I recently heard somebody say we should turn off the podcast when we read scriptures. What he was getting at is for our whole life, especial those raised in the Church, you have been told what a specific scripture means. If you can clear your mind of all preconceived ideas of what the Church wants you to think, and read the scriptures like it was your first time, you will find new meanings in the words.
Lets take some of the parables, and look at them in a new light.
Parable of the Lost Coin: A woman has ten silver coins and loses one. The woman goes to great lengths to find the coin. When she finds the coin, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin”. From: the Church’s web site:
Church members are like the woman in the story, and the lost coin is like a member who has become less active in the Church and is lost. Jesus wants Church members to find the lost brother or sister and to care for and bring him or her back.
For some context, Jesus told this story, along with the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Prodigal Son, in response to the Pharisees and religious leaders who criticized Him for welcoming and eating with tax collectors and “sinners”.
Instead of taking the Church’s position that this is about finding a lost member, what if I looked at it this way. The parable of the lost sheep and prodigal son both have that the item lost doing something wrong, either wandering away from the herd, or living a sinfully life style. But the coin in the parable did nothing wrong. It is not the coins fault. It was just lost through no fault of its own, and has the same value whether it is behind the couch or in your purse. It is in a safe space even under your bed. In fact if fault can be laid, it is upon the owner of the coin, not the coin. Could this be though of as a member of your family that no longer associates with the family? They did nothing wrong. They may have purple hair, are gay, or did not go on a mission. The family member is just as valuable as ever, and the parable tells of to bring them back with the others and rejoice. It puts the onus on us to bring them back, not to change the coin.
The Parable of the Wheat & Tares (A fan favorite of this blog): A man plants wheat. In the night the enemy comes and plants tares in the field. Tares look like wheat, and it would be hard to pull up the tares without destroying the wheat also. So when they ask if they can get the tares, Jesus says
But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
Matthew 13:29-30
The Church says “The Lord used the parable of the wheat and the tares to teach about gathering people into His Church.” Is that really what it says? The wheat are the good members of the Church, and the tares are the bad people of the world. Could the parable be teaching us that we should not judge (weed out) the bad people in our ward, family, neighborhood, or community? Because if we do judge somebody at Church to be a tare, and don’t asociate with them, or call them as a counselor primary, we could mistakenly have misjudged a faithful member (remember, wheat and tares are very hard to to tell apart). We then cause harm to the faithful person (wheat), while thinking we are getting rid of the tare. The parable teaches us not to judge anybody, but let Christ do that at the final judgement (harvest).
Now, don’t take my view of the above parables. Turn off your podcasts and blogs, and read the parables for yourselves without any preconceived notions. What do you find?
