Ordering Priorities

[Copperfox]

It's been said by someone that "Tragedy does not arise from a conflict of good against evil; it arises from a conflict between ONE good and ANOTHER good." In other words, tragedy arises from someone having a dilemma with priorities.

For instance: it is a good and important thing to honor your parents; but what if there is a division between your parents to a literally lethal degree? In the ancient Greek drama trilogy, The Oresteia, Orestes has to choose between loyalty to his father and loyalty to his mother. No "neutral" position is possible for him, because his mother Klytaemnestra has ASSASSINATED his father Agamemnon. Orestes therefore MUST either accept that Mommy had valid reasons for offing Daddy (and if we accept the most popular and lurid accounts of Agamemnon's own actions, there is at least something of a case in Klytaemnestra's favor), or else decide that it really was contrary to the Five Love Languages for Mommy to have Daddy murdered in his bathtub.

Interestingly, when playwright Aeskhylos depicts the gods being drawn into debating over Orestes' dilemma, NONE OF THEM bothers to address the individual merits and faults of the hero's parents; ALL of them "vote on party lines," i.e. blindly favoring fathers over mothers no matter what, or else the reverse. Aeskhylos thus does better at introducing the CONCEPT of conflicting loyalties, than in giving us guidance in how to RESOLVE them.

Hence my invitation to all TDL members who haven't lived their lives to date manning a weather station in Antarctica. You must at some time have wrestled with a conflict between competing priorities. Tell us about your dilemmas. Which friend deserves your cooperation at another friend's expense? Which creditor should you pay back first? Which of several possible ministry openings should you get in on at church?

[EveningStar]

The question simplifies when we consider what loyalty is. Loyalty is not what you express when you're helping a person to commit or escape punishment for a crime. Loyalty is doing what must be done, but then not turning against the person. Loyalty is a mother who puts her son in drug rehab against his wishes, but continues to love him and keep his best interests at heart. That's called "tough love". There is a term for blindly accepting whatever the other person foists upon you--conspiracy after the fact.

Given the Christian viewpoint that life is not merely the span between birth and death, loyalty is doing whatever is in the long term best interests of the soul. Making a person happy in this life whilst preparing them for damnation in the next is not loyalty.

[Copperfox]

Okay, Badger, that allows me to pose a hypothetical dilemma occurring WITHIN this very realm of wanting to see souls saved for eternity.

Suppose I have to choose between two missionary opportunities. In Lower Powderroomia, the people are proving easy to win over to faith in Jesus; thus, if I go there, I could well be used by God to save hundreds of souls within my first month on the job. In Upper Gastronomia, on the other hand, there is very great resistance to the gospel; but I have cause to believe that ONE particular official in the Gastronomian government would be receptive to my Christian testimony because of some interest that he and I share in common. If by God's grace I can convert this one Gastronomian, he MIGHT in turn be able to do something to make conditions in his country easier for the future spread of the gospel.

Neither of these alternatives is wrong in itself; but which one should I view as a higher priority--certainty of a large result, or the mere POSSIBILITY of an even GREATER result?

[HugsForReepicheep]

Does it necessarily have to be priority choice? Sometimes is just a matter of what God has put to you by now. I happen to know a missionary who had both his 'Lower Powderroomia' and 'Upper Gastronomia' (nice names, by the way :p). He and his wife have worked for a really long time supporting churches and missionaries in Latin America, were decisions for Jesus, as he said himself, are really fast to achieve, because there's opportunity and space to say and eagerness to hear and choose; now they do the same work in the Middle East, were it's far more difficult, as you have to fit yourself within many limitations and accept that the work will unfold slowly. They're elders and were considering retirement, but as God has called them for this second job, they've put previous plans aside.

[Ephinie]

Wow, you know... this thread so far really hits home with me. First, because I have been in the position of having to choose between my parents (though the situation was slightly less severe than one of them murdering the other); and more recently I have had several conflicts regarding friends and how to prioritize who I need to be "more loyal" to in different situations. Add to that mix what ES is saying - that real loyalty does not mean you do or tell them what will make them happy in this life but stick to doing what really is better for them in the long run. There are times when I feel as if my entire life is lived just doing nothing else BUT working out these priority conflicts and then suffering the consequences of it once the decision is made. I'm pretty firm about sticking to a decision and riding it out no matter what happens once a decision is made. Unfortunately, there are lots of times when no matter what you do, there are going to be people mad at you.

