What Color is a Green Apple?

a parable of perception

Things aren’t always as they seem.

Take your favorite coffee cup and put it on the table in front of you. Now look at it. Let’s say for the sake of the argument that you have “normal,” non-corrected, 20/20, human eyesight. Your eyes are giving you information about the cup. Your image of it is sharp and clear. You assume that what you are seeing is the cup. But is it?

An enormous number of living creatures on earth have eyes. Elephants, eagles, dogs, hammerhead sharks, and houseflies all have eyes. But are their eyes identical? When other creatures look at your cup, do they see exactly what you see? Do they see shapes and colors the same way your eyes do? If not, then which image of your cup—the elephant’s, eagle’s, dog’s, shark’s, housefly’s, or yours—is “correct”? Which one is really the cup?

When you examine the problem this way, you begin to see that all of these images belong to the cup, but none of the images are the cup. The cup is a reality that is more than merely what your eyes can see. Your eyes only see a narrow band of the full spectrum of light. For example, your eyes can see no light from the ultraviolet or the infrared spectrums. Your eyes “see” the cup, for sure, but only in the spectrum of light that your eyes are designed with which to see.

What you see, your visual image of the cup, is limited by your eyes’ design. In fact, your eyes are sieves that filter out the chaotic light frequencies that interfere with your survival—so you can hunt a deer, spot a crouching lion, and avoid walking off a cliff. Therefore your image of the cup is incomplete. The cup’s cup-ness is more than what your eyes in their limitations can perceive.

When an apple appears green to you, it is not because the apple is actually green. The surface of the apple happens to absorb blue and red wavelengths of light while it reflects green. The apple then appears to your eyes to be green. But if you were significantly colorblind, you probably would not be able to tell a red from a green apple!

One in every 100 males has some “red-weakness” (Protanomaly), meaning shades of red are difficult to distinguish. Five in every 100 males has a “green-weakness” (Deuteranomaly). (Colorblindness in women is very rare. Tritanope is even rarer.) A colorblind person who looks at a colorful map of the world will see “the world” differently than you. The following four maps of the world demonstrate this.

When your eye sees the green apple, the really weird thing is that a green apple is actually absorbing every other color but green. Green is the only light wave that it rejects! Your eye sees the apple as green because green is the only light color it can’t keep (absorb).

To state this even more accurately and boldly, when you look at your cup, you’re not really seeing your cup at all. Your eyes are “reading” the light reflected off of the cup’s surface. If you put your cup in total darkness, the cup is still there even though you can’t see it. Does the cup exist in the dark? Yes, obviously. So your cup is more than its mere appearance. Cup-ness is a reality in and of itself apart from your visual perception of the light bouncing off of it. The fact that a blind person can drink from your cup should have told you that! The cup is more than meets the eye.

We are “seeing things” because of light. Eyes are organs that process light. Light enters the eye, shining on what are called cones and rods, and the light triggers a chemical reaction in the rods and cones, and the chemicals turn into electrical impulses that are sent to a certain part of the brain where these impulses are received, organized, and transmitted to other parts of the brain for analysis and communication.

So when you look at your cup, are you seeing your cup? Yes and no. “Yes” because the image your eyes provide is an actual image of your cup. “No” because the image is not your actual physical cup. Like a camera, your eye catches light and provides a “photograph” of that light bouncing off of stuff like your cup. Light bounces off of the cup and goes into your eyes, and you “see the light” bouncing off the cup. You do not see the cup itself. For everyday purposes everyone seems to assume that the cup they “see” is the actual cup. In a very real sense it’s not.

Why?

Because light is the only thing eyes can see. Eyes receive and process light, not cups. Your eyes are light processors, not cup processors. The “photograph” of the cup is not the cup.

