The parable of the Ten Virgins is stupid.
But—wait—maybe not.
Occam’s Razor is a problem-solving principle stating that, when faced with competing explanations, the simplest one—requiring the fewest assumptions or entities—is usually the best starting point or most likely correct. Unfortunately, I don’t think Occam’s Razor works well for parables.
With some excavation, with patience and a willingness to let go of the literal cover, it eventually says something worthwhile, maybe even profound. Predictably, it is our literal interpretations that obscure whatever light the parable might actually be offering.
Taken at face value, the story works well enough as advice for a brand-new, tenderfoot scout about to embark on an indefinitely long camping trip in the Grand Tetons: Be prepared and everything will be fine. You don’t know how long you’ll be out there or how many bears you’ll encounter, so it would be foolish to run out of bear spray with one day left and one more grizzly still roaming nearby.
What a fool that scout was. Why didn’t he pack enough spray for one hundred days?
Of course, that would only make him a fool on day 101. And had he packed an extra pack full of bear spray, he might have been mocked for that too. The point is obvious: preparation has limits. Time always wins.
This is precisely why the common interpretation of the parable—be prepared like the wise virgins—is so thin it borders on absurd. The story is not about grizzlies. It’s about Jesus. One is a dangerous predator; the other is, allegedly, an all-loving God. Treating Jesus like a delayed threat that requires stockpiling spiritual bear spray already tells us something has gone wrong.
If we are honest, what distinguishes the “wise” virgins from the “foolish” ones is not virtue but timing—and a stroke of luck. Yes, the wise brought extra oil, but time remained unknown. Had the bridegroom delayed another day, another week, their reserves would have run dry as well. Their oil was not endless; it was merely enough.
Enough because time happened, this time, to cooperate.
The line between wisdom and foolishness, then, is not moral clarity but circumstance. We are all wise—and all a moment away from being fools. We are never cleanly one or the other.
And the wise virgins themselves are not entirely admirable. They are the ones who tell the others to leave and go to the marketplace. Their counsel suggests that had their own oil failed, they too would have gone. Either that—or they are simply jerks. In either case, the story quietly undermines the binary reading it is so often forced to carry.
Nowhere does Jesus say the bridegroom would have rejected the foolish virgins had they stayed without oil. The rejection comes only after absence. They are not shut out for being empty; they are shut out for not being there.
This is where the parable becomes dangerous, because “staying” is easily hijacked. Institutions—including the LDS Church—are quick to redefine remaining as compliance: remaining active, remaining loyal, remaining in covenant marriages that quietly suffocate life, remaining faithful to systems that promise future reward while draining present vitality. Read this way, the parable becomes a sanctified endurance test rather than good news.
But Jesus never equates faithfulness with institutional loyalty. He is relentlessly oriented toward life—here and now. “The kingdom of God is among you.” “I came that they may have life.” “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” His vision of God never evacuates the present in favor of a deferred payoff.
So what are we being asked to remain present to?
Not systems.
Not roles.
Not identities that require us to abandon what is alive.
The parable quietly asks a far more unsettling question: What happens when your oil runs out? What if the bridegroom arrives on a down day? A doubt day? A depleted day? Oil, even in the story itself, is perishable. Eventually, everyone’s supply runs low.
Have you ever felt like your oil was gone? I certainly have.
The parable begs the question we are never allowed to explore: What would have happened if they stayed?
We don’t know. But speculation is precisely where the parable opens.
Which leads to the deeper questions beneath the story:
What is the source of your oil?
Where do you think it comes from?
Where do you believe it must be purchased?
Read this way, the line between wisdom and foolishness dissolves. Wisdom is not having a reserve. Wisdom is remaining when you are empty. Foolishness is not dimness or doubt, but the refusal to trust that dimness is still welcome—that life is still being offered even when your lamp barely flickers.
The kingdom still arrives.
It arrives while everyone is asleep.
It arrives amid shared weakness.
It arrives not to the most prepared, but to those who have not abandoned life in the meantime.
