wives generally ask very different questions. Betrayed husbands typically ask questions about the sex.
Was he a better lover than I am? Was there something he did for you that I don't do? Did you enjoy him more than you enjoy me? Wounded wives almost never ask about the sex.
They ask, did you talk about me with her?
That shocked me. The first time a woman asked it. I thought to myself, of all things, that's what you want to know. You want to know what he was talking about.
Her husband was sleeping with another woman and she was interested in what they talked about.
I came to realize why the wives, and not the husbands were asking the truly important question. The wives wanted to discern what. What the act of immorality really meant.
They intuitively grasped that in the pillow talk, the depth of the disloyalty could be discerned loyalty in marriage is quite the same as loyalty in any other relationship. It means constantly building up the other, even at one's own risk and expense.
I cannot imagine being more loyal to her husband than than my wife is to me.
When I go preach where my wife has previously spoken, I'm often asked by people there, are you really as wonderful as your wife says you are? Of course, that makes me feel like a million dollars.
I must of course, humbly defer to my wife's wisdom and discernment.
Her loyalty, in turn, makes me want to respond in kind. It escalates. We begin to race with each other to see who can build up the other more behind the other one's back.
For many couples, the same cycle works in reverse.
My wife and I are always shocked to hear couples argue and contradict each other in public.
In criticizing the wisdom and ability of your spouse, or of your superior or of a subordinate doesn't make you seem bigger to others. It lowers you.
Logic dictates that the lesser works for the greater. Therefore, if the boss is the champion nitwit of all time, what kind of people would work for him?
If your wife is a dumbbell, what kind of man would marry her? If your husband is allowed, what kind of woman would marry him?
If the boss is an all around great person, tremendous insight and wisdom, then the happy conclusion is that surely he showed wisdom in hiring this person.
When I lift up my boss, I'm lifted up. When I brag on my wife, I shall be held in honor by others. If I speak of her disloyally, others will agree with me that she certainly is stupid. Stupid enough to marry me.
Likewise, if my parents are village idiots, well, they gave birth and raised me.
Loyalty must function upwardly and downwardly. The CEO of a corporation should periodically invite someone to teach his employees about corporate loyalty. They must know how to deflect praise and admiration onto the boss while being willing to accept the blame when things go badly.
The boss on his side or her side must also be loyal downwardly to employees. Upward loyalty helps to fulfill the superior's dreams. Lower level managers are generally not hired to be visionaries.
Any institution must operate on only one vision. An obvious example of this is an ambassador. Ambassadors do not get paid to have opinions, but to clearly communicate for the head of state.
When a U.S. ambassador presents himself or herself to a foreign government, no one there much cares about the ambassador's ideas. They want to know what the president thinks.
By the same token, a president who would denigrate his own ambassadors is basically disloyal.
Loyalty is at the very heart of all community.
Without loyalty, relationships shred and our life becomes filled with fear.
I'm so glad that you joined me for this episode of the Leader's Notebook.
I hope that this series on character matters is being useful to you. I want you to have the whole series, of course it will be archived and you can listen to the ones that are to come. I'll be teaching this for some time.
It's part of our two year celebration of the podcast the Leader's Notebook.
I also want you to have the book on which this series is based and I want you to have it in return for a gift to our Girls Homes.
As the founder of Global Servants, of which my son is now the President, we have established girls Homes in both West Africa and Southeast Asia. West we call them the House of Grace.
I want you to listen as the next voice you hear at the end of this podcast will tell you how you can make a contribution to these little girls to make sure that their destinies are secure and then immediately to receive a copy of Character Matters. No matter what the amount of your contribution is, I hope you'll make it generous, of course, as generous as you can possibly do.
But regardless of that, we'll send you a copy of Character Matters in return for any contribution.
Now, may God bless you and strengthen the life of loyalty in all your relationships. Until we meet again.
I'm Mark Rutland and this has been the Leader's Notebook.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Wow. Another great episode of the Leader's Notebook. Hello, I'm Ronnie Brannan, the Chief of Staff at Global servants and as Dr. Rutland said, we want to send you your copy of his book Character Matters. You can receive your copy by contributing any amount to Global Servants through our Secure Give app on our website. Go to globalservants.org, click the Donate button and then click Give Online and then leave your contribution under the Podcast Gift tab. Next, please click Add a Message and include your name, email address, and the mailing address where you would like your book delivered. As soon as your donation is processed, we'll send you an email confirming the delivery address and we'll get your book in the mail to you by the next business day. Again, thank you for subscribing to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland and helping make a difference for those around the world in helping save little girls for big destinies.
You've been listening to the Leaders Notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Be sure to subscribe, Rate and review Today's podcast. You can follow Dr. Rutland on Twitter @Dr. Mark Rutland or visit his website, Dr. MarkRutland.com join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
