The Mystic spoke many things to them in parables, saying, “A Sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell upon soil depleted due to overharvesting, and the seed never germinated because it could get no nutrients. Some seed fell where the soil was sown with salt and blood and hazardous waste, and the soil mindlessly received and killed the seed the instant it touched the ground. Some seed fell in warm, moist soil and the seed quickly sprang up, but the soil was actually a hybridizing alien loam that caused it to yield an unholy, poisonous fruit and those who ate it became zombies. And some seed fell on a place that had once been rich, open prairie but through decades of progress and construction was now a modern interstate highway. And when the seed fell on it, it was pulverized under car tires. But other seeds fell on soil that had been sustainably mulched and composted, and those seeds yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
And his inner circle came to him privately and said, “Why all the parables, sir? People would understand better if you just came out and said what you’re trying to say.” And he answered them as said, “You may not like this, but it’s how divine things work. You guys are special, so I’ll explain the parable to you. But all the people who hate my cause and think I’m a charlatan, and ultimately will kill me, why should they get to know the explanation? Their ignorance is their own punishment.
“Therefore, hear the parable of the Sower: whenever anyone becomes so self-obsessed with how they look and getting the praise of others, meticulously cultivating their appearance to look sexy and appear to have some enviable cosmopolitan lifestyle, relentlessly taking highly staged selfies so as to go viral on social media, that person is like a field that has been overharvested, year after year, without replenishing nutrients or laying fallow or rotating crops. The seed cannot find nourishment there; the soil may look alive, but it is actually dead.
“And the one who broods in violence and amasses an arsenal of lethal weapons, and celebrates laws that legalize murder, say, for trespassing on one’s land, or the one who feels smug when homosexuals or immigrants or triggered social justice warriors are killed and are glad that they are gone, and even secretly wishes they had pulled the trigger, that person is like the soil that has been sewn with salt and blood and hazardous waste. Not only can no plant grow there, but it instantly kills the good seed because it is incompatible with their vision of making their country great again.
“And when another one covets the power that religion has over the masses, and reappropriates the true faith, violently bearing away the kingdom, the doctrines, the liturgies and holy things to advance an agenda of fear and disgust and racial superiority under the guise of the rule of law and safety from the strange and foreign, that person is like soil that is warm and moist and initially receptive to the seed and cultivates it, but transforms and repurposes it by means of a daemonic germ, so the plant springs up strong and virile but its fruit subverts the minds of those who eat it, calling good evil and evil good.
“And when someone has spent a lifetime using logic, science and reason to engineer a sort of steel covering to deflect all mystery, transcendence, romance, or unanswerable questions, that person is like soil that has an interstate built on top of it and rather than produce a crop, the seed is immediately atomized by the speeding vehicles of reason and science and technology.
“And when the humble, lovers, dreamers, artists, poets, and mystics, trembling before mystery and uncertainty and doubt and melancholy and lamentation, hear the word and treasure it, they are like soil composted by kitchen scraps and enriched with natural microbes, and they yield a crop of ever-multiplying produce that satiates the gnawing hunger of life, finds comfort amid the enigmas of the human condition, and joins with the Almighty in the ongoing work of creation and sustenance of the world.”
