Stupid people don’t know: smart people don’t know but want to. Pastoral work is always about faith, but most people have no idea what that is. To say that it is “belief in things hoped for but unseen,” from the Letter to the Hebrews, is to say nothing about the content, but it may also get the meaning of the word itself wrong. At the very least it is incomplete.

Faith is a popular word these days. Search for faith definition and you get “complete trust or confidence is something or someone.” Sometimes the second definition adds the phrase “in God.” The problem of our day is that there is usually no direct object given. We just have faith. But to have faith is to have faith in something.

At church, we add “in Jesus Christ,” but we usually mean that we have complete trust or confidence in some facts about Jesus Christ. A few years ago, 18 or so, I started teaching that we should use the word “trust” in place of faith, and I still believe that helps. “I trust what Jesus Christ teaches about the world and that the way that he teaches is the way I should go.”

Lately a new translation is changing my understanding again. I have been looking for a new translation for pistis for a few years because “trust” still does not imply action. Even if you look back at Hebrews and study the examples the author gives, it is clear that what he (or she-we don’t know who wrote the letter) intends is more than an internal posture whether of the head or the heart. Every example did things. Jesus, when he asks for pistis, is expecting action. Trust does not quite capture the idea.

Matthew Bates has a new offering in his book Faith by Allegiance Alone. If you teach in the church, read this book. Bates is deeply traditional in the core of his faith. He could teach in my Episcopal church or my parents’ Southern Baptist one without crossing theological boundaries for most people. But at the same time, this book is devastating to the realities of both ends of the church, and it hinges on this one translation difference, “allegiance” instead of “belief” or “trust.”

For years the American Pledge of Allegiance has made me uncomfortable as a follower of Christ, not because I don’t love my fellow Americans and would die to protect them, but because pledging allegiance to anything above Christ is anathema. I would die for my fellow Americans because I am a follower of Jesus, but my first allegiance is to him. Fortunately, for those who get nervous when people put allegiance to God before democracy or the republic or my fellow man, you can know the content of my allegiance.

The teachings of Jesus are available to read and study. They are the content of my allegiance. So you should have no fear of me. I am a sheep among wolves. This, of course, raises some serious and deep issues for our other allegiances, including the Flag, but not limited to it. It raises issues of family, even children, and business, and friendship.

Matthew Bates does a wonderful job summarizing these issues for deep traditional believers. He has just begun to deal with the issues for the multiple allegiances for those on the left hand of the church. Does my being a follower of Jesus mean that I must keep with his disciples when their political views impinge my own? Or their moral views? Must I keep chastity central to my understanding of faith? What about abortion and sexual liberty? How do we respond to the pressures of social media and the culture of exploitation, racism, violence, promiscuity, lust, and greed?

Allegiance reduces freedom. It is very difficult to own in a culture where freedom is the faith of our time. There should be a goddess of freedom, so that we can see where our allegiance lies. Liberty itself is not a bad thing, but it is not an absolute good. It is not God. Yet we have come to accept a radical gospel of freedom. I first realized that I believed in it when I read Hugh Hefner preach it in an interview. There it was, true joy and happiness are in complete liberty, sexual liberty in Hefner’s argument right from the Constitution. Hefner was blithe in his assurance that freedom was the absolute good. At least de Sade was willing to show the violence of such a gospel. We must have something larger than freedom to have any real joy and productivity at all and certainly if we are to have peace and goodness for all. We need virtues that arise from a dedication to a larger vision,  indeed a global one.

Jesus taught that the God of Israel, Creator of all things, was a loving parent who called all people to return to their true creation as image bearers, God’s children, being like God in the world, creative, loving, caring, restoring, forgiving, making new. To do that we must be disciplined in our lust, greed, violence, hatred, judgement, words and actions, even thoughts. In the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7, we see how that relies on trust in God’s provision and allegiance Jesus’ teachings, so that we can offer freely what we have been given. This reciprocal relationship mirrors citizenship or status as an heir with allegiance and authority in a royal household.

This gospel offers real life, but if only if you have pistis in Jesus Christ the Son of God, ruler of all rulers. Bob Dylan’s You gonna serve somebody points out that everybody serves somebody, so choose this day whom you will serve, as Moses demanded of the Hebrews so long ago.

We can only do this by the grace of God to bring us home as heirs and the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us teaching us the ways of God for we are all shaped by the lies and habits of destruction that we have given allegiance to in the past.

Where does your allegiance lie? Whom do you pledge your life and allegiance to? Who are you gonna serve?