I think I may be the only man who had to do pushups in the El Paso sunshine because of a ticket stub from the Curran Theatre in San Francisco discovered in the pocket of his navy blue blazer. The issue was obedience. Obedience is an essential part of military life. If you are told by a squadron commander to take a certain evasive action during combat, you obey. If you ask for a little dialogue about the various options and insist on good process in decision making, you may end up dead, along with a few of your friends.
Obedience is an essential part of military life.
We choose to go to church not because the prayer book says we should although it does. We go because we like to and we stay away if we don t. A few years ago, a woman came to me to ask the Episcopal Church s position on intermarriage with Moslems. Not that she planned to obey any strictures that the church might impose, but because she had already made up her mind to undertake the marriage. She really had no particular intention to be obedient.