[From a sermonette to be delivered tomorrow at the author’s local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, in Jefferson, Missouri.]
Have you ever read “The Lost Boy” by Thomas Wolfe? It concerns the dawning awareness of Grover, a young lad of twelve when he comes fully into an awareness of himself as a conscious, moral agent in the world.
When I objected, I was given the further sanction of being stripped of my white safety guard sash and removed from the patrol at the next school assembly. It resembled the humiliation of being drummed out of the French Foreign Legion. Had it not been for my dad’s coming to my defense, the impact and the lesson of the event might have been quite different. He actually gave the principal a tongue lashing the cowardly man never forgot. After that confrontation the poor man would always make himself scarce at meetings my father attended.
Until that time I never was inclined to see any conflict over the rightness of authority figures or the immutably of rules. Like Huck Finn, who found himself in a similar conflict whether to remain true to Jim or to the rules of society, I saw my own loyalty to my friend in conflict with “the rules.”
It was an emotional response that was to play out only much later, and more fully intellectually. At the age of fourteen, I quite fully learned to always question authority. This went against nearly every axiom of the 50’s. It was not until the 60’s and the Vietnam War that it became a mantra. This realization, this awakening moment has been perhaps the most important principle of my life and has taught me to always think for myself first. I would rather arrive at an answer that proves to be wrong than blindly accept the right answer solely based on someone else’s authority.
| Copyright © 2017 by Bob Boldt |
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