I was reading a few blogs the other day, and I thought two posed interesting ideas. The first was prose about Perfect God, the second about brainwashing not being possible (Of course I can not find the blogs now). Later that night, the movie, “Last Temptation Of Christ” came on. I had a little nagging feeling that there was a link between the blogs and the movie, but I could not put them together.
As life works, today I found myself in a discussion about handguns and drugs. The talk was about how much better our worlds would be if handguns could be kept out of the hands of gangsters, and if drugs could be controlled and legalized. What a great idea, but we do not have what it takes to make the world a better place overnight. Maybe in three or four generations we will see those changes but not next week.
One of the people mentioned the bible parable of the seed sower. If you are not familiar with the parable, it goes something like this. A man was planting (sowing) seed by hand. Some fell by the wayside and was eaten by birds. Some seed fell in rocky places where there was not much soil, sprouted and died. Other seed landed where it was supposed to, received everything it need to grow, and grew beyond the norm. At least that is how I remember the parable.
Suddenly I had this flash of insight about the blogs, the movie, and the conversation – a Perfect God, brainwashing, and the sower parable. To me the diction following the parable of the sower parable does not flow with the sower parable. It seems to me as if it were taken from somewhere else and dropped in as an after thought, or a clever deflection lest a truer meaning be found?
Stepping out on a limb, what if the parable is not about the general interpretation people attribute to it? Some people believe it is a veiled admonition to be the grain in the best earth, and develop strong roots, and thrive. That is all the story is about, and there is nothing to understand or decipher, or bring forth from the teaching.
Those who refuse to live a wholesome life are the seeds eaten by birds. Birds are all the things that befall those who do not live a wholesome life. Other people are the seed cast on stony ground, sprouting, growing quickly and dying (literally or not) way too young.
That is the general explanation I have heard since I was a child and that explanation certainly meets the needs of the self righteous. It provides them with everything they need to confirm that they alone are on the right path and doing the right things, and the rest of the world is lost. I thought for many years, that this explanation is all there is the the sower parable. It certainly feeds the ego if nothing else.
What if it is really a literal reflection on life as it is? Some people never have a chance at a good life. Other people start out with the best of everything, but they make a wrong turn, and their life is ruined along the way, drugs, violence, or something else? Only some people – of all the people on earth will become what they were meant to become and reap the fruits of a wholesome life?
That would be where the Perfect God fits in, the parable tells us that is how life is, not that we all are able to become the wheat planted in the best soil! The brainwashing not possible idea would be the thought that the parable is exactly what it states, and nothing more. Perhaps some of us have been blinded (brainwashed) to its true meaning? The movie, and the conversation both talked about the sower parable. William Dafoe stated the parable in a matter of fact manner in the movie, and today we all took the generally accepted version of the parable, seeing gangsters and dug users as the poor seed by their own choice.
These are the things that go through my head when I have too much time to think..about seed planting, and life.
