Attending the King: General Yi Soon Shin's choice

Religious concepts can be used in a very subtle way to push some agenda. One example is the concept of the life of attendance, which is basically translated as: to live according to the desire of the heart of one's subject.

Here's one example. It is from the Korean drama of the General Yi Soon Shin.

The King of Chosen ordered General Yi Soon Shin to attack Japanese staying around Pusan harbor. However, Yi Soon Shin refused to follow that order because he knew if he did it, he would lose not only his navy but also Japan will find their way to eventually move forward to attack the King as well as to take the whole country.

Then Yi Soon Shin was considered as a traitor and he was arrested and tortured. They assigned General Won Gyun instead and ordered him to attack Pusan. He eventually launched the attack after some hesitation and then lost the whole navy (as Yi Soon Shin foresaw) including his own life.

Then the King assigned Yi Soon Shin again, but of course he couldn't just give him the same order, and now Yi Soon Shin had to start from scratch.

So, Yi Soon Shin had a choice when the King gave him an order:

1. Say yes to him knowing that it is not the best idea practically speaking, but with the "life of attendance--to live according to the desire of the heart of the King" and maybe by justifying his impractical action with the belief "there must be some deep meaning behind the King's order even though it doesn't make sense at all, so I must absolutely obey and then God can accept it as a condition of faith and miracle might happen based on that condition."

2. Say no to him knowing that it is not the best idea practically speaking, and with the "life of attendance--to live according to the desire of the heart of the King, which means "the King wants to end this war by defeating Japan as soon as possible. That is more fundamental desire of the King than his temporal desire to attack Pusan, which might have become his temporal conclusion based on somebody's wrong and irresponsible reports"

The choice 1 needs courage because he may die in the attack and the King and the nation may be lost, but at least he may be considered as a patriot, and miracle may occur by his "faith".

The choice 2 needs more courage because he has to risk himself (or maybe his followers and their descendants) to be branded as a traitor, or, the King may misunderstand and/or doubt his motivation or King may get hurt, etc. These may be even worse than death. And since he is not obeying the King's order, he has to take total responsibility for what he is going to do.

Eventually, he took the choice 2 because that was the only way he felt could be responsible as the person in charge based on what he knew, which may not have been available to the King for some reasons.

So, was the King's judgment about him as a traitor correct evaluation? He might have made that conclusion based on the reports he was receiving. So, the problem may be his close aides who handled reports...

Anyway, the point I am trying to make here is that when you say a life of attendance, there could be different levels. The reason why the two choices above exist is that there are different levels of how you perceive the desire of the heart of the subject, and how you are trying to take responsibility in fulfilling it. Therefore, you cannot just judge everything flatly by just one standard of judgment such as: "following the order = good; not following the order =evil/traitor"

However, religion (or religious institution) has a tendency to use this kind of way to push its own agenda...