Saturday, August 14, 2010

Parable of the Shepherd and the Shoemaker

Parable. There was once a shepherd renting land from an absentee landlord. The land was too salty to raise crops but the shepherd could raise sheep and goats, and he built a house on the land. One day the absentee landlord stopped collecting the rent and the man stopped paying for the land. A few years later, a shoemaker from a faraway land arrives and claims that he bought the land from the absentee landlord.

This shoemaker knows nothing about farming or raising sheep. But he does some engineering and draws water from the nearby shore of an inland sea, and although it is brackish water, he uses it to wash the salts from the soil. The shoemaker is desperately hungry so he buys meat from the shepherd, and then starts planting in his newly-flushed soils. To everyone's surprise, the soil is made fertile again after several thousand years of over-tilling. The shoemaker brings his friends, a candlemaker, and a watchmaker. They all start farming and building new buildings.

Now the shepherd can sell more goat meat to the new arrivals. Also his sons start working in the construction industry. Some more friends of his arrive from distant lands looking for work, and the farmers and goat-herds together raise enough food for everyone. Although the first man had to move out of the first house he had built, he just went and built more houses. Together, the families begin to build graceful cities. People are working and have jobs.

Together, they all built a garden in what had become an infertile desert. Together, they built some of the most beautiful cities in Africa.

Then one day a mob of idiots started making speeches on the radio. They talked about killing "cockroaches" with machetes. They taught hatred in schools. Mothers would raise their sons to hate other tribes they heard described on the radio. One day, at a signal from the idiots, thousands of people who had been shepherds and had immigrated into the garden, began killing tens of thousands of craftsmen who had become gardeners. After a few months of this genocide, there were many broken families and hopes, and destroyed cities.

And although many died, and now we are trying to forgive the killers, and repair the orphans, still, after all the deaths, life did not get better for anyone. It got worse.

It is better, perhaps, instead of leading chants -- "Death!" "Kill!" -- perhaps it is better to just build homes, plant your gardens, raise the goats. What did all the killing and hatred accomplish?

2 comments:

  1. In Rwanda, incompetent idiots took over the government. To avoid having to be responsible for their own incapacity to perform basic leadership functions, the idiots developed a comprehensive hatred plan. They introduced hatred in text books, and required Tutus to be treated as "cockroaches". Within ten years, at a signal from the radio, Tutus were rounded up in churches, evicted from their homes, and they were killed by machete in open acts of genocide.

    When idiots take over media and begin treating people -- ANY people -- as if they are 2d class or inferior, we should listen. We should all listen. Tyrants will not be content with extermination of others - they will come after you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Death to the infidel!" Who really talks this way? It is all over the radio and Al-Jazeera broadcasting stations of the Middle East. Most of the text books in Africa and Indonesia teach race-hatred to schoolchildren. There are almost no exceptions. The persecution of Jews, Darfurians, Moluccans, Ahmadiyya, Bahai, Chaldeans, Orthodox, and various Christian groups, is part of a concerted program promoted in school-rooms. Most citizens of Islamic countries really have no idea about history.

    ReplyDelete