Tough Decision Making - Loyalty vs Righteousness

Right or wrong decision is easier to make when the issue does not involve your friends.

For friendship, do we hide or bend the truth?
Even God faces this issue. God is all love and God is all just.
How does God solve the issue of man's sin?
For justice and truth, God has to punish man for his sin.
For love, God has save man from his sin.

God maintains the truth and justice with love by sending His own son to die for man's sin. This give us the clue to solve this balance of Truth and Love.

The rule is starts with truth and ends with love or

to package truth in love. 

Truth should always be the foundation of decision making.

However, the way we go about presenting it have to be done in love.
Love should incorporates truth for truth is the eternal thing. Truth has to incorporate love because love the binding force for any relationship.

For the love of my friend, I need to show him the reality and yet I must do it in such a way that he accepts and changes. So while the first intention is to show him the truth, I need to approach him with love and gain his trust to hear the truth from me. He must be sure that my concern is for him and not to condemn him.

We tend to be too fast to point out someone's error before we gain his respect and trust. So we normally get a defensive reaction and a rejection instead. This defeats the very purpose of sharing the truth which is for his benefits.

Without the trust, the good intention is misinterpreted as an attack.

Is Telling the Truth a Betrayal?
Coming back to address the issue of loyalty and betrayal. When we are exposing the wrong doings of our friends, are we betraying our friends? What are the criteria of judging? I think there are two criteria?

1. At whose benefits? My, Friends or Others.
2. Truth or Lie?

We then have the following combination:

1. truth that benefits me (at friend's expense)..Betrayal (Juda's betrayal of Jesus)
2. truth that benefits my friend.......................true friend (must do in love)
3. truth that benefits others...........................justice (e.g. injury of others caused by your friend. There must be wrong-doing by your friend)
4. lies that benefit me (at friend's expense)......betrayal of friend
5. lies that benefit my friend...........................still call lies and is wrong.
6. lies that benefit others...............................Contradiction 

 The above classification is a start. I think I need to reflect on it to get greater clarity.

See also Kindness 1st then Truth 2nd