Let’s make things worse! Think about light. If light bounces off of things (like your cup) and then goes into your eyes, then light has speed, right? What is that speed? Light travels at 186,282 miles per second (or about 670 million mph). It travels fast enough to circle the earth more than seven times a second. To put that speed in perspective, light coming all the way from the moon’s surface only takes 1.28 seconds to reach the Earth. That’s really fast. The moon is 238,857 miles away. A quarter-million miles in a-second-and-a-half. The implication of this is just wild.

What this means is that when you look at the moon, you are not seeing the moon as it appears right now. You are seeing the moon as it was one second ago. Merely by gazing at the moon tonight you are actually looking back in time one second.

The moon, however, doesn’t give off its own light. It merely reflects the light of the sun. So how long does it take sunlight to travel from the sun all the way to the Earth and its moon? Eight minutes. We’re talking about 93 million miles at 186,282 miles per second in about 500 seconds (or a little over eight minutes). So when you look at the sun—hopefully you don’t stare at it!—you aren’t seeing the sun as it is, but as it was eight minutes ago. You’re looking eight minutes back in time.

When you look at the planet Saturn with your naked eye—easily done if you know where and what to look for—you aren’t seeing Saturn as it is, but as it was . . . one whole hour ago.

The nearest star to our sun (our sun is a star)—Proxima Centauri (Alpha Centauri C)—is 4.3 “light years” away. A light year is the distance light travels in one year. It takes light from Proxima Centauri four years to reach us. So when you look up and see Proxima Centauri, you are not seeing Proxima Centauri as it is, but as it was four years ago.

On a clear, cold, moonless night, drive out away from the lights of “civilization” and look up using only your naked eye. The sky is a virtual canopy of stars—thousands of them. Some of the dim stars you are looking at are 2000 light years from Earth. But you are not seeing those distant stars as they are today. You are seeing them as they were 2000 years ago when Jesus of Nazareth walked the Earth. Moreover, when Jesus gazed at these distant stars, he saw them as they were 2000 years before his time, or near the time when Abraham walked the Earth.

Now there are 200 to 400 billion such stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. But, as the Hubble Space Telescope has so dramatically shown us, there are at least 100 billion galaxies out there too, each with on average 200 to 300 billion stars of their own. That brings an even more bizarre fact.

When the Hubble “looks” at a galaxy at the far edge of the known universe and provides us with an image of it, that image is not one of what the galaxy looks like now. It is an image of how it looked billions of years ago! To look at such distant galaxies is to look back in time well before the creation of telescopes, before the presence of humans on earth, before even the formation of our own solar system. How strange! The telescope orbiting Earth is viewing a time prior to the existence of Earth.

Again, things aren’t always as they seem. We can’t see anything in the heavens as it “is” right now. To stand in your backyard and look up at the stars is to leave “the now.” To stargaze is to travel backward in time. But this raises yet another oddity.

Look at your favorite coffee cup again. Not only is the cup in its cup-ness more than what your eyes can perceive, but the light traveling from your cup to your eye takes time to get there. It’s a very, very short amount of time, granted. But it takes time. Therefore, you can’t even look at your own coffee cup and see its image in “the now.” It’s nearly instantaneous, yes. And you can’t perceive it as anything other than instantaneous. But it’s not instantaneous.

When you look at your cup, you are seeing an image of it as it was a fraction of a second ago. In fact, because the speed of light is finite, there is no image that you can ever perceive visually in the actual present. Everything you perceive with your eyes is in the past due to a finite speed of light. How far in the past the object is seen depends on its distance from your eye.

Because light has a speed, you see the cup in front of you as it was fractions of a second ago. You see the moon as it was one second ago. You see the sun as it was eight minutes ago. You see Saturn as it was an hour ago. You see Proxima Centauri as it was four years ago. You see distant stars in the night sky as they were 2000 years ago.

My point? This blog is a parable of perception. When it comes to seeing, perception is not reality. But what about God? Is perception reality when it comes to God?

After much study and thought, I’m convinced that at the core of Jesus’ mission was his intent to provide for us corrective lenses. He came to reveal his heavenly Father as he really is. He came to correct our perception of God.

