Jesus had no parables about Windows, IPOD, Internet

Jesus had no parables about Windows, IPOD, Internet

Have you ever thought about how so many of the parables that Jesus spoke were based in agricultural, farming, or nature situations? Many people assume this is because most people of that time tilled the fields and tended flocks and so he spoke to them in a way they could understand. And this is true. However, in today’s reading (the parable about the seed that falls on different types of ground), notice he still had to explain it to the disciples. One reason is obvious: they were fishermen! I’m kidding a little here, but behind my humor I’m making a point. If Jesus only used parable settings to enhance understanding, he would have talked “fishing” to those who fished, “taxes” to those who taxed, “sowing” to those who planted, “herding” to those who kept flocks and so forth. He could have targeted and focused the parables even more to specific audiences than he did. So there is a larger reason that many of his parables dealt with nature and farming, and that is to reinforce the culture of life. Life is real and based on growth and stewardship of the earth, not on the artificial creations, however necessary they may be, of humankind. For example, Jesus did not tell parables like, “A painter needed the color purple one day, and he had only red paint and blue paint, and so he mixed it together to get purple paint.” The parables taught the deepest truths and meaning of life (and implicit in that, how humans can survive and thrive in charity and justice and, ultimately, achieve the kingdom of God). Therefore in order to access God’s truth and reality, the parables drew heavily on agricultural and natural situations.

I’m trying to re-sensitize people to the need to understand and participate in agriculture in their day to day lives, even in this so called scientific and “knowledge industry” society. If humans were meant to only relate to a flickering TV or computer screen, Jesus would have preached and taught parables that, like my paint example above, focused on human’s artificial creations and realities. He could have done it even then, of course, as I show in that example. But Jesus, bringing the kingdom of God to humankind, did not preach artificial creation, secularism, or relativism, because none of those are anything but ultimately dead ends if the objective is to seek God and ultimately be rewarded in eternal life. Jesus would have been perfectly capable of expressing parables in terms that would have great significance to “knowledge workers,” “service industry,” “financial analysts” and “media consultants” of today, if he so desired and more important, if there would have been any validity to do so. He could have taught a parable that would make a Microsoft programmer jump up and go, “Yeah, I know what he means!” But Jesus did not teach to “relate” to people. He taught to bring God – who is unchanging through and beyond all times – into terms that people not only can relate to but had to relate to in order to understand God. The less educated farm worker of a hundred years ago would have had deeper Biblical understanding than the education information technologist of today, because the farmer shares God’s world view and lingo. By moving away from a farming society (even if we are speaking of a backyard garden, or to some of the more radical ideas I have for bringing hydroponics and gardening to every corner of society) people have lost much of God’s lingo and ability to understand him. I say that it is vital that agricultural and natural cultivation be brought back into mainstream understanding and activity, regardless how one ultimately obtains one’s paycheck. The Qur’an, even more so than the Bible, articulates the understanding that paradise (heaven, the presence of God) is in a garden. Both holy books are totally rooted (pun intended) in the agricultural reality of life and the kingdom of God. In Revelations there is the harvest, so it is clear throughout, from Genesis in the Garden of Eden until the harvest and eternal garden of God.

People can fill their libraries with books and have Bible study galore, but they who live today who do not understand agriculture understand less of the Bible than those who lived a hundred years ago. And conversely, one of the reasons that so many youngsters are hyperactive, rootless and faithless is that their parents are not in professions and trades that pass on the affirmation of life (and receptivity to grace) that agriculture did. The humble person who tilled the field but had no education is much more in tune and receptive to hearing and understanding God than those, who through specialized education and technology isolation, have been, in a sense, “born deaf” to God’s specific language of creation and life. Children, like most modern day parents, have literally been uprooted from the earth. Phony (or genuine) interest in climate change and environmental causes, while laudable, are not at all what I am talking about. Most who are interested in environmentalism are doing so with a hobbyist or “righteous cause” perspective. It is much more recreation and quality of life oriented. Agriculture, gardening, and cultivating of natural spaces comprise participation in God’s actual work and language. One is able to hear God and speak in God’s language when one understands agriculture and natural cultivation. Agriculturalists and cultivators are instinctive partners and dialoguers with God. This is what some shrill right wing conservatives mean when they claim that environmentalists “hate people but love animals.” While I don’t like the discourse and verbiage they have felt, but not been able to articulate, a fundamental truth. The earth was not created by God so that half of it could be used to produce phony artificial human products and services and the other half be preserved for recreation, extreme sport, or just knowing that it’s there and the right thing to do. In other words, the same people who think nothing of the chemicals and so forth that goes into producing their recreational modern conveniences (computers, media, housing and so forth) are then hostile to people who live in a more dynamic way in their own environment with natural resources. Dismantling the toxic outputs of the consumer society is less a concern to some people than justifying people’s decisions to drive a car and consume some gasoline. Heavens! So I am not speaking of environmentalists and their supporters at all in this blogging. I am speaking of the need for everyone to become much more intimately reacquainted with agriculture and cultivation (whether it is of food, ornamental, or natural spaces) as an activity, rather than designating preservation spaces or fighting pollution (all essential and worthy causes, but not ones that teach the listening to and speaking the language of God).