Jesus' Violent Parables

Everything Looks Very Pink!

Many of us Christians pick up the Bible in our right hand, then pick up our rose-tinted spectacles in the left. We are thus enabled to read straight past all the 'awkward verses' that those without spectacles would stop dead at. Preachers are fortunately able to obtain extra strong prescription rose-lenses which enables them to actually study the Bible without noticing those "awkward verses'.

But for Christians who consider the Bible to be a God given set of writings to be taken seriously, this is a problem. If just once, you dare to remove the spectacles, then you will go through a series of mind-states. Beginning with shock and offence, you'll progress to panic and confusion, followed by humility and prayer, then comes the Holy Spirit's help. It is not an easy path.

Try reading Matthew's gospel without the glasses!

It starts off well enough - in Jesus' sermon on the mount', he talks about the kind of characteristics that lead towards God - poverty, sadness, meekness, a longing to be good, mercy, purity, a determination to make peace. He talks about the resultant persecution, pain, insults, and slander that results. Finally, he says, persistance and integrity ensures that those around will understand what God is actually like, and praise him.

Jesus then raises the bar on the Law and the Prophets. The life God wants does not just avoid the act of murder, but declines ever to think hateful thoughts; the problem is not adultery, but even looking with lust. He gives examples of what it means to be a peacemaker - allowing a violent person to hit you without resistance; when someone takes your shirt, giving him your coat; doing extra hours for the person who is forcing you to work. And doing all this not out of a sense of duty, but because you actually love these horrible people who treat you as an enemy. This is unconditional love and forgiveness worked out in day-to-day relationships.

Then comes the kicker - if you do, Jesus says, you'll be sons of your Father.

So we conclude that God is like that. In fact, in all Jesus life and behaviour, it is crystal clear that, if Jesus truly is the image of the invisible God, if he really is the "I Am" in a human body, then God the Father is full of grace, love and tenderness, full of humility, sensitivity and care. Angered by hypocrisy, deeply moved by death, woeful at rejection, but forever and always forgiving.

But there's got to be a catch, right?

Well, Not A Catch, But A Warning

Actually, several! Each giving us a hint of the disturbing reality that we would rather not take seriously! Consider ...

What has happened to unconditional forgiveness? Does this not stand in direct contradiction to what Jesus has just been saying?

Jesus has much much more to say on this uncomfortable topic. Later Matthew recounts some of Jesus' stories ... you know them, but your rose tinted spectacles may have obscured the endings!

Matthew 13 - ... (the wheat and the weeds) everything that causes sin, and all who do evil ... get thrown into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13 - ... (the fish in the net) ... the angels come ... separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be more weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 18 - ... (the unforgiving servant) In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

Matthew 21 - ... (the tenants in the vineyard) He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," (the listeners) replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.

Matthew 22 - ... (the wedding banquet) Then the king told the attendants, "Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are invited, but few are chosen'.

Matthew 24 - ... (the bad manager who beats servants when the master delays) He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25 - ... (the one-talent servant) ... throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25 - ... (the sheep and goats) ... Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Many of these parables were directed at the scribes and pharisees - those archetypal 'hypocrites'. Jesus direct criticism was always directed at hypocrites.

So just maybe we should pay attention!

Facing Our Own Avoidance Techniques

The danger of giving us moral awareness, is that we will use it, not to guide our own behaviour, but to tread down others. We may use it selectively, to position ourselves in some moral pecking order. And this is the path to pride, and a settled misconception of what we are truly like. And then we are trapped.

But here is the point - in that continuity of failure, all the time we are embracing our own pride, forgiveness is not what we need. Instead, we need to be changed! Freedom from self-deceipt is essential. So that is what God addresses.

This is why Jesus seems so tough on hypocrites. But don't imagine for a second that just because he called them 'whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones', that he didn't love them. He knows what they need - to be shocked out of their complacency.

All those stories end with the faithless, the unbelieving, the hypocrites consigned to something pretty bad - variously called outer darkness, or an inferno. These parables don't spell out what this place is, and we always have to remember - they are parables.

Let me shock you - some parts of them are patently not true. For example, we can be pretty sure that God did not send his Son, all the while thinking, 'They will respect my son'. So we must always be prepared to allow the peripheral details to be there just for dramatic impact.

However, the unpleasantness of whatever causes the weeping and gnashing teeth is certainly not a peripheral detail!

But while many will experience heartbreaking anguish, that by no means provides grounds for thinking in terms of a Hell involving never-ending inescapable torture.

