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The Devil's Advocate:

Mr. Sower -- the soil is now ready.

In the Church there are more than a few
All eager -- all anxious -- all expectant.

Your good listeners are waiting for you!

You bet they are, Mr. Sower. They're waiting, all right. Look at them. Asleep, grumpy, anxious to be sure, worn-out, bored, saturated with good things, hardened, toughened, preoccupied with other things.

But to tell you the truth, I'm on their side. And I am sure that most of you out there are secretly on my side. I know you are a little reluctant to admit it in front of the preacher. I know he holds a certain sway over your conscience. He is sort of a father-image for you, and you don't want to disappoint him, at least to his face. But you know, and I know, that deep down, you really see things as I see them. And that's all I care about. So long as down deep you hang on to the same things I do.

Now in a few minutes he'll have to have his say. And in piously warm, personalistic tones, he'll try to persuade you to be good soil, soft and pliable, open and receptive to his message. And he'll use every method imaginable. He'll wink at the impressionable young women. He'll call up the memories of your faithful mother and father. He'll try to con you into thinking tenderly of the hard realities of life. So right now, you can prepare yourself for the emotional onslaught.

Preachers are emotional because of their na•veté. You can expect him to tell us we ought not to be hardened like the path in the parable. He'll want us to be soft and pliable and open. But you and I know that to be a lot of nonsense. Listen, this world is not a place for softies! This is a time for hardened people, tough people, people who know what they want and who do not open themselves up for all the religious twaddle that issues out of pulpits.

Listen, 10,000 voices are clamoring to be heard today. Everybody is screaming at you, telling you your car is out of date, your furniture out of style, that you have bad breath, or that you need to use a stronger deodorant. Pictures, billboards, articles, ads, commercials shout at you.

Yippy, yappy hippies yelled through their beards and long hair that you were a bigoted, hypocritical, middle-class warmongering s.o.b. Arrogant, indulged, spoiled affluent brats drive away to college in BMWs and miniskirts that their parents bought for them and then write in the campus newspaper that their parents are a bunch of phony, double-standard materialists.

Then the executives of major communications networks decide they're going to puff up questionable celebrities and political activists. So every other night we hear these blowhard nonleaders tell us where we're wrong; that we're not only responsible for our own sins, but theirs too. With all that screaming and shouting, who wouldn't be hardened?

So, I'm with you. You have to harden yourself to the many voices and philosophies of today. Otherwise, you'll just disintegrate. Keep hard and resolute.

In this case, I think Sigmund Freud was right. Here, in the words of Gerald Sykes, is what he might say to us today:

Get clear about your relations to your mother and father, your brothers and sisters, and all the rest of your family ...

Understand the power of the death instinct.

See the sexual truth about yourself, and don't be stupidly ashamed of it. Face up to the ghastly sordidness, the disgusting vulgarity of being a human being -- and your reward will be that you will have the answers while your softheaded contemporaries are merely fooling around with words.

Traps are being laid for you every day. A great swindle called either by the name of a church or of a political system or some other institution is seeking every second to take you in with its calming mythology. You can beat the game -- and enjoy the infinite satisfaction of watching the great majority crawl on its belly toward you. All you need is to be clear and strong.1

The Lord's Advocate:

Ah! The sirens of Scylla and Charybdis: how they woo us to the shoals of self-interest and success. Cry on, Devil man: you talk to us all, and you're right, we give you a hearing, every one of us in our secret hearts.

We'd love to think the world would crawl to us: that by some secret Nietzchean knowledge we could exploit the sin of our souls and society's soul and turn it into profit for ourselves. We might even con our consciences for a while. But not for long, I think. Somewhere, out there, there is a longing for life -- real life, a hunger for the highest, a tension until the truth be found.

Let me concede your point about preachers. We do delude ourselves. We are vain, pompous, and proud little people. Because we are human -- and it is our shame. Only by God's mercy will most of us find our way into the Kingdom.

But you cannot curse the message by the man. For we proclaim not ourselves but Christ Jesus. And in this marvelous parable of the Master's you're dealing not with the likes of me, but with the Lord himself. Remember he is the Sower, and it is his Word that is the seed being scattered.

