"But the fact remains that the services are not alike, that no wit of man can make them alike, and that the retention by each of its separate character, customs and confidence is essential to the conserving of our national military power. Unification has not altered this basic proposition. The first requirement of a unified establishment is moral soundness in each of the integral parts, without which there can be no soundness at all. And on the question of fundamental loyalty, the officer who loves every other service just as much as his own will have just as much active virtue as the man who loves other women as much as his own wife." -- The Armed Forces Officer, U.S. Department of Defense (1950)
Christians should love their local church more than other churches. They should be members of their church as a matter of priority. They have an obligation to serve and minister to those who are enrolled as members in their local gatherings before they serve and minister to those Christians of other congregations.
Christians have obligations to love particular neighbors in a particular order of priority. Christians must honor covenants before anything else. This means a Christian is obligated first and foremost to God with whom they have made a covenant of worship. They then must love their spouse, if married, above all other earthly people as they made a covenant of marriage with them. Next, the children produced by the union of that covenant of marriage must be prioritized. One's own children take precedent over other people's children. Next would be a Christian's parents. One must honor thy father and mother and the covenant home into which one was born and lived under until establishing their own home through the covenant of marriage. Any siblings produced as a result of that covenant come next as the closest extended family from a previous covenantal arrangement. These blood-relatives whom God has made them family by His choosing of time, place and boundary a la Acts 17:26. Then the Christian must love the members of their local congregation of which they have a voluntary covenant of membership. Since this covenant can be transferred upon permissible geographical circumstances, it comes after the permanent nature of the marriage covenant under which you were born and the current one under which you have formed a new family. Next, the Christian must love their geographical neighbors beginning on their block and moving outwardly by association to neighborhood, city, county, state, nation, etc... Christian obligation is a matter of monitoring the especiallies and applying them with particular attention.
1 Timothy 5:8
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Galatians 6:10
So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
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