A few years ago, and not long after Heidi and I arrived in Kentucky, we found ourselves at a Rural King in Owensboro looking for fruit trees to plant on the property. After going through and looking at everything they had left that season, we settled on two nectarine trees and a couple of apple trees. (I think we’ve got a peach or apricot tree as well, but I’m not certain what it is at this point.) The trees we chose were the healthiest looking that we could find. We brought them home and put them into the ground with as much care as we could, making sure to give each one a good dose of rabbit poop mixed into its soil. (For those who don’t know, rabbit poop is sometimes referred to as “brown gold” where plants are concerned. It’s kind of like nature’s Miracle Grow.) We’ve protected them, watered them, and taken the best care of them that we could.
As it turned out, however, we didn’t know that the trees were diseased when we bought them. We knew that others in their stock were and actively avoided them, but these looked healthy at the time. Over the last couple of years as the trees grew, the disease began to manifest. In particular, it became very apparent in the fruit of the trees. I remember last year, especially with the nectarine trees, we went to almost absurd lengths to protect the blossoms from the late freezes in March so that we could have fruit from them. The blossoms did develop into fruit, but the fruit was all diseased, became blackened and shriveled, and couldn’t be eaten.
Jesus said that “A good tree can’t produce diseased fruit, and a diseased tree can’t produce good fruit.” That very saying has played itself out in front of our eyes with the fruit trees we bought and planted. Like I said, they looked healthy when we bought them, they even looked healthy with bright green foliage within the first year or so, but the disease made itself known not long after no matter what we did and the fruit bore this out.
Bu Jesus wasn’t just talking about trees. He was talking about people, doctrines, and ideologies. In particular at the moment, He was talking about Pharisees and Sadducees that looked spiritually healthy on the outside, but whose fruit was born of the flesh and diseased. He was talking about people who rigidly followed the rules regarding tithing and diet, but ignored or contradicted the foundational commands regarding love, mercy, and compassion. And He was talking about the beliefs and ideologies that sanctioned that ignoring and contradiction. Diseased trees can’t produce good fruit because the disease runs throughout the tree, regardless of how healthy it might appear on the outside.
This is just as true today of religions, churches, denominations, pastors, priests, and anyone who claims to be religious or spiritual. If such a tree is healthy, it will produce good fruit. The kind of fruit which should be seen is the person and personality of Jesus Christ Himself. If the person, belief system, or organization is healthy, we should be seeing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, trust, courtesy, self-control and all such things which reflect the person of Jesus Christ, the Divine Logos, flowing and growing through them. If such a tree is diseased, we will see diseased fruit. We will see pride, ego, fear, anger, sexual infidelity, overconsumption, mercilessness, arguments, and factionalism. We will see abuse; emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and abuse of power. We will see avarice. We will see theft. We will see people ruined, hurt, and destroyed. In the shadows, we will see murders. We will see atrocities. Diseased trees cannot produce good, healthy fruit no matter how much you want them to.
One’s fruit will betray the state of their spiritual, emotional, and psychological health, no matter how good they look on the outside. If that fruit isn’t the Logos, if it isn’t love, joy, peace, patience and all of the fruit of the Spirit, if it isn’t compassion and loving kindness, then it is diseased and shouldn’t be eaten lest it make the eater themselves sick.
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