The Unusual Floods

In a land of sudden rains and roaring floods, the authorities were charged with supervising dams, baffles, culberts, channels, and so on to prevent the worst of the floods.

The flood authorities were troubled by some who ignored their advice and plans. These people built culverts or filled channels to suit their own convenience.

Where the authorities were most ignored was when they asked people to manage their own property in specific ways to cut down on run-off or to make individual houses more flood proof.

The authorities often had to remind the people of the need for obedience and not doing their own thing. The more public-spirited among the citizens encouraged each other also to heed the flood authorities.

One day there was a horrible storm.

It came unexpectedly. It knocked out power and shut down normal channels of communication. It came from an unexpected direction and without the usual build up which gave warning. The authorities were scrambling to improvise using their existing network to deal with the floods.

Meanwhile citizens started filling sandbags, those who had heeded long before and had bags set by. But some of the dutiful citizens who might have sandbagged their homes refused. They said the authorities had not specifically given the order to sandbag and great trouble came from everyone doing their own thing. Those dutiful citizens, as well as the ones who had not prepared, had their houses flooded and in some cases washed away.

Moral: Obedience without initiative is not enough

Comment: I am not quite happy with this parable. It fits most organizations and institutions. I could probably do a virtue chart for it. The synthesis of obedience and initiative is being mission-focused. But it doesn’t precisely fit the Church. Granted, there certainly are people in the Church who are afraid to venture into territory where the Prophets have not spelled out the formula. In the church of my childhood, that was the main reason people insisted on the letter of the law and no more. But it isn’t now.