November 06, 2013
Bad Tree
My friend gave me a
couple sacks of Golden Delicious apples from the tree in his backyard. They
were so good that they caused me to go on an apple kick. When I went to
replenish the apple stock I bought a variety of Gala, Fuji, Red and Golden
Delicious. The apples were blemish free and beautiful, but they were also mealy
and lacking flavor. So now I’m wondering if the apples were simply picked at
the wrong time, or if they were left setting in shipping crate for too long. Jesus
often uses fruit analogies, but I’d completely missed the fact that a bad tree
is still capable of bearing fruit – bad fruit. “Likewise every good tree bears
good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree
cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” (Matt
7:17-18 NIV)
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Gail;
-----Thank you for correcting one of my misplaced sentiments. I have no count of how many times my mind has crossed this concept of bad tree/ bad fruit and even pondered the relationship between bad tree and bad fruit, yet my sentiments towards bad trees remained swayed towards the fig tree which Jesus found producing no fruit.
-----I share your temperament towards peffy fruit. I’ve even developed a rule of thumb for selecting against it. If it looks big and premium and is displayed on the stand individually, it will be peffy. I buy the smaller apples sold in the bags which don‘t make big deals of themselves, the number twos. And sometimes they are peffy. But often they’re nice, crisp, juicy, and sweet.
-----You and I might consider peffy fruit to be bad fruit, but in reality, it is yet nutritious. For the sake of the analogy, though, let’s monetarily dismiss that truth. I’m no botanist, but I haven’t discovered anything in life yet which has led me to believe a tree grows the fruit peffy. Everything I know so far indicates to me that the fruit handlers are the guilty ones. Pick it too early, and it’s green. Pick it too late, and it’s peffy. Fertilize and water the tree sanely, and it’s fruit is crisp and yummy. Push it too hard, and it’s peffy again. And then, of course, the best grown and picked fruit kept in the storehouse too long comes out of there bad.
-----Many good hearted, sincere folks go searching for the Lord amidst arrogant people. Our minds do not necessarily form in vacuums. They share a lot of mentality with their associations. Proverbs warns about this. And I have never seen a church without at least a few peffy Christians amongst its leaders and influential people. Now, like I said before, peffy does not mean no nutrition, but as far as you and I are concerned, it’s yucky. And some they handle become yucky II.
-----From my very early days I spred out a filter, not so much to eliminate the “bad handling” in my life, but more to adjust its dainties closer to the understanding of the Bible I had been able to achieve. I wanted the Bible to be the main influence on my life, not the fruit handlers. And it wasn’t that I thought the fruit handlers were worthless or poisonous. They all have their own usefulness the Lord enjoys. But they had yuck, too, if they pushed too hard. So I was always taking great precautions against becoming peffy.
-----I, however, failed to note a different “bad fruit” syndrome ailing my tree. Along with my desires to be handled less came unfamiliarity with dainties of cultural concepts. Anything my roots sucked up out of the ground which passed the filter I was developing from the Bible made fruit. Although I grew my fruit quite crisp and flavorful and never left it in the storehouse too long, at least by my own estimation, if that estimation might qualify, some of the minerals grown into it produced very odd flavors, indeed. Even very disagreeable flavors to a few, as one church noticed, and yet believes. But that’s ok with me. Like peffy, different is neither non-nutritious nor poisonous. It can just make one lonely.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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