The tragedy of the parable is not that some lamps go out. It is that presence is forfeited in the pursuit of adequacy.
Jesus does not ask us to remain loyal to death in the name of God. He asks something far more demanding and far more humane:
Remain faithful to life.
Remain with goodness.
Remain present to what is alive—
even when you have nothing left to bring.
Anything that asks us to abandon life for the sake of God is not asking what Jesus asks. Jesus always points toward life—here, now, and still unfolding.
QUESTIONS
- What other questions does the parable beg?
- How has this parable been abused
Wheat & Tares 
What I was taught about the Parable of the Ten Virgins when I was younger is that the oil represented in the parable represented something akin to spiritual reserves—that is to say, something that wasn’t possible to be shared (even though oil is a poor proxy for this, because it is fungible and very much can be shared). I think the parable only really makes sense when we think about it like the oxygen masks that drop from an airplane at high altitude: you have to put your own mask on first before helping others, otherwise you risk your own survival trying to assist someone else. Granted, this is sort of a Malthusian-view and spirtual Darwinism which doesn’t appeal to me so much, but it’s kind of the lens I was taught to view this parable through.
So as it was taught to me, the idea was that the five wise virgins were not necessarily “jerks,” but that somehow they had a quantity of oil that couldn’t be shared. This was always likened to a personal testimony or witness of Christ, or of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel. It was viewed as something that couldn’t be borrowed, but something that had to be acquired by oneself.
I really like the thoughts that Todd S. is putting in my mind here with this discussion (e.g., “relentlessly oriented toward life”), and I particularly like the idea of staying even when one’s oil is depleted. If we believe the imagery in Isaiah 61:3, where God can give “beauty for ashes,” surely the redemptive powers of God Among Us can replenish our oil even if (and especially if) we have burned the candle at both ends and have no reserves left to give. And then we should expect Isaiah 40:31’s promise of renewal in life to be fulfilled: “Those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles.”
The other thought that pops into my mind is the famous Walt Disney Silly Symphony: The Grasshopper and the Ants, which is a riff on this parable in a way and incorporates elements of the biblical story of Joseph’s seven years of plenty and seven years of famine:
In a recent exchange with ChatGPT, I proposed a different interpretation of Matthew 25. I argued that the foolish virgins err primarily in leaving, revealing a lack of trust in the bridegroom’s mercy, and that the other parables in the chapter reinforce this theme. Here was the response:
#1 Ten Virgins (25:1–13):
The decisive mistake isn’t “not enough oil” so much as leaving the place of meeting. When the cry goes out, the wise stay; the foolish go away and miss the arrival. Jesus’ punchline is “keep awake/keep watch, because you don’t know the day or hour” (v. 13). On your reading, watching = staying with the Bridegroom rather than scrambling in anxiety.
#2 Talents (25:14–30):
The unfaithful servant explicitly says, “I was afraid… so I hid your talent” (vv. 24–25). Fear of a “hard” master produces non-presence and non-risk. The faithful servants, by contrast, act with the master’s trust, taking risk in hope of his return.
#3 Sheep & Goats (25:31–46):
Final judgment turns on mercy to the least—feeding, welcoming, visiting. This is the concrete antidote to fear: love shows up. Presence with the vulnerable is presence with the King.
Thematic link (your angle, distilled)
Absence born of fear runs through the “foolish/wicked” responses:
Virgins: leave the scene (fear of not having enough / not being let in).
Servant: buries the gift (fear of the master).
Goats: fail to draw near to the vulnerable (fear/indifference blocks mercy).
And the faithful alternative is presence, courage, and compassion:
Stay with the Bridegroom (watch).
Risk the entrusted gifts (trust).
Serve the least (mercy).
If you’re teaching this, a crisp three-word outline that tracks your view is: Watch. Risk. Mercy.
Text anchors: 25:10–13; 25:24–27; 25:35–40.