We tend to see the Son and the Father as different, do we not? The Father is seen as distant and judging while Jesus is seen as accessible and forgiving, even though the Jesus of the Bible insists that “when you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” (For more on this, see The Un-Religion.)

This creates a rather bizarre dilemma, doesn’t it? If you are a follower of Jesus or want to be, and if you take what he says in the Scriptures seriously, then you can trust your own perception of God, or you can trust what Jesus is telling you when it comes to seeing his Father. Is Jesus’ image of his Father direct, clear, and correct, or is yours?

Faith is the willingness to trust his eyes instead of your own. Faith rests in what Jesus sees rather than what you think you see.

If you are interested in other of my parables or parable-like analogies, check out these: Pews Stink (A Black and White Satire), The Kingdom of Heaven is Like Gravity, A Guitar Hero Parable (Or The Gospel According to Slash), and A Country Fried Parable (Or A Lynyrd Skynyrd Parable of the Kingdom of Heaven).

For Jesus' parables see The Absurd Parable of the Unforgiving Slave, The God Who Gambles, Parable of the Vine and Branches, The Crooked Manager, The Friend at Midnight, Heaven Is Like a Crazy Farmer, He Speaks Of . . ., Salted With Fire, Talking Sheep and Goats, Is Your Eye Evil?, Two Prodigals and Their Strange Father, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife,and Jesus Used Parables Like a Sieve.

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like Gravity

Although Jesus refused to come right out and say what the kingdom of heaven is, he did speak constantly about what it is like and to what it can be compared. He spoke in mysteries. You may be wondering why. Here’s one pretty cool reason.

Defining something for you doesn’t mean you experience it. Jesus was more interested in your experiencing it than in your pocketing a portable definition. To me, trying to define the kingdom of heaven is like trying to define gravity. It almost defies definition. Let me show you.

Gravity doesn’t work in a direct line between two objects like most people think. Take the earth and the moon, for example. Gravity doesn’t exist as a straight-line attraction between the earth and moon like when you whirl a ball on a string over your head.

In the illustration above, the mass of the earth warps space toward it. It is hard to imagine, which is why most illustrations of gravity use a bowling ball on a trampoline model (left), which is less accurate but easier to "get" intuitively.

Imagine the earth is a bowling ball resting on a trampoline, and its weight is bending the trampoline fabric. Now imagine rolling a golf ball, representing the moon, past the  bowling ball. What happens? If you roll it with too much force, it will fly past the bowling ball and off the trampoline. But if you roll it just right, it might “orbit” the bowling ball a time or two before falling into it. It falls into it because of friction. But what if you imagine a frictionless trampoline surface? Round and round she goes! At just the right speed, the moon neither slingshots into space nor “falls” into the earth, illustrated by a perfectly rolled golf ball on a frictionless trampoline surface. Likewise, imagine our earth is a planet orbiting our sun, and our sun is a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Can you see it? The trampoline represents gravity! Gravity is the fabric of spacetime bent by mass.

It is a bit counter-intuitive, but an orbit is really just something falling. The moon is falling around the earth. The earth is falling around the sun. The sun is falling around a black hole.

Imagine you’re skydiving. We call that falling. As I just suggested, gravity does not operate as a straight line force. It is fields of bent spacetime. So when you skydive, you aren’t really falling in a straight line because of an invisible magnetic-like force pulling you straight “down” to earth. You’re actually sliding down curved spacetime. You’re the golf ball wanting to “fall” directly into the bowling ball.

Can anyone actually see gravity? No. Can you observe its effects? Constantly! It is there whether you can see it or define it exactly. You experience its power whether you see or understand its substance. You interact with it and you trust it in everything you do.

If I didn’t trust gravity, I would never walk without holding onto something that would anchor me to earth. I certainly wouldn’t risk jumping! But since I trust gravity, I not only can let go of whatever I’m clinging to and walk, but I can run and jump without worry of sailing off toward Alpha Centauri.

