Bad Theology

Text for today: Matthew 9 xxxv-xxxviii

Wandering among the cities and villages, Jesus sees the crowds and feels compassion because they are helpless. He compares them to a harvest with too few labourers to gather it, and instructs His disciples to pray earnestly for more labourers.

Assuming that the human and fallible evangelist's assessment of the Son of God's state of mind is correct, Jesus has compassion for the crowds because they are like sheep without a shepherd; in other words, because they have no master to shear their coats and prepare them for slaughter. As always, the Saviour's concern for His fellow man is a matter of ownership: as the Son and heir of the Father, Jesus does not want His presumed inheritance damaged or diminished. Anyone refusing to submit to this master-and-sheep relationship is destined for the usual compassionate helpings of eternal fire, outer darkness, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

As in the famous parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus likens humanity to a harvest; and here He extends the metaphor to instruct His disciples to pray for a larger supply of priests. Superficially this order is puzzling: since the Father knows everything, He must know who will be saved and who damned. Therefore the destiny of every human soul has been fixed from the beginning of time, as has the deafening silence which, whether the petitioner hears it or not, is the answer to every prayer.

Since the fate of every human soul is foreordained, no amount of praying for an extra bushel of evangelists can make the slightest difference; but of course the Saviour's meaning is more sophisticated than a mere requirement to petition the Father. When dealing with an all-powerful and murderous tyrant, the most prudent policy is always to beg the tyrant to do what he intended to do in the first place; which of course is also the purpose of the Son's last desperate gambit in Gethsemane: "not my will but yours".