The parable seems fairly straightforward. Be prepared for a certain sort of end time or messianic time which could come any day or hour. Perhaps it could have political overtones. The day of reckoning against the Roman government and the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel could come at any moment. So be ready with your own supplies. I think Jesus was trying to start a quasi political movement, especially because he was crucified, a punishment reserved for suspected traitors. But he was very cryptic about it.
Now the way the church uses the parable is ridiculous. It is abuse of a parable to scare people into unyielding devotion to the church.
The 10 virgins set out to perform a task.
Not all were sufficiently prepared to complete the task they had set out to perform.
We should count the cost (which means to work out what that means) and prepare.
The parable in context is telling followers of Jesus to prepare for His coming. In the LDS context, that means paying tithing, following the prophet, and obeying LDS dictates. Jesus said he would separate the sheep and the goats (those who returned to His presence and those who did not) by seeing whether or not they feed the hungry, clothed the naked, gave water to the thirsty, cared for the stranger, and visited those in prison. Currently, the LDS Church has a reserve of about $297 Billion. Members spent a lot of their time cleaning buildings, fulfilling callings and attending the temple, but most of the food banks, homeless shelters, and free clinics in our area are served by people from faiths other than LDS members. Perhaps we can do better.
Samjam, I’m interested in hearing more about what you mean by “the task” the virgins were setting out to perform. Preparation, in a general human sense, is obviously useful — we save for a rainy day, plan events, and make contingencies for the future. In that way, the future is always something we are preparing for.
But in the context of this parable, what exactly are we preparing for? If we don’t know whether Jesus will return today, tomorrow, or at some indeterminate point in the future, then isn’t today the only day that can meaningfully tell us whether we are prepared?
And if we are not prepared today, then when will we be? How would we even know that we are? If readiness can always be deferred to “later,” then it never really arrives. So I wonder whether the parable is less about stockpiling something for a future moment and more about the state we are already in — a readiness that either exists now or doesn’t at all.
Thank you so much for the post. I really like posts and discussions like this one.
I wanted to add another comment and how I personally find value out of this parable. I view it as injunction for spiritual preparation, though I also think that BradD has the right of it when it comes to situating this in the historical framework of Christ’s ministry.
One of my favorite talks ever given by President Oaks was in 2002 and is entitled “The Challenge To Become”. I like to think of the process as collecting oil not as hoarding physical possessions or temporal resources, but effectuating a spiritual change within ourselves.
“A wealthy father knew that if he were to bestow his wealth upon a child who had not yet developed the needed wisdom and stature, the inheritance would probably be wasted. The father said to his child:
“All that I have I desire to give you—not only my wealth, but also my position and standing among men. That which I have I can easily give you, but that which I am you must obtain for yourself. You will qualify for your inheritance by learning what I have learned and by living as I have lived. I will give you the laws and principles by which I have acquired my wisdom and stature. Follow my example, mastering as I have mastered, and you will become as I am, and all that I have will be yours.”
Brad, while I agree that there is a “straightforward” interpretation, it’s precisely that straightforwardness that raises questions for me. Jesus explicitly says that parables were meant to do something other than convey simple doctrine. They were told, in his own words, to confront a problem in human perception—understood only by those with “eyes to see and ears to hear.” Since everyone has eyes and ears, he is clearly not speaking literally. The issue is not access to information, but the posture of attention with which one listens and interprets.
Ancient parables functioned more like what we might now call koans. They were not designed to settle doctrine or enforce orthodoxy, but to destabilize settled ways of thinking and provoke reflection on hidden assumptions. In that sense, they are less like rulebooks and more like autostereograms—“magic eye” images. The obvious 2D picture presents itself immediately, but the deeper image only emerges when one relaxes habitual patterns of seeing. If one stares too rigidly at the surface, the deeper reality never comes into focus.
Read this way, the parable of the ten virgins operates precisely as an autostereogram. On the surface, it appears to be a moral lesson about preparedness: some people plan ahead, others do not, and the unprepared are shut out. This is the flat, 2D image—simple, memorable, and easily weaponized into a warning about personal worthiness or institutional loyalty.
