Understanding "No dogs allowed"

It has long been a curiosity of the Hillside cemetery that leashed dogs daily prance through its wrought iron gates past a sign that reads, "No dogs allowed." When I was a newcomer, with my greyhound Spider in tow and contemplating that forbidding notice, I at first made the understandable foreigner's mistake of thinking that the sign really meant, "No dogs allowed." But upon careful observation of the casual comings and goings of human-canine pairs through the idyllic headstone-pockmarked acres, I came to the only reasonable conclusion that the sign was not serious. Maybe there had been a time when it was serious, but now it was wallpaper.

About two weeks ago I noticed a few new signs had been put up---more prominent, less weathered---that read "No dogs allowed." And I also noticed a complete absence of dogs. I tried to understand the meaning of this---why the original signs were not effective but the new ones were. I detected immediately unflattering comparisons to my parenting: how the first command to "Come and eat" had very little impact on the environment. It took about two more calls of "Come and eat" at an increasing decibel level to get the job done.

But then, in a different direction, I thought more generally about how people learn what to take seriously or not, and what to fear or not. It occurred to me that we may hear an authoritative word every day, and it may have a simple enough meaning, and we may understand it very well at some level. But if we then look around and see that nobody is heeding that authoritative word, we tend to disparage its authority and join the crowd. It is, I take it, the relational component of the learning process. The importance of the company we keep. Of our "fellowship," you might say.

Then I thought of all the Bible teachings and truths a person might read every day, mostly clear and simple English sentences. But if the person looks around him and doesn't see other people (who read the same Bible) acting on those things, then he tends to think they mustn't be very important after all. Or perhaps he has misread them. Or likely there will be no consequences for noncompliance.

Hold on, it gets even weirder: If that person reads something in his Bible that at first seems to be very plain, but if the preaching from the pulpit seems to tacitly deny it---either by consistently ignoring it or downplaying its power or relegating it to bygone age---then after a while, the person will not only disobey the plain word, but will even come around to the opinion that the word doesn't mean what it seems to mean. The final stage is that he forgets he ever saw the plain meaning.

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