I obey you, you obey me: A cautionary tale of moral certainty

Wonder, at its root, is wild. It’s the kind of astonishment that makes your stomach do tiny somersaults when you see sunlight hitting dust mites in a forgotten attic or when you realize a single snowflake has more geometric precision than any blueprint ever drawn. It’s uninvited, unpredictable, and completely unowned. It allows paradox, surprise, and awe—everything that convinces you the world is bigger and stranger than your checklist of rules.

Political correctness, by contrast, is like trying to rearrange that attic so that the sunlight falls in a perfectly measured rectangle and the dust wiped clean so no one sneezes. Its ostensible goal is empathy, but in the process, it sterilizes the magic. The sun still shines, yes, but it now feels like a meticulously framed photo rather than an invitation to dance in the dust. The snowflake survives, technically, but it is now a symbol, rather than something that might surprise you with its depth.

I discovered this human cost one fateful morning while talking to an anti-Zionist scholar—someone whose intellect could probably calculate the trajectory of a falling star, but who regarded actual wonder with the suspicion normally reserved for nuclear waste. When asked, simply, “What do you think of Jesus?”

His response was “Jesus was a wannabe tyrant.” He went on with admirable clarity to call the command to “love your enemies” perverse because it supposedly demanded obedience lest one be tortured. Pray he never be cast the role of Barney.

🎵
I obey you, you obey me,
We’ll do exactly what the rules decree.
Every hug is a contract, every kiss a form,
Mercy is domination, that’s the norm!

Surrender is slavery, gentleness deceit,
Every act of kindness gets carefully reviewed.
We all march in line and toe the mark with glee,
And never, ever wonder what it means to be free.

I obey you, you obey me,
Love is just paperwork legally.
No spontaneous laughter, no foolish delight,
All fun is audited from morning to night. 🎵

Curiosity, being the nuisance it is, compelled me to continue. Every word he said felt like a small, precise poke to the ribs of possibility. Calling someone out on moral certainty in this state is, as it turns out, walking through a snowstorm to only see the inconvenience of snowflakes. To sit in the Duomo cathedral to only notice the dirt on the floor, to watch a sunrise and mutter about ultraviolet safety standards. Everything they say becomes projection. Their goodness is armor. Being unmasked feels like existential death delivered via politely worded email.

By the end of our conversation, we were operating on two different levels:

• My level: The interior and spiritual “what happens when love replaces fear.”

• His level: The tribal and defensive “you’re on the wrong side of history.”

Meanwhile, the universe continued, entirely unconcerned with our debate. Dust mites pirouetted The Nutcracker in a sunbeam. A spider in the corner executed a flawless web that would have made Charlotte weep. Somewhere, a child contemplated the ocean as they jumped into their first rain puddle. And moral certainty might protect this scholar from uncertainty—but it also rendered him spectacularly, tragically unamused by wonder.

So the moral of the story is that wonder cannot be intellectualized into polite compliance. It is inconvenient, surprising, occasionally terrifying, and absolutely necessary. And sometimes, just sometimes, it is far more satisfying to watch someone in full moral-certainty armor trip over a simple question while a dust mite pirouettes merrily out the window, because both exist simultaneously in paradox.