REVERSE ENGINEERING THE QUESTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A MASON?
Reverse Engineering the Question: What Does it Mean to be a Mason? s the Master of a Masonic lodge I find myself interviewing prospective candidates and explaining to them what it means to be a Mason. This is the prime question that must be explained to all who would join our craft but I find that I cannot give a simple answer to it, certainly not one that clearly sets Masonry apart from many other organizations.
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Increasingly I find myself wanting to provide answers to two different yet highly related constituent questions, each of which relates to an important part of the whole. Surprisingly, perhaps, these questions do not involve the usual queries about religion or secrecy in Masonry and they do not come from the concerns of the interviewee. They originate with me and reflect what I think is important to communicate to anyone considering membership in the craft. In retrospect, I realize that I have simply reverse engineered the questions. In other words, I am generating the questions so that the answers provide what I believe is the correct response to what the possible Mason should know about what it means to be a Mason. I find it necessary to explain what it means to be a Mason by answering the two questions – “When am I a Mason?” and “Where am I a Mason?” When am I a Mason? Some would argue that at the moment a candidate is made an Entered Apprentice he is in fact a Mason, while others hold firm to the idea that a person is only a Mason when elevated to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason. Either way, the answer to the first question could be stated simply as “I am a Mason when I am made one.” That may be true in some elementary sense, but it is not a very satisfactory answer. It is true but hardly enlightening or useful. For one thing, while the process of interviewing and examining a candidate might lead to certain confirmations about his character and values, it is no guarantee
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Dalton West, Worshipful Master Naval Lodge No. 4 that the candidate will be fully committed to all that Masonry expects. In any case, almost certainly it will not tell you whether, or even if, the person ever can or will exhibit a fraternal spirit in the Masonic tradition. Unless one knows the candidate for a very long time prior to his petition, it is almost impossible to detect his dedication prior to receiving the degrees. A better answer would be that a man is a Mason when in his daily life and in his social interactions he exhibits truthfulness, charity, even handedness and the other social and moral virtues that Masons are expected to practice. In other words, “behaving Masonically” is one of the gold standards when determining whether or not one is a Mason, and a judgment about a person’s willingness to live that way should be a key factor in any decision about admitting him to the fraternity. But let us be clear and honest with ourselves about these virtues. They are not exclusively or uniquely “Masonic” ideas. In fact, they are quite the opposite because they are genuinely universal concepts and are found in most civilized societies to one degree or another. The peculiarity of Masonry is that the craft has gathered together the universal virtues from a wide range of civilizations over a long period of time and adopted them as its own and codified them into its practices. As regards the universal social and moral virtues, if we are unique at all, it is only in the sense that we are “transcendental” in our acceptance and adaptation of these virtues, whereas most of the great civilizations and the universal religions are to one extent or another somewhat parochial, limited in time, place, and historical circumstance. In the modern period we may differ from other organizations professing similar ideas but the difference as to substance is often only a matter of degrees.