Notice that I just did what Jesus did. I didn’t tell you what the kingdom of heaven is exactly. I spoke instead about gravity. I made gravity a parabolic analogy. The kingdom of heaven is like gravity in that it is something invisible, it is nearly indefinable, yet it is powerful, it is all around you, it has a hold on you, and it facilitates everything you do.

When I hit a grounder to the shortstop and try to run out the throw to first base, however, I’m not asking any questions. I’m just playing baseball! Yet I would not have been able to hit the ball and run out the throw if gravity were not acting on me, on the pitcher, on the ball, and on the shortstop I hit it to. Gravity, a mysterious invisible force throughout the universe, made every bit of the fun possible, though I may not have been thinking about warped spacetime as I hustled for first base.

Jesus’ kingdom of heaven is like that, for those who have ears...




If you like my parabolic analogies, try Pews Stink (A Black and White Satire), What Color Is a Green Apple?, A Guitar Hero Parable (Or the Gospel According to Slash), and A Country Fried Parable (Or A Lynyrd Skynyrd Parable of the Kingdom of Heaven).

For Jesus' parables see The Absurd Parable of the Unforgiving Slave, The God Who Gambles, Parable of the Vine and Branches, The Crooked Manager, The Friend at Midnight, Heaven Is Like a Crazy Farmer, He Speaks Of . . ., Salted With Fire, Talking Sheep and Goats, Is Your Eye Evil?, Two Prodigals and Their Strange Father, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife,and Jesus Used Parables Like a Sieve.

Heaven is like a crazy farmer

Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴ And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵ Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶ But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷ Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸ Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹ Let anyone with ears listen! (Matthew 13:3-9)

The always overlooked point of this parable is that the farmer is reckless with his seed. A sane farmer would carefully plant expensive, good seed one by one in the rich, cultivated soil of a field cleared of rocks, weeds, and brambles.

Yet, in Matthew 13, seed is landing all over the place, even on the road and on rocks and in thorn bushes. Jesus’ parable-farmer is flinging expensive, good seed in every direction. He must be crazy! Why would he throw perfectly good seed on the road? On rocks? In a brier patch? That’s not just wasteful. That’s nuts!

Thankfully, a few seeds land (purely by chance, it seems) in some good soil, and those seeds grow a bumper crop. So what’s Jesus’ message here?

What if God the Father (the insane farmer!) scatters the truth of his kingdom madly and passionately on everyone? What if he’s seeding the whole world with the good news of his gracious kingdom, seeding the entire cosmos with his Son’s all-inclusive message of Life, and wildly seeding the universe with his word of grace to all people? Jesus said,

“[For your heavenly Father] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

I think Jesus’ point is that the Father loves perfectly—that is, indiscriminately. Impartially. He confers grace to the whole world via the kingdom present in Jesus. His word of truth and freedom and Life is freely distributed to everyone. He doesn’t play favorites.

For Jesus to go to Galilean agricultural villages like Chorazin and Cana to preach, and for him to say that his heavenly kingdom is like a farmer who went out with good seed to plant, and for that farmer to be said to waste seed in every direction hitting the road and rocks and brier patches, would have been both highly entertaining and maybe a not a little bit shocking to those folks. Why? Because a sane farmer from Chorazin or Cana would never do that!

What if, however, this farmer isn’t sane? What if he’s just loopy enough to throw seed in every direction so that the seed lands everywhere? What if he lets the seed find good soil by itself? What if the Father has sown the world with the word of universal forgiveness? What if he’s seeded the world with his Life in Jesus?

The parable implies that he’s an extravagant Father to be sowing such precious seed so recklessly. But reckless extravagance is required to seed a whole planet, or should I say a whole kingdom.

Maybe Jesus is telling his listeners that everybody is graced equivalently by a God who is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34) He has no bias. Maybe God graces everyone just the same, whether you are a rock, a brier, a path, or fertile soil.

