Loyalty and Proximity
If I were to play a football game on an Xbox, Playstation, or some other system, I would pick the Kansas City Chiefs. Not because I am a fan (I think they wear red and white), but because when I was a child, one of my band directors had played for them briefly. At least that is the story I heard. It may not be true, I don't know.
The point is, because I liked that band director, I became somewhat tangentially loyal to the Chiefs. The other reason I would pick the Chiefs is this: when I was in seminary, my roommate was a big football fan (or at least in comparison to me). He loved football and had a copy of Tecmo Bowl, a football game for the original Nintendo system.
He wanted to play, so we played and I picked the Chiefs. He treated the game like a real football game. I treated it like a video game. I wasn't thinking about rational plays, stats, or player capabilities. So when I won the game by kicking a 75 yard field goal, my roommate was not happy.
"You can't do that!" he yelled.
"I just did." I said. It was just a game. But we never played Tecmo Bowl again.
So I stick with the Chiefs.
But those are the only reasons. And if one were to ask me if I was a loyal fan of the team, I would have to admit that I was not. I don't know a single name of a player on the team, a coach, a stadium name - nothing. I just have those two anecdotal stories as to why I would pick Kansas.
Yet for many, loyalty to a team is a part of their makeup. But that team depends. Where did you go to school? What state did you grow up in? What team did your parent like or dislike? Which team did your friends like? And so forth. You become loyal to that which is around you as well as that which is supported among your peers.
Loyalty, as Ali Rizivi wrote in his book The Atheist Muslim, is a function of proximity. We may not even be aware of that fact unless we are able to remove ourselves from that particular proximity and view the world with larger eyes.
Even then, we often carry our previous proximity with us. From accents to worldviews, we take our proximity to our new location: racism does not go away when one enters a more diverse cultural setting. Pride of place or of previous location does not change with a new setting. One may carry their love for Kansas City Chiefs all the way to Spain. What we do, after assimilating the loyalties of our previous proximity, is to universalize it and make all other proximity and loyalties the other. "They" hold foreign opinions. "Ours" remains the ideal.
This, of course, may be the case, but the only way to know is to evaluate and compare which comes from study, interaction, and an open mindedness to other ideas.
It is hard to do.
For example, I am a United Methodist. Born into that denomination and now a pastor of it. Yet I have to admit that the thought of leaving it is almost impossible to consider due to the overwhelming place it has in my life. However, I have also realized that some of the theology and ideas of other denominations is as if not more appealing in some cases than that of the UMC. So I seek more to assimilate than to reject. What works? What makes more sense? What speaks to me?
Perhaps my loyalty to the UMC is a function of proximity. Likely so, actually. I also recognize that there is an ingrained double standard: I am able to be critical, even dismissive of other denominational ideas and thinking, but I am only critical towards the UMC to a point - not to the point of dismissive. Why not? Because I am a part of it. I cannot be wholly objective about the denomination given my proximity. Perhaps because of that, I remain loyal.
Yet that loyalty, I would imagine, has its limits. I do not know fully what they are because I have not reached them. But, I assume, from my critical observation of other denominations, I recognize that there would be a point or points where I would diverge from the UMC.
At that point, I would again surmise, my loyalty would be questioned. That is because there is no one whose loyalty or critical feelings match my own. Like cleanliness in a house, some people are cleaner and some are less so than oneself. Yet no one holds the exact level of cleanliness in the same esteem as another. The same is true of my loyalty to the UMC. For some I am already too far removed from their idea of loyalty to be considered devout or beholden to the denomination. For others, I am an example of exceeding loyalty that cannot be comprehended (why does he remain so? one holding this opinion might ask). So is life and loyalty.
When it comes to the larger issue of Christianity, the argument is much the same. Why am I not Muslim or Jewish? Particularity of birth, predominantly. Background and rearing secondarily, and choice as a distant tertiary concern. I look at these and other world religions with an academic approach, not a desire to join. Why do I not look at Christianity the same way?