Carey F
Either ChatGPT will make for some really interesting future Sunday school lessons or create the next wave of disaffiliation from the LDS church.
The other, and probably more predictable one is it will be placed on the list of unapproved resources.
I’m increasingly convinced that Matthew 25 isn’t laying out three complementary “aspects” of the kingdom so much as setting up and then subverting our expectations about it. The usual reading goes: be prepared (ten virgins), be productive (talents), be ethical (sheep and goats). But that assumes Jesus is offering a neat progression. What if instead he’s doing something closer to “one of these things is not like the other”? The first two parables feel uncomfortably familiar because they operate inside very human ways of thinking about the kingdom. The virgins raise anxiety about readiness—who’s in, who’s out, who has enough. Everyone is invited, everyone waits, everyone sleeps, and yet exclusion still happens. The parable doesn’t actually tell us how to be ready; it undermines our confidence that readiness is something we can secure.
The talents push even further. The “faithful” servants expand the master’s wealth, while the one who refuses is cast out. The master is explicitly described as harsh and extractive—and that description is never corrected, in fact, rather than proving he’s not harsh, he validates that he is. If this is a straightforward picture of the kingdom, then the kingdom looks a lot like the systems of power Jesus critiques elsewhere. At the very least, the parable exposes how easily we baptize productivity and obedience when they align with existing hierarchies.
Matthew 25: 26-27 “‘You wicked, lazy servant!’ replied his master. ‘You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received it back with interest.’ These words are attributed to Jesus and directed at the so-called ‘lazy’ servant. Yet they sit uneasily with Jesus’ consistent posture toward ‘the least of these,’ whom he meets not with condemnation but compassion. Even more striking is the apparent endorsement of usury—something a first-century Jewish rabbi would have been highly unlikely to affirm, given the strong prohibitions against interest in Jewish law. Rather than clarifying the kingdom, these words seem intentionally jarring, forcing the listener to question whether the master’s logic is meant to be imitated or exposed.”
Then the sheep and the goats arrive, and the logic changes completely. There’s no waiting, no delay, no accounting. The king is already present, hidden among the hungry and the imprisoned. Judgment isn’t about preparedness or output but about recognition. The shock isn’t the separation—it’s the repeated question: “When did we see you?” Read this way, the third scene doesn’t complete the first two; it judges them. It relocates the kingdom from the future to the present, from anticipation to attention, from power to vulnerability.
Jesus isn’t rejecting end-times language—he’s using it to dismantle our habit of pushing the kingdom “later.” If the king is already here, disguised as the least, then the real question isn’t how to prepare for the end, but what we’re doing right now while we wait for it.
Wow! I have never really liked the parable of the ten virgins — we so often (and very uncharitably) weaponize it against the faithful. Todd S’s thoughts resonate within me. Yes, it makes sense that Jesus is saying that salvation does not work like in the first two examples (ten virgins and talents with unkind masters) in the future; rather, salvation is already happening and we don’t even see it (sheep and goats, “when saw we…?”).
Indeed, maybe the parable of the ten virgins and the talents in Matthew 25 is a continuation of the Savior’s thoughts at the end of Matthew 24, rather than a parallelism with the sheep and goats parable at the end of Matthew 25? Maybe the chapter break was improvidently placed?
There is lot to consider in the post as well as the comments. I am thinking of the purpose of parables as put forth by the New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine in that the parables have two purposes. First is to comfort the afflicted, and second is to afflict the comfortable. Many of Jesus’ parables , not just those quoted in the post, are doing just just and should get the listeners tho think.
I think it’s about the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It’s about having the oil of anointing in your vessel–which is you–without which we cannot abide the presence of God. And as such it isn’t that the five wouldn’t share their oil but that they couldn’t. It’s a non transferable sort of thing that one has to get from the proper source.
Jack
While the intuition behind this interpretation is compelling—particularly the idea that one person’s inner formation cannot substitute for another’s—it becomes surprisingly flimsy when pressed against the details of the parable itself.