This is absolutely congruent with Jesus’ parable of the vineyard where the all-day workers get a full day’s pay and the one-hour workers get a full day’s pay (another great kingdom of heaven parable in Matthew 10:1-16).

This is absolutely congruent with Jesus’ parable of a father who loves his runaway prodigal the same as he loves his stay-at-home prodigal (Luke 15:1-3 and 11-32).

It seems that everyone gets this seed-gift in equal measure in the kingdom of heaven. Forgiveness is scattered on the whole earth without calculation of who’s more deserving. It doesn’t seem fair to scorekeepers, and it may seem as crazy as a farmer wasting perfectly good seed by flinging it without direction, but it is grace personified from the perspective of the heaven of Jesus’ parables.

If this universal grace thing makes you feel uncomfortable, no wonder! Jesus’ word is the grace-irritant in the oyster of your scorekeeping, judgmental heart.

For more on Jesus' parables see my blogs The Absurd Parable of the Unforgiving Slave, The God Who Gambles, Parable of the Vine and Branches, The Crooked Manager, The Friend at Midnight, Heaven Is Like a Crazy Farmer, He Speaks Of . . ., Salted With Fire, Talking Sheep and Goats, Is Your Eye Evil?, Two Prodigals and Their Strange Father, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife,and Jesus Used Parables Like a Sieve.

Talking Sheep & Goats: Not An Afterlife Documentary

Adapted from Chapter 4 of Heaven for Skeptics © 2009 by Bert Gary

I’ve watched shepherds in Israel. A shepherd who has both sheep and goats in his flock has a challenge. To get sheep moving he must call their names and lead them. But to get goats moving he must drive them in front of him by yelling and throwing rocks. So what does the shepherd have to do to get them moving with him at the same time in the same direction? I’ll come back to that question after we look at Jesus’ herding parable.

Look at what a serious-minded religious tract illustrator has done with a line from the Parable of the Talking Sheep and Goats:

“You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels . . .” (Matthew 25:41)

Can you believe it? Without explanation, a gigantic, faceless omni-god casts out a naked, terrified man on his knees. If the artist had bothered to actually read the parable from whence he quotes, he would have known that a shepherd-king casts out a bunch of talking goats all at once, not one man at a time. And he would have known that the blessed sheep were at the shepherd’s right and the cursed goats were at his left. The unapproachable omni-judge in the illustration is pointing the wrong way! This tract is also pointing the wrong way.

Most disturbing to me is the possibility that after all of Jesus’ teaching on unearned love and amazing grace, that, if the tract illustrator is correct, our salvation might come down to our behavior after all. If we do acts of charity, we earn heaven? If we don’t, we earn hell? Does your afterlife destiny hinge on how good a do-gooder you can be? Hardly. The tract could not be more misleading.

Here's my outline of Matthew 25:31-46. Color-coding it reveals surprising symmetry:

INTRO ³¹ "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,

I. ³³ and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

A. ³⁴ Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;

1. ³⁵ for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'

2. ³⁷ Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸ And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹ And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?'

3. ⁴⁰ And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,¹ you did it to me.'

A'. ⁴¹ Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;

1'. ⁴² for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'

2'. ⁴⁴ Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'

3'. ⁴⁵ Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'

I'. ⁴⁶ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

• I and I' (red) enclose the parable. I reveals separate places in the judgment, and I' reveals separate places in eternity. 

• A and A' (orange) are the judgments pronounced on the separated ones; they get very different sentences. 

• 1-3 and 1'-3' (yellow, green, purple) mirror one another revealing the causes of these judgments.

Getting to the heart of it, Jesus placed an unexpected twist in this parabolic vision of judgment day. These verses are the keys:

'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' (italics mine) (NIV - Matthew 25:40)

'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' (italics mine) (NIV - Matthew 25:45)

And the key word is “these.” Who are these least brothers of the king? The obvious answer is that the least brothers are the unfortunate ones who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, or in prison. But there is a less obvious answer. An answer with a twist. Let’s view some of these least ones as goats! Some of the talking animals in the parable do turn out to be goats, and goats are certainly least on my affection list. Hey, can you love a mean old goat? As it turns out, that’s the key question. Can you?

