The "Dung of Christianity" Rehabilitates the Fallen Trees and Restores to them their Grandeur in the Garden of the New Eden
Jesus was a gardener not a lumberjack. So, put down the ax and pick up the dung! Dung the trees! Don't chop them down! By rehabilitating the trees, the catastrophe of Eden is reversed.
"He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down." (Luke 13:6-9)
Adam and Eve were the two original trees that our loving God planted in Eden. God’s expectation was that in their garden of love, love would germinate grow and prosper. But, they became barren (Mark 11:12-25). They stopped yielding sweet fruit (Isaiah 5: 1-7) (Matthew 21:33-40) (Cf. Revelation 22:2). Yet, the orchard continued to grow (Genesis 1:28). The absence of trees that produced sweet fruit turned the world into a Valley of Tears (Hail Holy Queen). During the days of the old Covenant, God would, from time to time, have his lumberjacks take their axes to the deadwood and 'uncumber' the ground of it. In the days of the new Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34), God retired the lumberjacks and their axes (Jeremiah 24:6). To rehabilitate the trees, to restore them to their original grandeur and to recreate (2 Corinthians 5:17) the garden of the new Eden (Revelation 22:1-3), God dispatched his gardeners to cultivate the soil around the trees and to pitch dung around them. "... I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Instead of relying on axes and lumberjacks, God would rely on gardeners and the dung of gratuitous and unconditional forgiveness to restore the world. In the transition to the new economy from the days of the old Covenant to the days of the new Covenant, the gardeners replaced the lumberjacks in an analogous way that word processors replaced typewriters. Lumberjacks are the ‘typewriters’ of the old Covenant; gardeners are the ‘word processors’ of the new.
A well-defined, step-by-step process proceeds in regular order to get the trees of the orchard to produce sweet fruit "some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred" (Mark 4:20) (Luke 6:43-45) (John 15:16). Gardeners first cultivate the soil around the trees and then dung it (Luke 13:6-9). Simple. However, the process does not come to a conclusion overnight. It takes time to run its course. Results are not immediate. Gratification is not instant.
Anachronisms from the original Covenant still lurk in today’s shadows - ancient, fearsome, monstrous relics from our dark past. On occasion, overzealous, ax wielding, tree chopping, deadwood hacking, ass kicking, swaggering, swashbuckling lumberjacks among our bishops ‘unretire’ themselves. They are the religious equivalent to bug infested software that has failed its beta tests and hasn't been updated in a zillion years. Their signal defect is that they lack the capital virtue of patience that Jesus taught us. They can't wait. Impetuosity drives them. They plunge headfirst into the problem without due deliberation. They want immediate results without the delay necessary to put the trees through the tedious, long drawn-out process that produces the results. So they try to bypass the process. They try to short circuit it. They want to take a shortcut even though no shortcut exists. So, they do not cultivate the soil and dung the trees (Luke 13:6-9). Instead, with glee, the anachronisms swing their axes to chop down non-performing, under-performing and mal-performing trees. They delight in razing the trees of the orchard to the ground. 'Kill the patient; cure the disease' is a fair description of their demented logic. Unfortunately, the only trees that survive their barbarous brand of ruthless rehabilitation are a devastated landscape of amputated stumps. It is not a pretty sight. It's not paradise. Far from it. The anachronisms pray for a smaller, purer Church that excludes sinners from the pursuit of God. They reject the egalitarian notion that the Church is a big tent under which saints and sinners pursue God together (Luke 18:10-14) (Matthew 9:10-12). The pursuit of God in their churches is reserved exclusively for a small, elite, sanctimonious, self-annointed clique of saintly super heroes.
Razing the trees is not the new Covenant methodology of Jesus (Jeremiah 31:31-34). By failing to dung the trees, the swaggering, ass-kicking lumberjacks among our bishops betray the office they occupy. They commit episcopal malpractice. They follow not Jesus's example.
Heavy is the ax of the bishops whose hearts are filled to the brim with love and how difficult it is for them to swing it. Light is the ax of the bishops whose hearts are empty of love and how nimbly and eagerly do they swing it. UNFORTUNATELY, THE LOVELESS AX DOES NOT MAKE LOVING CHRISTIANS BECAUSE ONLY LOVE BEGETS LOVE (1 Corinthians 13: 1-3). Only love depetrifies stony hearts and fleshifies them (Ezekiel 36:26). “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another“ (John 13:35) (Matthew 22:36-40) (1 John 4: 7-12). Lumberjacks do not make Christians. Gardeners make Christians. In the new Covenant, the ax yields to the dung. Jesus understood the science of cause and effect, implemented it himself and has his gardeners implementing it. The anachronistic lumberjacks, however, do not. They cannot wrap their heads around the new Covenant's science of cause and effect. It is beyond them.