First, the text says that the wise virgins brought extra oil—a reserve. A reserve implies supplementation, not merely possession. If oil represents the Holy Spirit, what exactly constitutes a “backup supply” of the Spirit? The language suggests something stockpiled, something consumable, something that can be anticipated and managed. That already strains the metaphor. One does not normally speak of the Spirit as a quantity one carries extra of, like batteries for a flashlight.
The more difficult problem, however, is the instruction given to the so-called foolish virgins: they are told to leave the wedding party and go into town to buy oil. This creates a serious theological contradiction within the interpretation. If oil represents the Holy Spirit—and if, as Christian theology insists, the Spirit is given by God and not acquired through commerce—then the parable appears to misunderstand its own symbol. Why send them to the marketplace for something that cannot be purchased, transferred, or earned?
And if the deeper issue is readiness, trust, or relational participation, then the marketplace is precisely the wrong place to look. If the oil truly comes from God, why is no trust placed in the bridegroom to supply what is lacking? Why is absence—rather than dependence—presented as the solution? The wise virgins’ advice effectively removes the foolish ones from the very place where transformation or provision might occur. Taken together, these elements suggest that the parable resists a tidy allegory. The reserve oil, the act of buying, and the absence of the bridegroom during the crisis all undermine a straightforward “Holy Spirit = oil” reading. If the parable is about inner readiness, then its imagery oddly emphasizes external acquisition. If it is about divine gift, it strangely directs the unprepared toward the market rather than toward the giver.
This does not mean the parable is empty—but it does suggest that attempts to lock it into a clean theological system may do more harm than good. The tension in the story may be the point. The parable confronts us not with a clear mechanism of salvation or spiritual acquisition, but with the unsettling reality that readiness cannot be deferred, borrowed, or resolved at the last moment—and that the systems we instinctively turn to for remedy may be incapable of supplying what is actually needed.
In that sense, the parable exposes our assumptions more than it explains them.
Ji – Nice connection to chapter 24. Chapter headings came much later to create a convenience for modern readers, but they come at the cost of disrupting the authors intended narrative flow, as well as prejudicing readers. Headings potentially create universal agreement, but they run the risk of shutting down thought and conversation. If we have already been told what the meaning is, most of our time is spent congratulating our authority figures rather than wrestling with the text.
The parable of the “Minas” (or pounds) is Luke’s version of “the talents” told by Matthew. To read the parable of the minas as a description of the kingdom Jesus endorses is to ignore the story that immediately precedes it—his encounter with Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is not merely a tax collector, but the chief tax collector: a figure whose wealth is inseparable from systemic exploitation. If the nobleman in the parable is meant to be aligned straightforwardly with Jesus, then Jesus would also be endorsing the economic logic that produced Zacchaeus’s wealth. Yet Jesus does the opposite. He neither claims a “lord’s share” nor legitimates Zacchaeus’s accumulation. Instead, the encounter culminates in restitution and redistribution, with wealth returned to those who were harmed. Read together, the two passages resist a simple identification of the nobleman with Jesus and call into question any interpretation that treats the parable as an uncritical picture of the kingdom.
Todd S,
Speaking in strictly theological terms I think we have to ask ourselves what it is that gets us through that door. What is it that the wise virgins had that allowed them passage? It wasn’t just the fact of them being there at the right time–though that’s undoubtedly important. The parable suggests–however implicitly–that that it was imperative that their lamps be lit. Because the timing of the situation becomes a moot point if there are no lamps burning–let alone no lamps at all.
That said, while readiness seems to be at the center of the parable–I think we have to go back to my first question in order to qualify the rather broad category of readiness. What is it specifically that causes us to be ready to enter into that space with the Lord? What is it that we would want an ample supply of in order to dwell with him? Or perhaps better said: what is it that the Lord would like us to be in possession of so that we can remain with him?
I think the simple answer is that we must have the Savior’s influence in our lives–or at least enough of his influence to be led out of the world (typically as a process) and into a holier sphere or condition.