Gathered before the shepherd-king (see Jesus’ face rather than an imposing, impersonal, ogre-judge) are all the people of the world. All nations are represented (Matthew 25:32). All people who have ever lived are before the throne. Now, some are put to the shepherd-king’s right and some to his left. Some are revealed as being sheep already and some as being goats already. He will speak to the sheep first.

He turns to the ones on the right and addresses them as those already blessed by his Father to inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. He identifies them as sheep. Why are they identified as sheep? Because they acted sheep-like on this earth; that is, they tended to the needs of the least of these brothers of the shepherd-king.

Then he turns to the ones on the left and addresses them as those already cursed (not cursed by his Father or by him—check it yourself), and commands them to go away into a place not prepared for goats and sheep (humans), but for the evil one and his angels. These people he identifies as already goats. Why are they goats? Because they acted goat-like; that is, they did not tend to the needs of the least of these brothers of the shepherd-king.

This is what’s eye-popping. The guy on the throne, the Son of Man-shepherd-king guy, didn’t judge anyone. (See my blogs, “The Father Judges No One - 1" and "The Father Judges No One - 2") Contrary to the tract and popular opinion, he didn’t reward anyone or judge anyone. He didn’t praise or condemn anyone. Let’s get the facts straight.


The sheep are blessed of the Father from the beginning of all things.

“Come, you that are (already) blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world . . .” (Matthew 25:34)

And the goats are accursed not by the Father or the Son. They are accursed by their own actions, and told to leave and go to a place not prepared for sheep or goats, but for Satan and his angels.

“You that are (already) accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels . . .” (Matthew 25:41)

Again, this bears repeating. Neither the Father nor the shepherd-king-Son did the cursing. The throngs’ sheep-ness and goat-ness, if you will, were already apparent to the king. At first glance he could see what they already were. He doesn’t curse them on the spot or bless them on the spot. He doesn’t wave a magic wand and turn them into sheep or goats. Neither does the Father. The shepherd identifies what they already are. He easily distinguishes the two species, and he separates them by kind.

But prior to the shepherd’s identification, prior to their lives on earth, the Father blessed all sheep “from the foundation of the world.” Get this, because it’s critical. Apparently originally there were only sheep! All were blessed from the beginning as sheep. All were prepared for the kingdom (not the place where the devil and his angels go). But later, tragically, some of the sheep became goats. And goat-ness is a non-sheep state of existence.

This cursed state as goats is a result of the ex-sheep’s own choices. Consequent to the blessing that they were given up-front as sheep, they chose to become non-blessed. These goats-by-choice did something or some-things that cursed them. They cursed themselves. They are self-judged. How? Simple. They judged! Specifically, they judged some as unworthy of their charity. In other words, they ended up judged as goats because they themselves judged others as not worthy of food, drink, clothing, and visitation. Their judgment boomeranged.

Do you see it? It’s beautiful. The goats are former sheep because they decided some of the “persons” in the flock were unworthy of their humanitarian—or should I say sheep-itarian—charity. They showed partiality in their love. God’s love is impartial. He loves all the sheep the same. Thus the ex-sheep damned themselves. They chose eternal goat-ishness by picking and choosing who to help rather than helping indiscriminately.

They labeled some as goats, and by doing so unwittingly revealed themselves as goats.

So what’s the shepherd-king to do? He can’t put goats in the sheep-dom. The sheep-dom is for sheep. So, the king honors the decision made by some “persons” to be goatish, and sends them to a place where sheep (humans) were never meant to go. It’s a place where “people” who play God and play judge (as Satan and his angels do) can hobnob with other judgmental pompous religious elitist goat-ites who glory over their own superiority. 


