Parable of Forensic Electrical Theory
26 Jan 2005 
terribly early in the morning 
Matt Winckler
We received yet another edition of Credenda/Agenda in the mail yesterday: “On the Subject of Cheese.” It is, as usual, excellent, and reinforces my belief that my annual donation is a worthy investment. It’s worth it just to receive issues a month or two or three before they appear online, and to be able to have the nice glossy hard copy to pore over in front of the fire, and not have to cadge a copy off of friends. But I digress.
Contained within this issue’s humorous pages is a particularly good parable by Douglas Wilson, which runs as follows:
Once there was a little toddler who had just learned to turn on the lights. He was very pleased whenever he had an opportunity to do so, and so his parents took to asking him to perform this valuable service whenever possible. One evening, this family had a bachelor over for dinner, and as it turns out, this man was a licensed electrician. After dinner, as they were all making their way into the living room, the father asked his son to turn on the lights. Delighted, the son pushed a stool over toward the switch, stood on it, and straining upward, pushed the switch and the lights came on.
The visiting electrician simply stood and stared, profoundly appalled. He turned and looked at the father. “He can’t know anything about electricity!” The father beamed. “Not very much, certainly. But he knows that.”
“Does he know the difference between alternating and direct current?”
“No.”
“Does he know where the panel is?”
“No.”
“Does he know what the breakers are for?”
“I am quite sure he does not.”
“Does he know that electricity is a forensic declaration of righteousness, based on a prior imputation of righteousness?”
The father looked puzzled. “I didn’t know that.”
The electrician left shortly afterwards, perhaps a little sooner than he had intended, and this was because he was still puzzled and astonished. There were many things to think about here, and he spent the rest of the evening sitting in the dark of his living room, just pondering.
(Credenda/Agenda Vol. 16, No.5, p. 28)