And with regard to timing–there’s nothing like the present for repenting and opening ourselves up to the Savior’s influence.
Jack,
It’s the treatment of “readiness” primarily as a moral project that makes me cringe. I’m not suggesting that people cannot or should not live moral lives of depth and meaning, but when reunion is framed in terms of performance, we lose something essential. It completely sidesteps the beauty of people in love seeing one another again after a long absence. What makes a child “ready” to see a father who has been deployed for over a year? What makes a parent “ready” to embrace a child who has been away? What makes family members, broken apart by circumstance, ready to see one another again? Readiness, in these cases, has little to do with achievement or preparedness and everything to do with where one’s love has been held during the separation. Are not these people always “ready”?
The phrase “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is sentimental, and yet it contains a difficult truth: love must be actively preserved when physical proximity is no longer possible. Absence introduces not only longing, but the struggle to keep one’s affection oriented toward the one who is gone. This is why Jesus’ final words—“I did not know you”—are so striking. The verb “know” is intimate and relational; it denotes experiential knowing, not doctrinal familiarity or moral correctness. The issue is not ignorance, but estrangement. Of course, while the bridegroom is absent, love is sustained through acts of remembrance. But remembrance is not mere recollection—it is a way of remaining present to someone who is not physically there. In the end, what Jesus exposes is not a lack of moral effort, but a lack of presence. Their love has been captured elsewhere. It is as though a missionary finally returns home, only to find the family occupied with something they deem more important. The tragedy is not failure, but misdirected affection.
I’ve never cared for any of the parables because there seems to be an almost mystic “correct” way of interpreting them. I wish the teachings of Jesus were more clear and easily understood by the average person like me. If we had more golden rules and fewer ten virgins to be weaponized, Christianity might be in a better place than it is today
Todd S,
I agree with your first paragraph for the most part. I’d add that while there are few things more beautiful than reunion between people–what we’re dealing with here is not merely a broken relationship that is born purely of circumstances beyond our control. Yes that’s part of the problem–but there’s also the (shall we say) more proactive elements of pride and rebellion and whatnot that have to be overcome in order for us to be reunified with God. A child being embraced by parents her parents after she’s been away for the summer is a wonderful thing. A rebellious child who won’t come home is heartbreaking–and it is a sad but real disappointment that many people experience in this world.
That said, I think there’s room for the idea that our act of coming to the Savior is the “repentance” that the gospel requires. Even so, the reality that some folks refuse his call is evidence that the devil is in the details. What is it that keeps us from turning to him? Or moving towards him? For most of us (IMO) those pesky little impediments don’t come off all at once. There’s a lengthy process of refinement that most of us go through that requires effort on our part. We move from grace to grace–but only as we receive grace for grace. There’s no other way.
And so, I think the parable calls for a little of both: accepting the beauty in the reunion of a child and parent who love each other. And! We–as the child–making the effort to return to a loving parent from whom we’ve estranged ourselves.
The LDS Church interprets the Parable of the Ten Virgins as obedience to LDS leaders. Jesus described those who would be acted with compassion—feeding the hungry, helping strangers, and visiting the sick/imprisoned—thereby serving Jesus. The “goats” (on his left) are those who ignored the needy, neglecting to serve him. He said nothing about church membership or obedience to church leaders, only reaching out to those who suffer.
Jesus placed a huge emphasis on generosity, with “giving” mentioned over 2,100 times in the Bible, and over half of his parables relating to money or possessions. His teachings frequently commanded giving to the needy and practicing hospitality. A question that could be asked about this parable is: What behaviors did Jesus say would prepare us for his coming? Will only obedient members of the LDS Church be worthy to return to him? Did He ever specify any religious affiliation in his teachings? What were the basic teachings of His followers after He died?
Rose,
Thank you for adding your question: “What behaviors did Jesus say would prepare us for his coming?”
