"Remember who you are, Dick," my Dad would say. "You are a Jensen. You have a family name to live up to." I did not get that speech too often when I was young. I got it often enough, however. It usually came at very strategic times like when I went out on my first date, or got the family car, or left home for the first time. "Remember who you are." My Dad believed, and I think he was right, that he and Mom had instilled certain values in me. Most families have such values. When I went out on my own I was expected to live up to those values. "You have a family name to live up to," he said.

In theological circles we have a fancy name for that. We say that the imperative to action grows out of the indicative. The imperative for me was to remember. The indicative was the fact that I was a Jen…