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

  1. What other questions does the parable beg?
  2. How has this parable been abused