Actually, I am beginning to do so. Yet I have not because I have often thought that I did. I thought that I was approaching Christianity with as open a mind as I would to any other religion. But I did not. I could only see it as through a glass darkly because of my proximity.
To begin to look beyond proximity can only begin with a recognition of proximity. I am in this particular tradition. What does that mean for how I view other religions? What does that mean for how I view my own? Only in answering these can I begin to see if there is a double (perhaps triple) standard in my views. Only in answering these can I begin to recognize that loyalty can and has shaped my opinion and sight of this faith in ways that only someone from the outside could recognize.
It should also be said that proximity is temporal. We tend to think of our era as either the best or the worst or sometimes romanticize a time in the past - an age to which we seek to return that may not have existed at all in reality. We hear that in political campaigns to make this party, that state, or this country great again. The suggestion being that we are no longer as good as we could be or as good as we were. The trick then is to position the ideal in proximity to a mythic time in which all things were well - a time that might be different for all concerned. In our country, that proximity is to a view of America that could be but likely never has been. But proximity to an ideal provides the test of loyalty among proponents of that idea.
Nationalism, far more so than just patriotism, demands a loyalty beyond just proximity. One needs to be loyal to the idea as well as to the idea beyond proximity: one is loyal to an idea but to be truly nationalistic, that loyalty has to extend to every facet of existence. Not just in re-framing the past, but in portraying the present as divergent from that past ideal while seeking to reestablish that ideal for the future. It isn't enough to be loyal, one has to be a fanatic.
And when one is a fanatic, the shorthand of which is fan, one is a person with extreme and uncritical zeal for a person, group, or idea. Fanatics, though usually utilized in a humorous, less frightening manner, are those who cannot tolerate the opposition of thought, faith, politics, or proximity. A fanatic is the ultimate in loyalty.
Perhaps the idea of loyalty isn't in and of itself a dangerous thing. Marriage, for example, is a wonderful example where loyalty is a boon. Yet even there, loyalty can keep persons in abusive relationships. Loyalty, it would seem, must be examined routinely to verify if the loyalty is a good thing, or if the team, religion, location or proximity is worth the loyalty it may demand.
I will likely stay with the Chiefs, though. For the time being.
The point is, because I liked that band director, I became somewhat tangentially loyal to the Chiefs. The other reason I would pick the Chiefs is this: when I was in seminary, my roommate was a big football fan (or at least in comparison to me). He loved football and had a copy of Tecmo Bowl, a football game for the original Nintendo system.
He wanted to play, so we played and I picked the Chiefs. He treated the game like a real football game. I treated it like a video game. I wasn't thinking about rational plays, stats, or player capabilities. So when I won the game by kicking a 75 yard field goal, my roommate was not happy.
"You can't do that!" he yelled.
"I just did." I said. It was just a game. But we never played Tecmo Bowl again.
So I stick with the Chiefs.
But those are the only reasons. And if one were to ask me if I was a loyal fan of the team, I would have to admit that I was not. I don't know a single name of a player on the team, a coach, a stadium name - nothing. I just have those two anecdotal stories as to why I would pick Kansas.
Yet for many, loyalty to a team is a part of their makeup. But that team depends. Where did you go to school? What state did you grow up in? What team did your parent like or dislike? Which team did your friends like? And so forth. You become loyal to that which is around you as well as that which is supported among your peers.
Loyalty, as Ali Rizivi wrote in his book The Atheist Muslim, is a function of proximity. We may not even be aware of that fact unless we are able to remove ourselves from that particular proximity and view the world with larger eyes.
Even then, we often carry our previous proximity with us. From accents to worldviews, we take our proximity to our new location: racism does not go away when one enters a more diverse cultural setting. Pride of place or of previous location does not change with a new setting. One may carry their love for Kansas City Chiefs all the way to Spain. What we do, after assimilating the loyalties of our previous proximity, is to universalize it and make all other proximity and loyalties the other. "They" hold foreign opinions. "Ours" remains the ideal.
This, of course, may be the case, but the only way to know is to evaluate and compare which comes from study, interaction, and an open mindedness to other ideas.
