The Parable of the University

Josh lives.  Josh walks.  Josh breathes.  Josh speaks. 

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, which is the higher calling, truth or good?”

Josh spoke thus:

A man sent his son to university, but he did not trust the university.

“Go to the university,” he told his son, “But do not listen to the things they tell you.”

The son went to the university, and he did listen to the things they told him.

He learned that his father had been wrong about many things.  He learned that many of the things that his father had told him had been false.  The son believed that some of the things his father had told him had been lies.  The son suspected that some of the lies his father had told him had been deliberate.

“My father betrayed me with his lies,” the son said to himself, “Now I will betray my father’s lies.”

“The world is not this way,” he told his father.  

The father nodded, but also the father told the son, “You are mistaken.  You have been listening to what they have been telling you at the university.”

“What they have been telling me at the university is the truth,” the son declared, “They have exposed your lies.

“Perhaps,” the father said.  He did not broach is son’s betrayal.

The son denied his father, and his father’s lies.  The son estranged himself, in the name of truth, in the name of his betrayal.

“I wish my son had not listened to what they told him at the university,” the father told his neighbor.

“But you sent him to the university,” the neighbor said the the father, “Did you expect him not to listen?”

“I expected him to listen,” the father said.

“Did you expect him to deny what he had learned?” the neighbor asked.

“I expected him to accept what he had learned,” the father said.

“And did you expect him then not to deny you?” the neighbor asked.

“I sent him to university so that he would deny me,” the father said, “And now we are estranged, and now my heart is broken.”

“And what of your daughter?” the neighbor asked, “Surely you will keep her near you.”

“I will send her to university,” the father said.

“Then she will break your heart,” the neighbor said.

The father replied, “But no one will say a child of mine is uneducated.”