I’m responding here not to resolve that question—because it’s far too large for a single blog thread—but to participate in it seriously. What follows is also a response to Jack’s latest comment, especially his references to “pesky little impediments,” “refinement,” and “estranging ourselves” from a loving parent, and how those ideas are being used to define what it means to be “ready.”
Jack— first, I struggle to sort out whether LDS theology wants to foreground the fortunate fall or the inherited logic of original sin. Your comments move back and forth between these metaphors, much like general conference talks often do. On one hand, mortal life is described as developmental and formative; on the other, the story quietly slides back into the idea that human beings are unclean, impure, and rebellious—and therefore must prove their worthiness to be admitted back into Dad’s house.
Those “pesky little impediments”, and estrangement are not only things that strain relationship, they are also the things that give love and choice real meaning.
One of the central questions animating the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leadership is this: “Why do you eat with sinners?”
The question exposes a belief that had lodged itself deep in the collective psyche—that unclean things make clean things unclean. Jesus subverts this assumption at every turn. In doing so, he challenges not only his contemporaries but our modern instinct to imagine that God does not dwell with unclean things. Jesus reverses the flow of holiness. He treats impurity not as something contagious that must be avoided, but as something healed by contact. Sinners are not dangerous to God’s holiness; God’s holiness is dangerous to sin. Cleanliness is not preserved by separation but created through presence. This is precisely why Matthew inserts the parable of the sheep and the goats as the final story. The intent is not to tell what tasks must be completed to get your future reward, but to keep the love alive that Jesus had started, to show that kingdom had already arrived within. Behavior for Jesus flows from love, not as a way to secure it.
In this way, Jesus turns our ideas of “holiness” and “virtue” upside down. They are not personal attributes that tell a story about individual moral achievement. They are active powers—strengths that move outward, not inward; forces that restore rather than exclude. Holiness does not withdraw to protect itself. It advances, touches, and transforms. If God refused to dwell with unclean things, the incarnation would be unthinkable. But Jesus insists, in word and action, that divine holiness is precisely what makes the unclean clean—by coming near, not by standing apart.
But when you change the plot of the story, you change the meaning of every term inside it.
If life is framed as a summative test in which worthiness must be demonstrated, then grace subtly flips from an enabling power to an enabled one—something activated only after sufficient effort. Love and belonging become tools for behavior management rather than the very things meant to displace fear and coercion as motivators for goodness.
Adam Miller captures this tension beautifully in Letters to a Young Mormon:
“Wanting love is good and wanting to excel is good. The trouble comes from trying to tie them together. Pursue love and pursue excellence—pursue them with abandon. But you will spoil the joy native to each if you spend your life wanting to be loved because you are great.”
As I’ve sat with the parable of the ten virgins, I’ve noticed how common interpretations hover above lived reality. We moralize the story in ways that protect the heart from risk—turning it into a lesson about preparedness or obedience while quietly avoiding the vulnerability of love itself. Moralization becomes a defense against intimacy.
My imagination was drawn instead to the beauty of reunion—especially reunions that arrive without warning, under unknown conditions, shaped more by longing than by readiness.
The film The Impossible captures this powerfully. In one scene, brothers—bruised, filthy, and traumatized after being separated by the tsunami—search desperately for one another amid chaos. In a final act of hope, the oldest brother cries out. In the noise and confusion, a familiar voice answers. Sound meets sight. Recognition ignites movement.
Readiness is not calculated; it sprints. Love abandons caution and runs toward its own.
Now imagine that moment being interrupted by an audit. Imagine the reunion paused for inspection: You’re too dirty. Too damaged. Not prepared enough to embrace. The absurdity exposes the poverty of our moralized readings.
Love, in its truest form, does not pause to audit. It does not demand credentials or cleanliness before recognition. When love recognizes the beloved, it moves—recklessly, decisively, without restraint.
Perhaps the parable of the ten virgins is less about moral preparedness and more about whether we believe love would ever hesitate once it recognizes its own.
Mainstream Christian interpretation often drifts toward the lowest form of relationship: the legal. Readiness becomes moral bookkeeping—personal purity, behavioral compliance, proper preparation—rather than relational openness. The story is flattened into an audit instead of an encounter.