Say what you will about the fraudulent faces of us who proclaim the faith. Mouth all the old excuses church members themselves have used for why their lives are too hard for the hope of heaven to find root within their souls! But when you're face to face with the Sower who is the Savior, you'll not fault him! Look to yourself, Devil man! And you people look to yourselves, and who you're letting in your heart -- the Divine Lord, or this Devil-friend.

He wants you to think "hardness of heart"Êis a virtue, very modern, "cool," cosmopolitan, the thing. Be tough in a tough world.

If you're hard men, it's because you've let everything walk up and down your life -- every "passing wind of doctrine," every new bit of gossip, every lewd picture, every cruel thought, every cheap, unworthy idea that came traveling down the pike.

One of the beautiful prayers of the faith says, "Let not our hearts be busy inns."

Maybe you've been busy, busy, busy with a thousand things each day. Maybe you're so important you really haven't time to take a look at Christ's way. I know the newspaper seems much more important at seven o'clock in the morning than a chapter out of John or Mark. But will it be with you to help some day when you face the dark?

It will not. Neither will the fare you found on television late into the night -- nor the conversation of your friends -- all of which you put before the cry to cultivate the cutting edge and growing life of prayer, and the discipline of devoted reading of the Bible. They are seed for the soil that the heart and mind full of the garbage of the day is too sated to satisfy.

Is your heart really that hard? I think it's not!

II
The Devil's Advocate:

No matter how you say it, I think most of us come off rather badly in this parable. It is unfair to us. Now, you take that bit about the rocky soil. You know what kind of soil that is? It's soil that's about an inch thick with a solid layer of rock underneath. Like the parable says, it's hard to put deep roots down in that kind of soil.

But that's not so bad -- at least not from our point of view. We've already agreed that you've got to be hard in this life. That's what's important. Now, of course, some people think you should add a little surface softness, an appearance of kindness and receptivity, a diplomatic disposition to make human relationships more palatable. I see nothing wrong in that.

And I notice most of you feel the same way. You are basically hard as rock underneath. You can resist a whole mountain of verbiage, ward off the onslaught of 1,000 salesmen and preachers. But you are very clever and cunning. You come to church because it's easier that way. It's an accepted thing to do. Life is calmer when you do. The folks back home think it looks good. And the genteel, moral influence of church can certainly do no harm. It makes the wife happier. Besides that, it ceases the twinge of conscience we might have if we didn't attend.

So in the nice, pleasant, amiable surroundings of the church we all develop a nice, pleasant, amiable personality. And I'm for it. Things go better that way. But I must say that some of you get carried away with the whole thing and pretend you are enthusiastic about religion. Of course, you and I know you don't mean it and that it's only the fun thing to do at the time. However, there is this matter of excess, you know. Some of you are even claiming new birth and conversion.

Don't you think that's being just a bit too amiable? You could get on quite well in the church and society without getting all lathered up about your love for Jesus. You know that can't last. Not in our kind of world. So my advice is to keep up the surface niceness, the affability and amiability. But never let down your rock-like defenses. You know that all those nice religious sentiments will never make it in our kind of world.

Just take a look around at all these Jesus fulminators. They give you all that sweet-syrup stuff about giving the heart to Jesus. Well, don't believe it. I'm convinced they are basically just like you and me -- rock-hardened underneath. I've heard them backbite, gossip, expound their ignorance ad nauseam, consign everyone else to hell, and judge everyone else's beliefs and doctrines by their own simplistic formulas. They are full of pride. They have Messianic complexes. They are determined to make everyone go through their kind of religious experience just so they can have psychological power over other people.

Now I ask you, isn't that like the rest of us? They claim to be soft and pliable and receptive to the Word of God. But look at them closely and you'll find a super-huge, extra-hard ego covered over with the "Four Spiritual Laws" of Campus Crusade and Billy Graham clichés.

So don't waste your energy. Don't have religious flare-ups. Be cool. Be hard. That's the only way to survive all the windy nonsense.

The Lord's Advocate:

You have a thin blade, Lucifer ... and you know just how to slit it in between the ribs and twist it.

Better to be false, eh? Better to be soft and pliable on the surface but like a rock within? I do believe you are the father of fraud! You and your subtle insinuations are the hometown of hypocrisy!

