TO QUESTION OR NOT TO QUESTION: THAT IS THE QUESTION

QUESTION AUTHORITY,  the advice which occasionally appears on bumper stickers, did not begin in the 21st Century, nor in the late 1960's, nor in the 1940's, but, at least for those of us who grew up in my father's house, as early as 1916 in an Armenian household in the city of Marash, (Western Armenia), Ottoman Empire.  In one of the snippets I recorded on audiotape in the 1970's (now on CD), my father sings a song and comments, and I quote:

"When I was a little boy in Marash, I used to go to Sunday School. One Sunday we sang this song in Sunday School (as we put our offering into the plate).

                                       Jungur, jungur, jungur, jungur,  mangurlar dusung; 

                                       Hepisi Onun uchundur, O alur butun.

                     Translation: Jingle, Jingle, Jingle, Jingle, the coins all fall in.  
                                       All of it is for Him (Jesus), He (Jesus) takes it all.

 

So after the Sunday School was over  I came home and  I asked my mother, these pennies were dropping in. There's something wrong about that. They said that those coins were for Jesus.  I didn't see Jesus taking them.  They took all the money.  My mother would say to me, Jesus didn't actually take it, but it goes for the work of Jesus. . ."

My father started early and never stopped questioning throughout his long life. He taught his children to do the same.  Amazing that the questioning should have begun in a traditional society, although admittedly in the not-so-traditional mind of a boy who was growing up outside of the traditional society, in a not-so-traditional household, in a not-so-traditional time.

As one of his admirers recently commented, "He was an independent thinker, even then!"