But Jesus is not speaking to a morally uniform audience. He is addressing crowds of mixed company—some who respond immediately, others who hesitate or resist. The question, then, is not who was more righteous, but what distinguished those who were ready from those who were not.
In a word: need.
Those who followed Jesus were not the ones for whom the system was working. They were the sick, the poor, the excluded, the burdened—the ones for whom moral performance had already failed to deliver life. Their readiness had little to do with purity and everything to do with desperation: the need for healing, belonging, forgiveness, and restored kinship.
They were not ready because they were clean.
They were ready because they were empty.
Imagine Jack for a moment someone dear to you, who has passed on. Your days remaining here on earth are not known, and what if you happen to pass on a day where your moral uprightness has been drained, your oil is low. Does that take away from
your readiness to reunite with that long lost loved one? The question is really not about moral congruence as much as relational harmony.
This is what moralized readings of the parable obscure. In Jesus’ ministry, readiness consistently emerges not from achievement but from hunger—not from those who have managed themselves well, but from those who know they cannot save themselves within the existing order.
Read relationally rather than legally, readiness is not about maintaining moral reserves. It is about whether one’s life is oriented toward love—whether longing has been preserved during absence, and whether the heart still knows how to recognize the beloved when he appears.
The tragedy Jesus exposes is not impurity, but insulation.
Not vice, but self-sufficiency.
The least ready are not the worst behaved, but those who no longer need anything—and therefore no longer know how to receive.
In that light, the parable does not warn against moral failure. It warns against losing our hunger for restoration, and mistaking adequacy for readiness.
Todd S,
Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I agree with much of what you say. I just wanna be clear that what I’m talking about really boils down to transformation. And for that to happen we need to do two things–IMO. First we need to accept that Savior’s invitation to become his child and, second, as his child, we need to follow him. That said, while those two elements may overlap both functionally and theologically I find it interesting that the Savior lays out the parables of the Ten Virgins, the Talents, and the Sheep and the Goats in one consecutive stream.
When all three are taken together the parable of the Ten Virgins signifies (to me) the anointing of the gospel covenant wherein we receive the light of the Savior’s influence. The requirement is simple–though not necessarily simplistic–that we come to him. And if we come to him we are cleansed by his influence (typically by degrees) and he becomes our spiritual Father.
The parable of the Talents involves our commitment to the Savior as his child. As part of the gospel covenant we commit to do his works–to follow him; to strive to be like him. And so we do our part within the limitations of our allotment–it doesn’t matter if we receive one, two, five, or twenty, talents so long as we strive to magnify our portion in his Kingdom.
And the parable of the Sheep and the Goats sets forth what it really means to become like the Savior. And some folks have suggested that not only does this particular parable speak of nurturing others in general terms–but also in terms that have to do with providing the necessary rites and ordinances of the Kingdom–food for thought. Even so, it is in becoming transformed to the degree that we love like the Savior loves that we are invited into his Father’s Kingdom.
All of that said, I realize that I’ve spoken with very broad strokes (sorry for the mixed metaphor). I’m not as good as you are at getting inside the mechanics of human motivation and moral sensibilities-you have a real talent there. Even so, the long and short of the whole thing is (IMO) the Lord’s concern not only with our restoration but also with our progression. And while both require transformation on our part the latter is much further beyond our comprehension than the former. And it is by coming to the Savior and receiving his influence and then “pressing forward” in his love (as Nephi says) that we ultimately become like l him–which is his real objective.
Finally, though I’ve spoken of how all three parables may work together to teach a pattern of transformation I also view each of them as being complete in their own right vis-a-vis the purposes and nature of the Kingdom.
Thanks for hearing me out.
What if the wise virgins had shared with the foolish? Why do we always accept the assumption that they could not share their oil? Maybe it’s a parable about how our refusal to share can have adverse consequences. Maybe if the wise had been willing to share they would all have joined the bridegroom.