Because it's a mellow voice with which you croon. Not a few of our forces would love to think that just what you propose is okay! Particularly if they could have all the words that sound just right: all the talk about the gospel, and about Jesus, and about conversion, and walking with the Lord, but still have the aura of affluence that a place in Prestigeville offers! What could be better, after all, than to have your Jesus Christ on Sunday -- full-fledged, and foursquare gospel -- and your cocktails at the club, and cigars after dinner, and that sense of worldly involvement all through the week?

It could make Docetists of us: people who take our pleasures where we find them, and say no bodily excesses interfere with the purity of the Spirit. Live a little! That's all right! The Lord doesn't mind! Have a hard heart underneath! Make sanctity a thing of the surface for the sake of society.

Sure, there are some who consciously live like that. There are hypocrites in the world and in the church -- we all have trouble with the beam in our own eye when we're worrying about the speck in our brother's.

But I do not know many who want to live that way. Most of those I know are in the church out of deep hunger and longing need. They have no desire to be false.

But they are tempted, and sometimes trapped: we all are tempted to come to Christ for all the wrong reasons: because he, in his singing, swinging, free-moving life is the most glamorous personality they've come across in these times full of tired and tedious types.

Some move in with the Christian crowd just to make friends, or because joining a church is good company policy: image, you know. Some think, especially in the suburbs, that they'll be safe away from the sordid sorrows and stubborn sicknesses of the city. They never think the Lord Jesus would be so impertinent as to protrude himself into their consciences out there. And, of course, when the kitchen gets hot, and they see the Lord means business with their lives, and that it's not a talking game, anymore, but a living game, then they take their marbles and play elsewhere.

But I believe the ones who care come back. Christ's own are not lost. And they're not the shallow soil with the rock beneath, and they want no part of it.

So go away, you apostle of insinuation, and take your gravel with you.

III
The Devil's Advocate:

Now this next part of the parable is where a lot of people get bamboozled. You know, the part where the thorns choke out the good grain. And of course, Mark tells us the thorns represent the cares of the world, the delight of riches, and the desire for other things.

I have noticed that once in a while some of our hardest, sturdiest, most stable types begin to fall for this one. It often happens, as Vance Packard points out in his book, The Pyramid Climbers, to men in their forties and fifties. He says that life, in the thirty-year-olds in our businesses and corporations, seems amazingly simple. They see the world as demanding intelligent achievement, and they intend to achieve no matter what. They are grey flannel suit types. They are out there to succeed, to make the buck as quickly as possible.

But men in their forties begin to wonder if the objectives of their organizations are correct. Packard says that they begin "to re-examine their own inner lives and personal desires." Sometimes they wonder if they "should not have chosen some other occupation, one they propose as more attuned to human values, to the rewards of interpersonal relations."2

The fifty-year-olds become philosophic, and usually try to rationalize their lifelong devotion to the goddess of success. And even though they tend to prattle on in nostalgic reconstructions of their successes and even though they sound like repetitious windbags to the juniors who work under them, we must affirm them to be right. Their position is ultimately the correct one.

It is correct because it is the only realistic one. There is delight in riches! And the cares of business which bring a handsome profit are happily endured for the reward. The parable has it wrong. Riches are not thorns, they are flowers -- flowers yielding sweet-scented fragrances and delights and pleasures.

Now look at the poor. Do you think they enjoy their diets of malnutrition? Do you think they are happy with only one car and a house furnished from garage sales and Goodwill instead of prestigious furniture stores? Not on your life! Do you think they enjoy sitting home sipping beer and watching videos? Not a bit. They would all unquestionably enjoy cocktails and beef at the best restaurants, theater in New York, and blintzes at the Carnegie Deli. Listen, they want to be right where you are. So don't give anyone a chance to delude you with nice religious folderol.

Most religious guys are phonies anyway. They talk against riches and success, but, brother, they'll take it any day. They'll tsk, tsk us with a holier-than-thou attitude because we're out there fighting for financial success. Yet, have you noticed? They'll take every penny we give them.

So if the "thorns" of riches and desires and worldly cares choke out the so-called Word of God, it's only because riches and desires are real and the Word of God is not.

