Who's your Master?

"The Hartford" insurance and investment company has a haunting two-page ad in which its iconic majestic stag stands atop a pillared old edifice that connotes solidity, stability, and strength. A spare text is all that's needed: "The question isn't how do you reach your goal, it's who do you follow?

That seems a risky pitch to me in an age where the notion of "following" is a nonstarter at best, and where we all fancy ourselves as autonomous.

But it is absolutely right, and quite profound. In point of evidence: note our teenaged boys walking around with their pants slung so uncomfortably low that nothing but the tacit "authority" of peer pressure could impose that kind of style servitude.

The fact is that, far from our modern nation being devoid of authorities, it abounds with them. A certain child of mine likes to tell me, when I quote Jesus, that she is emancipated of all such external authorities, even as she follows unawares many a stag that wanders helter-skelter. But P.T. Forsyth was right:

"The first duty of every soul is not to find its freedom but its Master."