The Cure for Our Collective Insanity

I have come to conclude that the human race suffers from a collective insanity.  This insanity manifests as abuse and anger, which is ultimately driven by the engine of fear.  We all suffer from this collective insanity, and as a result, we inflict enormous abuse to ourselves and to each other.

The same was true in Jesus' time.  Jesus prescribed a solution in Luke 13-.1-9, the parable of the fig tree.  The owner of a garden discovers a fig tree that is dying, so he tells the gardener about it.  The gardener replies that manure will be spread on the fig tree, and that it will be cut down in a year if no fruit grows from the tree.

It speaks volumes about our theology that most sermons on this text identify God as the gardener, and interpret the gardener's agenda as destroying the tree because the tree has not born fruit.  If we read the text carefully, we see that the gardener's agenda is to save the tree.  More importantly, if the tree fails to bear fruit, the tree is dying, and the act of cutting down the tree is redundant because the tree is already dead.

God is not the gardener or the owner.  God is the soil and the water.  God's role in this story, and in our story, is to bring us life, and God wants nothing more than for us to stop hurting ourselves and each other.  The last thing that the human race needs is more violence and death.  If there is more violence and death in this world, it is a product of our insanity, not God's acts or omissions.

Here is the good news of the story: it is the nature of the tree to grow fruit, just as it is our nature to live as God's people and overcome our insanity.  The human race is lost, but all it needs to do to be found is for us to look at ourselves, see that our collective insanity is causing us to hurt ourselves and each other, and do what is natural to us, which is to live in peace with ourselves and with one another.  God is eager to be in relationship with us and to impart grace to us so that we can be holy.