What is Duty?

We have a duty to ourselves, to our family, to our friends, to our employers, to our community, to our country and to our g-d.

Where does that duty come from, and how does masonry help you to compass that duty?

Duty is that obligation that we take upon ourselves. By our life we each have a duty to our mothers and our fathers. By that obligation, for it must be freely taken on, we further owe a duty to our brothers and our sisters.

What happens if we do not honor that obligation to duty? Nothing. Oh, we will not be considered good men, our neighbors will look down on us, and we will grow a lack of self-respect for ourselves, but nothing will happen TO us for having a lack of honor.

Our compact with society, and each one of us has a compact with the society of men, for within society we were raised, educated and protected, includes a duty to give back. Not coin of the realm, necessarily, but labor, service of a kind. Of course, we pay back a part of the ongoing debt in taxes with coin of the realm.

In kneeling at the altar and taking on the obligation of a mason, we take upon ourselves the DUTY to our brothers, withersoever dispersed around the globe, to aid and assist, and more, to SERVE, our community our god , and ourselves.

Merriam Webster defines duty somewhat more broadly:

1 : conduct due to parents and superiors : RESPECT
2 a : obligatory tasks, conduct, service, or functions that arise from one's position (as in life or in a group) b (1) : assigned service or business (2) : active military service (3) : a period of being on duty
3 a : a moral or legal obligation b : the force
of moral obligation
4 : TAX; especially : a tax on imports
5 a : WORK 1a b (1) : the service required (as of an electric machine) under specified conditions (2) : functional application : USE (got double duty out of the trip) (3) : use as a substitute (making the word do duty for the thing -- Edward Sapir)

The most relevant is #3 “a moral or legal obligation b : the force of moral obligation.” Duty is a moral obligation. DUTY is that moral obligation we owe to our brothers, our fellow man, and our g-d (not necessarily in that order). Duty then is service... even service to ourselves.

Duty is morality in action.

We have two separate types of duty. One duty is what we OWE to society, our forbearers and our contemporaries for our very life. The second is like the one we take on willingly at the altar of freemasonry, to obey the tenets of our fraternity, to aid and assist a distressed worth brother, and to whisper good counsel, either orally or by example. Our DUTY in masonry are the obligations we freely take at the altar. The duty we owe to society is the very air we breathe.

So, what is that nature of duty? It seems it is the obligation that a man owes g-d for the blessings of life, to his parents for giving him life and raising him, to the community for helping raise and educates him, to others as he GIVES the obligation, (wife, church, and lodge).

Duty flows from the self to the other, based on obligation, which is recognized by the honorable man. A man with no sense of obligation is only interested in the self... what HE wants, what HE needs... regardless of the consequences to those around him?

So from a sense of obligation, the honorable man accepts his duty. A man without honor has no sense of duty or obligation. Therefore, to be a mason, a man must understand and accept his duty to g-d, his community and his family. He must be an honorable man, a moral man. Otherwise, he rejects his duty or tries to avoid it.

As Freemasons, we know our duty to g-d, our brothers, our country, our community, our family… and we embrace it.

May the blessing of heaven rest upon us and all regular masons. May brotherly love prevail, and moral and social virtue, cement us.

Keeping Our Word

One thing that distinguishes Freemasons and binds them together is our oath and obligation. Each of us, since time immemorial, has sworn certain things before our brethren and before g-d.

It is the golden tie which binds us, our obligation to all brothers, withersoever dispersed around the globe, and their obligation to US in return. We know that we can, in time of trouble, call on a brother to aid and assist us, so far as he can do so without serious injury to himself or his family.

What are we to make then, of brethren who declaim they do not feel bound to the rules and regulations of their grand lodge(s). These brothers state that THEY are the sole arbiter of which rules/edicts they will obey, and which they will not obey, despite the fact that all of us, in one version or another, swear to abide by and conform to all the laws, rules and regulations appertaining to the degree of master mason, and to support the constitution and edicts of the grand lodge.

These brothers offer a variety of rationals for this behavior, from the puerile to the... intellectually dishonest. In all cases though, the excuses are, at the very best, disingenuous, selfish, and unmasonic. More about unmasonic later in this entry.

If a brother is willing to compromise his integrity on any point of his obligation to Freemasonry and to his brethren by rationalizing his obligation, he is proving that he cannot be trusted on any level. Truly, a man is willing to compromise his ethics, which is what keeping or not keeping an obligation freely taken is, then how can he be trusted on any level?

Yet, according to our obligations, this man is still a Mason. It is incumbent upon us, who keep our obligations, to aid, support, defend and assist these brothers who clearly do not feel the same obligation to us, BECAUSE we keep our obligation regardless of what others do.

And here, I point to my masonic motto:

Its not about me changing them, its about me changing me.

I can't change them, I can only do my best to keep my obligations, and hope that by my example, I can encourage my brothers to do the same. It is my considered opinion that as masons, we should fight always in all ways to keep our obligations. If a man cannot honor his obligation, he should consider carefully why he is still calling himself a Mason.