[Created and played by Dana Carvey, The Church Lady (pictured) is a skit character named “Enid Strict”, who is the uptight, smug, and pious host of her own talk show, Church Chat. Enid is a spoof of “holier-than-thou” Christian churchgoers.]

Why do we fail to appreciate the wicked humor in Jesus’ parables? Why do we take everything so literally and seriously? I guess humor is wasted on the humorless. Look, the parable says you are a sheep or a goat. What a choice! That’s like saying you’re dumb or dumber! And the sheep and goats talk! And look, Jesus portrays himself as a herdsman sorting out livestock in the sheep-dom of heaven! And look again; eternal blessedness comes to those who are generous and compassionate to goats! Surely many of “the least of these my brothers” are mean old goats. And eternal cursedness comes to those who are calloused and careless to the least of these his brothers, including the goats—especially the goats. Sheep treat everybody like sheep, as does the shepherd. Goats discriminate.

So, how do you become a goat? Treat someone like a goat. Isn’t Jesus’ humor obvious now? Do you see the boomerang of self-judgment?

Look at the parable one more time, please. The dumb sheep don’t even know they’re sheep. The dumb goats don’t even know they’re goats. Neither can tell a sheep from a goat (though the shepherd can).

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food . . .’ (Matthew 25:37)

Then they (the accursed) also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' (Matthew 25:44)

Jesus uses this barnyard cartoon of the Jewish cult afterlife to elevate simple acts of charity to the level of ultimate punishment and reward. But—and this is so important—Jesus robs from this reward and punishment model any calculation or comparison or strategizing by the sheep and goats. How? By making the sheep and goats oblivious. The sheep have no idea in the end how they succeeded. They’re shocked and confused. And so are the goats. They haven’t a clue how or when they failed.

So this is not by any means a “how to” parable. This is no lesson or strategy on “how to get into heaven.” So if Jesus’ parable of the Talking Sheep and Goats isn’t a teaching on the afterlife, then what is Jesus getting at?

I hear Jesus saying that God is personally related to all people everywhere. He is everyone’s Father. That makes Jesus everybody’s brother. That makes you everybody’s brother (or sister). How you relate to your brothers is inseparable from how you relate to Jesus your brother and God your Father. We’re not talking about love as a feeling, but love as impartial treatment. Generosity and care and respect to all—whether you think they are a sheep or a goat, whether you think they deserve it or not—is an expression of knowing God’s impartial treatment of you. Knowing God is eternal Life which equals heaven. (John 17:3) Greed plus hardheartedness equals spiritual death which equals hell. Peter Kreeft put it like this:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.’” C.S. Lewis in Kreeft, p. 164

Yet Jesus is saying that nobody knows nor can anyone assume their own ultimate status before God. Hellishness is the result of merciless presumption. Heavenliness is the result of merciful trust. Compassion and generosity to neighbors here and now is part and parcel of your relationship to God the Father. Don’t assume. Don’t even wonder. And certainly don’t worry. Just live and love. The key question that this parable asks is:

Don’t you realize that trying to figure out who is and isn’t a goat is goatish behavior?

Luke sums up his entire gospel with these words Jesus spoke:

“ . . . [God] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” (Luke 6:35)

Let that one soak in. God’s love is perfect, the scriptures say, because it is impartial. God blesses the whole flock. God is kind to goats! God scatters grace on everybody like a farmer throwing seed in every direction, showing no distinction between the road, the rocks, the briars, the weeds, and whatever good soil they may find. (Matthew 13:3-9; Mark 4:3-9; Luke 8:5-8) This is God’s love, says Jesus.

for [your Father in heaven] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (italics mine) (Matthew 5:46)

If God imparts grace on everyone indiscriminately, then who are we to make judgments and show distinctions? Only goats do that.