I will try to think of a specific situation that I can share, but it may take a while. I dun want to talk about anything too current, you know... just in case it comes back to bite me on the rump if someone I know reads about it on here and has a big mouth. Surprisingly, that has actually happened to me on here a couple of times.

[Copperfox]

I'm about to do something which is almost NEVER done: I'm going to reproduce onto this thread a post I entered within the last few hours on a different thread, because the existing post IS very much about priorities, and some who didn't see it on the first thread may profit by seeing it here. So, from the "Cold War" thread to this one....


No nation is left in peace forever; and innocence is NO protection. Just ask the Dutch or the Tibetans. God has not guaranteed tomorrow to any of us on this Earth. There are numerous despots--Marxist, Islamist or otherwise--who bitterly hate all nations that cherish freedom and justice; and they will do us harm if they can. Such men have proven long before now, to anyone who bothered to pay attention, that they NEVER--as in "not ever in any case at all"--negotiate in good faith. For them, since the beginning of time, diplomacy has never been anything but a tactic to put their intended victims off guard, just as pirate ships used to camouflage themselves as peaceful ships in order to get closer to their quarry.

Thus, peace-loving people in the U.S.A. and other free nations could, sometime soon, fall prey to massive enemy attacks of one kind or another--electromagnetic pulse weapons, for instance, knocking out a country's vital power grids and communications networks. Are ANY of us making even a little bit of effort to be something like slightly ready? Or is everybody just watching music videos and reading vampire novels?

I don't believe that God Himself is very much interested in even allowing, let alone helping, us to shrug off disaster altogether and get back to our previous lives. I don't say this only because there are so many of us living heedlessly with no thought for anything but fun in the present moment. I also say it because even those who ARE God's devoted children and who ARE trying to do right while time remains, are NOT being helped to be ready for continent-wide catastrophes. EVERY time such believers think they're getting ahead and might be able to store up something for future emergencies, God always, ALWAYS confronts them with enormous already-existing needs that can't wait: refugees here, famine there, an earthquake somewhere else. God refuses to stir one finger to prevent these disasters from happening in the first place. Not that He is under any contractual duty to prevent them, but His letting them keep on happening when He could effortlessly stop them does mean that His most conscientious children are kept busy--AND financially depleted--trying to help the never-ending masses of helpless victims who need help RIGHT NOW.

It can be depressing to realize that the drought victims and flood victims and so on, whom we may help today, might STILL all be killed off anyway by a terrorist attack or a civil war next month. WE could be killed off next month. So is there ANY use in trying to be ready to survive?

Well, on one hand, Jesus told us not to be anxious for tomorrow. On the other hand, it is not inherently sinful to try not to be killed by an enemy attack or a natural disaster. Here is my opinion, only my own opinion. God may allow some of us to succeed in being prepared for SOME degree of survival--that is, prepared to survive ourselves and help others to survive FOR A LIMITED TIME. And this would be for a greater purpose than postponing death. If God, say, grants us the means to keep our own family plus ten other persons alive one week longer than we would have lived if not having ANY emergency preparations, then what will matter will be what we do IN that added week of earthly life. Maybe those ten neighbors or strangers with whom we share what we have will turn out to be souls who never knew God personally up till then; and in that final week-long grace period, we might be allowed to introduce them to the saving mercy of Jesus, so that when all of us die, ALL of us will be headed up to Heaven.

[bruiser]

Sorting out one's priorities. This is nice.

My priorities are not in [what other's may think is] the 'right' order. I do put God first, then friends, then family, myself. Yes; friends then family. Education then sports.

I have had choices that I had to make in my life, that seriously did effect which way things went. I had the choice to tell my dad that mom and one of her friends were talking about divorce. My mom's friend told my mom that she should divorce my dad. I could either tell daddy or not. I told him and they worked everything out. If I didn't tell then, well they might not still be together.

[Copperfox]

Amanda, little sweetheart, I'm SO glad that you DID take useful action! Too many Christians will fasten onto some typical cautionary warning, like "You shouldn't gossip," and use it as a catch-all excuse NEVER to take action about ANYTHING. Their true priority, sad to say, is finding a path of least resistance for themselves.