One day I was just there minding my business, living my unemployed graduate life; yawning and staring into space when my friend asked to meet in town. I told her that I was busy, and by ‘busy’ I meant too broke to spend on transportation. She said that the matter at hand was urgent and that she would provide transportation and lunch. At the mention of food, I went running. When I reached town, she told me that she was about to meet the woman who was accusing her of being a boyfriend stealer. She wanted me to form a one-woman defense team. I looked at myself. My thread-thin arms. My protruding collarbone. The twenty-two short years I had spent on earth. I couldn’t understand why she had picked me for the job. A few days ago, that friend of mine and I were reminiscing about the foolishness of that day. I finally asked why she had picked me and she told me that it was because of my unwavering loyalty. I was reputed to be the kind of person friends could trust to defend them with my life, even if they were wrong. Thank God I’m not like that anymore. Granted, loyalty is an admirable quality. We want to have ride-or-die types of friends. But the danger with that, the biggest danger with unwavering loyalty is that it demands that you love both the sinner and the sin. Unwavering loyalty demands that you don’t just stop at condoning the behaviour of your friend who is a serial cheat. You must become an accomplice to his behavior by providing him with an alibi when one of his many girlfriends calls to ask where he’s been. In other words, your friendship has to matter more than the hearts that will broken or the lives that will be destroyed if/when your cheat of a friend spreads an incurable disease. To be unwaveringly loyal is to attack your brother’s wife based entirely on his side of the story. You fail to recognize that there are many types of love and as such, a wonderful brother may in fact be a terrible husband. You are blind to the fact that there are three sides to every story; the side of the accuser, the side of the accused and the truth. When the truth is finally in the open, unwavering loyalty demands that you lie, cover up, attack the victim and do everything to exonerate the person that you love. You stand by your pastor in public and say that she is an upright woman of God who could never molest a child even if you have caught her doing it once before and she cried and ‘repented.’ Unwavering loyalty is dangerous because it requires ignoring instinct. It vehemently condemns asking questions. It’s the reason why people end up in cults. It’s the reason why criminals walk around scot-free. If you have a person in your life who wants you to stand by them no matter what, you’re better off cutting them loose. They are not good for you.