What makes sheep sheep? What makes goats goats? It’s this very thing: Loving your neighbor with tangible acts of kindness no matter how trivial, or not. A wave. A nod. A lift into town. A dollar to a drifter. It’s fruit of the Spirit that we’re talking about. (Galatians 5:22-23) It’s the good things that come from goodness inside. (Matthew 7:16-20, ..12:35..) These verses remind us that we don’t earn Life by doing good; doing good flows naturally from the gift of Life.

“We do not do good to get to Heaven; we do good because Heaven has already got us.” (Kreeft, p. 209)

I’m afraid that some, however, read the Parable of the Talking Sheep and Goats quite differently. I give you the all-too-familiar legalistic, literalized, afterlife version of Matthew 25:31-46:

1. Whenyou die you “go” to stand alone and naked before “God” to be judged.

2. If you’ve done a bunch of good stuff, you’ve earned your way into the pearly gates. The judge blesses you. Poof, you’re a sheep. You get on the “up” escalator.

3. If you’ve failed to do a bunch of good stuff, then “God” curses you; poof, you’re a goat; a trap door opens underneath your feet—I mean your hooves; and you slide down the shoot into a lake of fire.

Now you have your legal “God.” The “God” of legalism’s default setting is hell. So, legalistically, the burden of proof is on you alone. You are guilty and going to hell until proven worthy of heaven, and it’s up to you to prove it. You get what you deserve. Everybody get what they deserve. And it’s all up to you.

Notice that a savior is not needed in the legalized, literalized interpretation of this parable. Jesus is unnecessary because by your performance you determine your own fate. You save yourself, or you don’t get saved. In this model, Jesus doesn’t have a job.

So, the legal “God” aside, what’s the real moral to Jesus’ smart story? I think it’s this:

Judge instead of love, and you will die; love instead of judge, and you will live. That’s how God does it. Those who love him are called to do the same, and are driven to do the same.

As I said, I’ve watched shepherds in Israel. It looks like to me that a shepherd with both sheep and goats in his flock must drive the goats ahead of him (by throwing rocks at them!) and call the sheep by name, which then follow. Maybe this is the purpose of the Parable of the Talking Sheep and Goats. Perhaps Jesus’ parable is intended to drive goats into loving indiscriminately here and now, and to call sheep into continuing to love indiscriminately here and now.

That being the case, Jesus deals with goats on goats’ terms. It’s the only way goats will respond. He drives them to love impartially with a parable that, to goats, is as hard as a rock upside the head!

But what if a goat is yelled at and kicked and pelted with rocks and he still resists the direction of the shepherd? Will the shepherd give up on the goat? No. Will the shepherd force the direction of the goat? No. Will the goat be allowed to suffer the consequences of his own choices? Yes.

The stiff-necked goat is graciously allowed by the good shepherd to graze in Gehenna! (See my blog, “Hell Defined 2.”)

You may be wondering, why are we talking about this life instead of the afterlife? That’s where your religious training can get in the way. Far from being a documentary on the afterlife, Jesus’ barnyard parable about talking sheep and goats is about loving in this life. Today is the day of judgment and salvation.

2 Corinthians 6:2 See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!

Jesus gives us a parable that elevates our everyday actions to the level of eternity. Failure to love produces eternal goats. Love produces eternal sheep.

Sheepness and goatness are everyday choices for those who are given eternal Life in the kingdom here and now. In the Bible, Jesus emphasizes at every turn the here-and-now-ness of Life eternal in his all-encompassing kingdom of heaven. It’s how we respond everyday to this gift, this present and coming kingdom, this Life more abundant, that makes our species recognizable to our shepherd-king.

I hope he doesn’t return when I’m having a ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-d day.

For more on Jesus' parables see my blogs The Absurd Parable of the Unforgiving Slave, The God Who Gambles, Parable of the Vine and Branches, The Crooked Manager, The Friend at Midnight, Heaven Is Like a Crazy Farmer, He Speaks Of . . ., Salted With Fire, Talking Sheep and Goats, Is Your Eye Evil?, Two Prodigals and Their Strange Father, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife,and Jesus Used Parables Like a Sieve.