It is hard to do.
For example, I am a United Methodist. Born into that denomination and now a pastor of it. Yet I have to admit that the thought of leaving it is almost impossible to consider due to the overwhelming place it has in my life. However, I have also realized that some of the theology and ideas of other denominations is as if not more appealing in some cases than that of the UMC. So I seek more to assimilate than to reject. What works? What makes more sense? What speaks to me?
Perhaps my loyalty to the UMC is a function of proximity. Likely so, actually. I also recognize that there is an ingrained double standard: I am able to be critical, even dismissive of other denominational ideas and thinking, but I am only critical towards the UMC to a point - not to the point of dismissive. Why not? Because I am a part of it. I cannot be wholly objective about the denomination given my proximity. Perhaps because of that, I remain loyal.
Yet that loyalty, I would imagine, has its limits. I do not know fully what they are because I have not reached them. But, I assume, from my critical observation of other denominations, I recognize that there would be a point or points where I would diverge from the UMC.
At that point, I would again surmise, my loyalty would be questioned. That is because there is no one whose loyalty or critical feelings match my own. Like cleanliness in a house, some people are cleaner and some are less so than oneself. Yet no one holds the exact level of cleanliness in the same esteem as another. The same is true of my loyalty to the UMC. For some I am already too far removed from their idea of loyalty to be considered devout or beholden to the denomination. For others, I am an example of exceeding loyalty that cannot be comprehended (why does he remain so? one holding this opinion might ask). So is life and loyalty.
When it comes to the larger issue of Christianity, the argument is much the same. Why am I not Muslim or Jewish? Particularity of birth, predominantly. Background and rearing secondarily, and choice as a distant tertiary concern. I look at these and other world religions with an academic approach, not a desire to join. Why do I not look at Christianity the same way?
Actually, I am beginning to do so. Yet I have not because I have often thought that I did. I thought that I was approaching Christianity with as open a mind as I would to any other religion. But I did not. I could only see it as through a glass darkly because of my proximity.
To begin to look beyond proximity can only begin with a recognition of proximity. I am in this particular tradition. What does that mean for how I view other religions? What does that mean for how I view my own? Only in answering these can I begin to see if there is a double (perhaps triple) standard in my views. Only in answering these can I begin to recognize that loyalty can and has shaped my opinion and sight of this faith in ways that only someone from the outside could recognize.
It should also be said that proximity is temporal. We tend to think of our era as either the best or the worst or sometimes romanticize a time in the past - an age to which we seek to return that may not have existed at all in reality. We hear that in political campaigns to make this party, that state, or this country great again. The suggestion being that we are no longer as good as we could be or as good as we were. The trick then is to position the ideal in proximity to a mythic time in which all things were well - a time that might be different for all concerned. In our country, that proximity is to a view of America that could be but likely never has been. But proximity to an ideal provides the test of loyalty among proponents of that idea.
Nationalism, far more so than just patriotism, demands a loyalty beyond just proximity. One needs to be loyal to the idea as well as to the idea beyond proximity: one is loyal to an idea but to be truly nationalistic, that loyalty has to extend to every facet of existence. Not just in re-framing the past, but in portraying the present as divergent from that past ideal while seeking to reestablish that ideal for the future. It isn't enough to be loyal, one has to be a fanatic.
And when one is a fanatic, the shorthand of which is fan, one is a person with extreme and uncritical zeal for a person, group, or idea. Fanatics, though usually utilized in a humorous, less frightening manner, are those who cannot tolerate the opposition of thought, faith, politics, or proximity. A fanatic is the ultimate in loyalty.
Perhaps the idea of loyalty isn't in and of itself a dangerous thing. Marriage, for example, is a wonderful example where loyalty is a boon. Yet even there, loyalty can keep persons in abusive relationships. Loyalty, it would seem, must be examined routinely to verify if the loyalty is a good thing, or if the team, religion, location or proximity is worth the loyalty it may demand.
I will likely stay with the Chiefs, though. For the time being.
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