A Parable About Two Wordsmiths And Their Mute Father

I wrote this as an attempt to flesh out some of my experience to the drama that unfolded with my most recent series of posts. I’m fascinated at how important we’ve made “beliefs” in our lives. It’s as if we think our salvation lies in what we think in our heads or the words that we’ve agreed to on paper or we think truth is a certain order of words. The church has become irrelevant by holding people hostage to whatever cognitive conclusions they have come to or processing someone has done. It’s all really too bad, because I don’t think God gives a shit (Paul would say skubala) about what thoughts we have in our head.

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There once was two brothers who could speak and write.  The older brother put all the right words in the right order according to the world he found himself in.  He was a wordsmith.  He sat at home, writing on Facebook, sharing his perfectly ordered words with the world.  He got many likes.  He would go to the public square and wow the crowds with how much sense his word order made.  And everyone loved the order of his words.

The younger brother was a bit different and his word order didn’t fit what everyone else liked.  Sometimes the order of his words would be brand new, no one had heard it before, which scared people. His word order made everyone angry and they all tried to tell him so.  He just kept rambling on with the orders of his words until no one would listen to him anymore.  In public, people ignored him and left him rambling off to the side.

Their father was different. He was mute and could not write.  He could only listen and motion.  The father loved both his sons. He listened to them both intently.  He loved their words no matter what order they were in.  He would listen to them both for hours with big wide eyes loving every minute of being with them both.

One day the older brother told his father that he needed his father to take his side and to affirm and love him for his word order and to start correcting the younger brother and set him straight.  He wanted his father to tell him that his word order was right, and his brother’s word order was wrong.  He no longer wanted to be associated with his brother for the way he ordered words, because people from his family should know better and the way he ordered words was wrong and embarrassing.  He didn’t want people to think his word order was represented by his brother’s word order.  His plan was simple, the older brother would write down the perfect word order.  He called it a creed.  And the father just had to sign it to tell everyone else that it was the right one.  Then there would be no question.

His father was confused.  He thought to himself: Sides?  Know Better?  But I love him.  I love you.  Why do I care what order he puts his words in? There is a perfect order to these words?  What about just how beautiful it is to listen to either of you speak?  What about both of your poems? The older brother, with many beautiful words, in a beautiful order, laid it all out for everyone to see.  He shared these words in a particular order with the world and they loved them.  They loved them so much that they signed it.  Now there was no more need to come up with new word orders.  The perfect order exists they thought to themselves.

The father stayed confused and didn’t sign it.  He was just happy to experience more words and word orders from his sons.  He didn’t want to pick a side, so he just sat and continued to listen and loving them both so very much.