The unforgiving servant of Matthew 18 was to be let out, once he'd paid back all he owed. Though in his case, it was an impossible amount, so the parable does imply that this man was powerless to achieve his own freedom.

But hear this - in another post-parable explanation, Jesus explicitely states in Matthew 24 that the bad manager is in a place where those whose sin is greater, receive more severe punishment, and those whose sin is less, receive less severe punishment.

So we cannot take from these parables a flattened simplistic extreme conclusion like, 'every sinner ends up being burned alive for ever.'

Because scripture does not support that!

For At Least Three Reasons

Firstly then, in the parables, aside from the metaphorical fire and worms of Gehenna, the only implication that this torture is unending is drawn from the mis-translation of the word aiōnios (αἰώνιος in Greek). This is found in the Matthew 25 phrase eternal fire. And the word eternal is popularly believed to mean that something goes on forever.

But a detailed study of the word aiōnios gives no indication that it should mean unending. The root noun aion is actually a pretty weird and fascinating word, but that's another story. In very many cases in scripture, aiōnios refers to time limited events, and then translators are forced to translate it differently!

Secondly, what profit does unending torment bring? It does not serve restitution, if the pay-back is never enough. Neither does is serve justice, if the penalty is never equal to the crime. It cannot serve correction, if finally, the corrected individual is stuck in the torture chamber.

Thirdly, how good is heaven going to be for 3% of humanity, if the remaining 97% (who, incidentally are loved by, and precious to the 3%) are still weeping and gnashing teeth with no hope of release.

On the other hand, what if we regard the outer darkness as a place of finite corrective exposure and restitution? What changes if the one inflicting pain is a surgeon rather than a psychopath? Then the certainty of unconditional love and forgiveness remains.

Jesus himself undermines his hearer assumptions as he nears the end of his vineyard story — the landowner creates a lovely vineyard, then rents it out, on the proviso that the tenants share the harvest with him. As we know, the tenants beat the landowners representatives and finally kill the son. Then Jesus asks a question:

They answer immediately, almost reflexively:

The violence in the response mirrors the violence in the story. Their imagination runs straight to the obvious response - retribution.

It seems that a bitter end is what justice demands.

But There Is A Twist In The Tail!

Here it is! Jesus does not affirm their instinct. Instead he rebukes them.

Let me just paint the likely scene for you.

There is a crowd of Jews standing around Jesus. All of them as children were raised on scripture. Many of them still attend synagogue weekly. Several of them are teachers of the law, some Pharisees.

There is a pause. Then Jesus narrows his eyes, slowly shakes his head for a while, then says, with mock disbelief:

Silence. Shuffling of feet. The theologians among them dare not speak, because they know from bitter experience that Jesus is soaked through in scripture, and can always expose their assumptions and preferences and shortcomings.

After a couple of moments, Jesus veers to Psalm 118:

Extraordinary! You can almost hear the tyres screech at the handbrake turn.

Jesus was telling a story, and the son had been cruelly rejected. Murdered. The vineyard owner arrives. He is rich, powerful. He is furious. The vineyard story is almost certainly careering towards ultimate destruction.

But no! Rejection leads to construction! Something utterly new will be built. And the story puts the listeners on a different track.

The rejection of the Son does not signal the end, but the beginning. A new creation. Everything reconstructed but differently.

Where the one rejected becomes the first stone in the new building. The one cast out becomes the measure of alignment. The one killed becomes the standard by which every other stone is set true.

Before they have time to digest that, or even draw breath, Jesus pivots again, this time to the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 8:

And while they are absorbing the fact that this rejected one will trip them up, making them realise their thinking is wrong, Jesus veers off again in yet another direction. This time it is to take in a much wider view.

Continuing the 'stone' metaphor, Jesus refers to Daniel chapter two which describes a rock cut out of a mountain that smashes into the huge statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream signifying all the empires of the earth. Because when all is said and done, this same rock will destroy the empires of earth, where one country insists on dominating others, and God's kingdom will be built.

By this stage, we might wonder how many of his listeners are still on board! I suspect many had bailed out!

How about you? Perhaps you have heard Jesus disquieting words so many times that they no longer register. Maybe you, like me, have developed the skill of simply hopping over that stumbling stone, and carrying on regardless.

Just know this - the deeply felt desire for vengeance is like a virus in humans. We were all born with a powerful survival instinct, and that readily accommodates the infection. Normally we pick it up before primary school from other family members.

Could you be infected with it?

.