It is not easy to make a Christian. In fact, it is extremely difficult. The proverbial camel needs to go through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). To make a Christian, we must pass through a "narrow gate" (Matthew 7:13-14). THE ONLY APPROACH THAT WORKS IN MAKING A CHRISTIAN IS TO LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS AS JESUS LOVED US (John 15:12) (John 13:34-35). Jesus loved us even though we tortured and killed him - even though we made him suffer and die. Wow! How exorbitantly expensive was his love for us! How intransigent! The dial that controls his love for us is in his hands not ours. Moreover, it is set to the highest degree and is locked in place. Not even the evil that we did to him could budge it. Moreover, the impact of his prodigious love for us was enhanced with the accelerant of audacity - radical, extreme audacity! We were unworthy of forgiveness, but Jesus forgave us anyway. Our God did not wait for our conversion to forgive us but forgave us to bring about our conversion (Matthew 22:10) (John 15:13) (John 12:24). JESUS TOOK THE FIRST STEP. While we were still unrepentant sinners (Romans 5:8) (Matthew 7:6), Jesus loved us first (1 John 4:19). Forgiveness, despite the evil that we did to him, is the catalyst of our conversion. It gobsmacks us. It knocks us off our horse (Acts 9:4).
We attacked him. He did not defend himself. He had access to unlimited divine resources for his defense (Matthew 26:53). Yet, he did not fight back. He did not answer the evil that we did to him in kind. He did not give us a taste of our own medicine. He did not require "an eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Exodus 21:24)(Matthew 5: 38-48). He forgave us (Jeremiah 31:31-34) (Luke 23:34 ) (Acts 10:43) (Matthew 6:12) (Matthew 18:21-35 (Luke 7:47) (Matthew 5:45). The evil that we did to Jesus offered him a demotion. Jesus, however, refused evil’s offer of a demotion (Matthew 5:45). He refused to allow evil to reduce him from the level of our loving God to the level of the most miserable and hideous of loveless beasts who scavenge for scraps among the ruins of Eden in brutal, ruthless and cutthroat competition with the other miserable and hideous of loveless beasts. Jesus refused to allow evil to reproduce itself within him (Matthew 5:38-40). Evil did not find a foothold in Jesus. Jesus gave evil no purchase. There was no room for evil to enter the inn of his most Sacred Heart (Luke 2:7). Love had reserved all of the space for itself.
Doesn't this tell us everything that we need to know about the nature of our loving God?
What, exactly, is the dung that inspires the trees of the orchard to bear sweet fruit, rehabilitates them and restores to them their original grandeur in the garden of the New Eden?
Putting the children of Adam and Eve into intimate contact with the prodigious love of God so they can experience for themselves the joy of close encounters with it is the dung for the trees.
Jesus was a humble gardener (John 20:15) not a swaggering, ass-kicking lumberjack. In Luke 13:6-9, both the cutting down and the dunging of the trees are mentioned. However, in the real world outside the artificial world of parables, the only tool that Jesus ever gave his bishops to bring about the salvation of the children of Adam and Eve was dung not axes. Jesus spent the precious coin of his flesh and blood to purchase the dung of gratuitous and unconditional forgiveness to rehabilitate the trees. He emptied his entire treasury to make the purchase. He spent not a penny of his limited human resources to purchase axes to chop them down. He has never spent more on anything else So, from whom did the bishops get their axes? Not Jesus. Who taught them to act like swaggering, ass kicking lumberjacks? Not Jesus. Why aren't they all, like Jesus, soil cultivating, dung pitching gardeners?
Christianity, when done right, challenges us to come to grips with the prodigious love of God. It confronts us with the prodigious love of God. It whacks us over our heads with it. It sticks the prodigious love of God in our faces. It pokes us in the eyes with it. It rubs our noses into this truth. Helping us to experience the joy of discovering the prodigious love of God is how gardeners dung the trees. The prodigious love of God is the treasure of Christianity and the most powerful force on earth. It gives Christianity its magic, Jesus his charisma and bishops, who exclusively devote themselves to it, the power to change the world. With this dung, gardeners recreate (2 Corinthians 5:17) the gardens of the new Eden (Revelation 22:1-3).
More of the prodigious love of God not less. More gardeners; fewer lumberjacks. Always. Without exceptions. Put down the ax; pick up the dung. Stop razing the trees to the ground! Rehabilitate the trees. Cultivate their soil and dung them. Build the garden of the New Eden. Help Jesus make the new Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)!
Love embellishes life. Life without love is salt without flavor (Matthew 5:13). Love is life in abundance (John 10:10).
Love is the sweet fruit of the trees in the garden of the new Eden (Revelation 22:1-3). But, only love begets love. Love is the spark that ignites a chain reaction of love. Jesus understood the science of cause and effect. So, while we were still unrepentant (Matthew 22:10) sinners (Romans 5:8) (Matthew 7:6), Jesus loved us first (1 John 4:19). He lit the match of love. He started the ball of love rolling. “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing”(Luke 12:49)! Our job is to turn the spark into a conflagration.
Unlike coffee, there is no such thing as an instant Catholic. It takes time to make a Catholic. We do not become Catholic overnight. A human being develops from a baby in the womb through other stages of life including infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. A similar framework of development takes place in the thinking of Catholics. A Catholic whose thinking is not quite up to speed with the thinking of a self-styled orthodox Catholics is still a Catholic for the same reason that a baby in the womb is still a human being.
Jesus is God’s invitation to experience the joy of discovering for ourselves the prodigious love of God. If our clerics are not delivering the invitation, the are not doing their jobs.
The economy of paradise is based on the currency of love. With ordinary currency, the more we spend, the poorer we get. It is a paradox, but, by spending the currency of love, we grow rich. The more we spend, the richer we get. The most Holy Trinity dispatched the Son of God from heaven to earth to introduce us to the currency of love and to establish the economy of paradise here and now upon the earth.