The Lord's Advocate:

Are they ever real! To all of us they're real. We do like our cars and ski-doos, our gracious homes and wide lawns. We like our clothes and clubs.

But Christ's concern was how much we like them, whether we give our loyalty and love to them. Whether they dominate and control us. Whether they, in fact, are god to us. That's what he saw in the Rich Young Man --Êthat he couldn't give it up. And that was the Savior's sorrow; for he wanted that young man. He loved him. And knew that he could have come, if his heart had been willing to let his wealth go.

Men can be wealthy without being worldly. Men can have riches and still stand for the right. It's a question of who and what is God to you.

You just check out your giving to Christ's cause, to see just how chained you may be to the riches you have. You know, even a tip isn't ten percent anymore! You might see whether you're trying just to tip your Lord instead of really rising up to follow him, using your riches for the redeeming of the world. With a few magnificent exceptions it is rather revealing that the ratio of people's giving to the church goes down as they get richer.

Maybe it is harder for those who trust in riches to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle! Maybe the thorns of wealth, and ambition, and prestige, and success, and suburban isolation from the sufferings of society -- and all the other trappings of white power, really do choke out the growing flowers of God's love from our hearts and his care from our consciences --Êunless we're in there every day with the plow of prayer, and the hoe of the regular hearing of God's Word on Sunday, and the hoeing of the scriptures.

Sure, the weeds are there -- but it's flowers, for those of faith.

IV
The Devil's Advocate:

Now this last part of the parable is just too much. Have you ever heard such nonsense? Do you see what the climax to this story is? It suggests that the soft, open, pliable types are the real producers. They are the ones who reap the rewards.

I'm sure you agree with me that only the gullible could believe that bundle of twaddle. Look around you. Who is it that really makes it in this world? Who is it that really has success? It's the hardheaded hustlers who know the realities of economic life. Oh, sure, they may look soft but they play hard. They'll tell you that themselves. It's a hard game out there. It's a rat race, they say. And they are right.

Most all of us believe that, don't we? Sure we do! However, once in a while some of us wonder about it all; we wonder if the struggle is worth it all, and if we shouldn't turn our attention to other things like, say, religion. But you know what that is, don't you? That's the rationalization of a man who's not making it in the economic world. He's just nursing his wounds and bruises with religious consolation. He needs encouragement and he would take it from anybody -- even God.

Oh, well, that's okay. We all know that once he's on his feet again, he'll be his old hard self and resist the religious sentimentalisms. Unless, of course, he continues to fall. Then he'll either be religious or alcoholic or both. And the only thing he'll produce thirty-, sixty-, or a hundredfold, is trouble. But you and I, we'll continue in our push for the fruits of success in this world. It's the only thing that counts.

The Lord's Advocate:

Not the only thing that counts, my friend: not when your back's to the wall, and you're in a corner, and the clouds are rolling in, and death walks your way, and tragedy snaps at your heels. Not then, it isn't all that counts!

About all it does is pay the funeral costs, or the medical bills, or the psychiatrist's fees: it doesn't heal anything. It doesn't help anything. It doesn't even buy a friend.

What shines a light when all is dark; what brings up the sun when the night's been long; what heals the heart that's been horribly hurt; what provides an answer when the spirit is numb; what provides a highway of hope when there is no escape -- is something in the heart. In your heart. In Everyman's heart, who hungers for the highest.

And that is faith. And faith means Christ the Lord -- Christ of the Cross, Christ of the crown. His victory is hard. It is through the rain to the sun beyond. It is through the tears to the day of Triumph. And it's the way he offers us.

It's the way open to those whose heart is a field prayerful enough for plowing, hopeful enough for the harvest.

It's the way of the Lord for those who hear and believe that God loved the world so much, that he gave his only begotten Son, that they might not perish but have life and have it more abundantly.

The soft winds of the world have winsome voices -- but you listen for the winds of God that come whistling down the highways of the heart for those who hear the Word of their Lord Jesus, and know that they are called to be good soil --Êdeep, rich, ready!

____________

1. Gerald Sykes, The Hidden Remnant (New York: Harper), p. 50.

2. Vance Packard, The Pyramid Climbers, Crest Book reprint (Greenwich, Connecticut: Faucett Publications, 1964), pp. 198-199.