Why I Didn’t Become a Lawyer                                                                               March 24, 2020

 

In elementary school the teacher knows everything. She will tell you to use Capital Letters correctly (sorry e e cummings), and to always put commas where they belong (When did you eat grandma?). He will tell you not to end a sentence with a preposition (Boy to dad who brought the wrong book upstairs, “Why did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?”).

 

When she asks if you have a question, she means about the subject she just taught. “Is Muttley a good name for my new dog?” is not a good question.

 

Everyone understood that the teacher was the unchallenged authority. “I don’t care what your grandfather says. One plus one is not eleven.” 

 

I respected my teachers. Both my mother and father were teachers. I was told to pay attention (How much is a 10 shun?) and listen to them. 

 

Usually I accepted without a question what they said. But sometimes I just could not help but challenge them.

 

When I was in the third grade, the teacher had asked Johnny, “Did you just sail that paper plane across the room?”

 

Now why teachers asked questions like that when they already know the answer, I’ll never understand. But teachers do and parents do.

 

Johnny, of course, denied it, “No. It was not me.” 

 

We learn early that a little lie might avoid some trouble.

 

After a short lecture, she wrote on the blackboard, “Honesty is the best policy.” 

 

Now I had been taught to tell the truth even when it hurt. I remember when Mom was at the church and Jerry and I decided playing ball in the house was a good idea. 

 

My mother had a collection of vases, some she had bought but most had been given to her. There was a glass cabinet for displaying them. Additional ones sat on her piano on knitted doilies. Close to the couch, on a little end table, was a  black vase with gold trim around the top and a red rose in the middle.

 

The game of catch changed into a game of dodge ball. I threw and Jerry ducked. He grabbed the ball, returned the throw and I dodged. The game moved down the hall. The ball bounced off the wall and rolled into the living room. Jerry picked it up and threw it as I came around the corner. I caught the ball in air and quickly fired a shot to score a point. He twisted sideways and I watched in fear as the ball passed him, headed for the black vase. In slow motion, the ball hit the vase. The vase tipped sideways, swung back, stood on edge for a moment then continued off the table. I made a hopeful dive. But too late. Right in front of my face, I watched the treasure disintegrate into small pieces. 

 

“Oh! No!” was all I could get out. Jerry stood there, not moving and not making any sound. 

 

“Get the broom!” I commanded in panic as I picked up some of the pieces. He returned and I quickly began to move the pieces around and push them into the yellow dust pan. We carried the fragments into the kitchen. We lifted the smelly thrash out from the can, and empted the evidence from the dust pan into the very bottom. Carefully, we replaced everything making sure that no part of the destruction was visible. 

 

We decided that reading a book in our room would be the best activity for when Mom returned.

 

I’ve never been able to understand mothers and their ability to see out of the back of their heads and to know when you’ve done something wrong even when you act as innocent as a new born baby.

 

Mom walked into the house. She didn’t ask, “Are you hungry?” or anything else. Instead she looked straight into the living room and asked, “What happened to my black vase?”

 

Looking off to my left, I said, “I don’t know.”

 

Jerry echoed, “I don’t know, either.”

 

“Did you break it?”

 

“Not me.”

 

“Not me either.”

 

“Then what happened?”

 

“Maybe the dog knocked it off the table.”

 

“Maybe the dog.”

 

“Then where is it?”

 

“I cleaned it up and put it in the wastebasket. I didn’t want the dog to get into trouble.”

 

“I helped.”

 

“You boys know it is very important to tell the truth. So, I’m going to ask you again. What happened to my vase?” she asked intensely.

 

I knew the time had come to confess. “I knocked it off the table throwing a ball. I’m sorry, Mother.”

 

“I’m not going to punish you because you did tell the truth. We need to be able to believe everything you say. So always tell the truth. It is what we want you to do and it is what Jesus wants you to do.”

 

So when the accepted saying appeared on the blackboard, I already knew a person should always tell the truth.  

 

However, my analytical mind went to work on it. I thought, “If it is only  policy, then policies can change. It has to be more than a policy. It has to be what you always do, regardless of the circumstances.”  

 

So I thought I should help the teacher and the class to understand this. 

 

“It is not the best policy because you must be honest.” I explained.

 

“Bob, what do you mean? You should always be honest. It is the best policy,” she corrected.

 

“But what if your policy changes? You could say that you’d be honest to your friends but not your enemies.” I argued.

 

“No, it is a policy to be followed. Don’t you see that?” she  asked.

 

“What if you had a policy of being honest in big things but little things don’t matter much?”

 

"No. It would be a policy in everything.” she answered.

 

I tried my best to communicate what I wanted her and the student to understand. There must be an absolute of “Honesty is right because it is what God wants and commands.” Jesus put it simply, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” There is no policy there. There is only the absolute. 

 

I could express it better now that I use the word absolute, but then I was limited in how I tried to communicate my thought.The teacher and I carried on a discussion before the whole class, me trying to say it must be more than a policy and her trying to get me to see that honesty is the best policy. I remember her restating it and me trying to correct the weakness in my argument. Her thought was that I was saying you don’t have to be honest but that was not what I was trying to express.  I don’t know how many times we each stated our point but finally she presented an argument I could not answer at that time. She said, “And, Bob, your dad is a minister!”

 

I knew her argument at that point was, “This is what a minister would say and your dad is a minister. He would say what is written on the board.”

 

I did not know what to say to that issue. I had never discussed it with my dad. I felt he would agree with me but I couldn’t tell the teacher that because I did not know for sure. I wish now I had asked him that afternoon what he thought. Maybe I did and I have just forgotten it. 

 

For me my point was right and I continued to feel that way. It was many years later when “Situational Ethics” became popular. I thought back to my discussion with the teacher and realized that this was the same argument again but with a little more force. The problem was still there for me. If there is not an absolute for honesty, integrity, morality, faithfulness, loyalty, etc.then they are only a policy that can change with the seasons, the situations, or the needs. 

 

Joseph Fletcher, who wrote the book “Situation Ethics”, put love as the highest and acting in love would determine if we need to be honest or to lie. Love sounds good but another person may put something else, like personal gain, as the ultimate criteria and they often do. 

 

Maybe today I would have made a clearer argument. Maybe I would have shown more respect for the teacher instead of arguing with her in front of the class. Or maybe I would have said, “I can’t change the world.” and stayed quiet. 

 

Regardless, to be honest, I haven’t changed my position in my 80+ years.

 

Matthew 5:37 “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

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