Jerking Knees

When I was a boy, I always wanted to play with the little tool the doctor would use to whack my leg just below the knee. It looked to me like a tomahawk, and I wanted one. I never did get my own Taylor’s Reflex Hammer, as the little tomahawk is properly called.

There are other designs of reflex hammers, but the Taylor’s is the most common. With it, the doctor tests our neuro-muscular reflexes by whacking on certain spots and then watching to make sure that we jerk appropriately. It is that whack just below the kneecap, and the accompanying leg jerk, that give us the phrase “knee-jerk reaction.”

Unfortunately, when we use that term, we are not usually referring to knees, but to the propensity most of us have to react unthinkingly when we encounter certain ideas or actions from other people. I regret to say that I can speak as an expert on this matter of knee-jerk reactions.

Fortunately for me, my son, Matt, has become very good at forcing me to re-think many matters on which I would previously react with a somewhat-predictably jerking knee. That is not to say that I always agree with him, even after I re-think a matter. But he has often pushed me, and he frequently – and uncomfortably – has done it by using my own words against me!

As a Christian conservative, there are a number of issues on which I have been well trained to jerk my knees. I appreciate the fact that my son frequently makes me take a fresh look at them. He does not always convince me of his perspective, but he is very good at identifying the key issues involved and presenting them with a logic – and with an attention to details of fact – that often leaves me no honest choice but to agree with him.

At the very least, he forces me to go back to my sources and re-examine and re-think that of which I had previously been so sure. Sometimes, I come away more convinced of my old position than before. More and more frequently, however, I find that my reconsideration brings me around to Matt’s viewpoint.

Meanwhile, why should I be surprised that Matt does this? After all, Patsy and I raised him. And as we, in our own generation, refused to accept everything we were taught as “Gospel” unless we “read it in the Book” for ourselves, so now Matt is doing the same thing. And he is doing it to me!

But, as I told him he should, he really is “knowing more and seeing further” than I. In so many ways, Matt has become my teacher.

Even before Matt came of age and intellect to press me so, I had already taken to trying to limit my own knee-jerk reactions to the bare minimum. Now, he will not allow me even those small luxuries! Using my own principles and logic, and using a deadly-sharp sword of facts, he often discomfits me and requires me to reconsider another long-held assumption.

Not surprisingly, I tend to find this intellectual stress uncomfortable. Sometimes, it feels as though the old soldier is having to go back through basic training. If I complain, however, I do so knowing that the exercise really is good for me.

There are certain Truths that will never change, no matter who challenges them. At the same time, I know that there have been many points of which I was sure, but which honest reconsideration forced me to see differently.

Jerking one’s knee is fine when the doctor whacks away with his little tomahawk-shaped hammer. It is not fine when one is dealing with the important issues of life. I am fortunate to have someone so close to help me deal with my own jerking knees.