As great as this parable is about the fig tree that symbolizes the potential fate of Israel, I think it needs to be modernized, so allow me to offer a more contemporary version. There once was a farmer named Jane. Everyone in town was well acquainted with Jane’s Organic Produce Stand. She grew an array of fruits and vegetables that were popular with local residents. She had blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, leeks, and last, but not least, the most delicious figs anyone had ever tasted. Fig juice was one of Jane’s specialties, and everyone for miles around swore that it had the power to cleanse one’s system and cure almost any ailment.
Jane’s business was a big success for many years and was the main reason Jane and her partner Sharon were able to provide for their twelve kids. Sharon was a philosophy professor at a local community college where she taught logic, and there was no way that her salary could provide for all twelve of their kids.
As it was, life was an unending season of joy for Jane and Sharon’s family until one year. The year that the fig trees stopped producing. The fig trees were up high on a ridge that overlooked the rest of the farm. After dinner, Jane would often walk out onto the back porch and look up the hill at the fig trees. She couldn’t understand why they were behaving so strangely. The problem persisted year after year, and Jane’s Organic Produce Stand was suffering because of it. With none of her magical fig juice, her neighbors came less and less.
Finally, after three years of hardship, Jane announced to her neighbors that she was going to chop down all of her fig trees so that she could plant a new batch of them. As it so happened, Jane lived between two ecology professors who were bitter rivals in the ecology department at Sharon’s community college. On one Saturday afternoon, one of them came to visit. His name was Stuart, and Stuart had come to warn Jane against cutting down the fig trees. He said, “Jane, if you cut down those fig trees, you will be at risk for a severe mudslide that could ruin your farm and even your house. You see the leaves of the trees help to keep the rain from hitting the ground hard, and the roots of the trees help hold the soil together. Without those trees, a big rainstorm would just cause all that mud to roll down the hill and wipe out everything in its path.” Jane was worried. This all seemed to make sense, but she couldn’t continue to support her family without having some fig trees that produced figs. She asked Stuart what she should do. Stuart advised her to dig around the fig trees and lay down some “organic fertilizer.” “Great idea,” said Jane.
A few hours later, however, Jane’s other neighbor Simon stopped to visit. Simon said that he had heard Stuart had paid her a visit and had told her not to cut down those fig trees. Simon assured her that Stuart’s advice was complete and utter nonsense. There had been a study that demonstrated that the causes of mudslides were much more complex than Stuart would have her believe. One had to take into account the angle of the slope, the composition of the soil, and the amount of rainfall likely to occur. According to Simon’s estimates, Jane had nothing to worry about. “Save your self the trouble and just cut down the trees,” he said. “We can have a big bonfire with the wood and invite the whole town to roast weenies and marshmallows.” Jane thanked Simon for his advice as he left, but she was now deeply confused. How was she ever going to make a decision? She knew that in an another hour Stuart was probably going to visit again and tell her that Simon’s advice was complete and utter nonsense. How was she to know who was right? She wasn’t a scientist. Finally, she decided to pray about it, but no answers came. “What good is my faith if it doesn’t give me answers?” she thought. This was a huge life decision after all. The well-being of all twelve of her kids depended upon her making the right choice.
That night Jane told Sharon about her two visitors. Sharon just looked at her and smiled. “Jane,” she said, “this is a simple case of logic.” Sharon then pulled out a flip chart and diagramed the problem. She drew a line down the center of the chart and a line across the top. She then said, “Essentially you can choose between two lottery tickets. If you buy the first lottery ticket, you have made the decision to cut down all of the trees. If you buy the second lottery ticket, you have decided to care for the fig trees as best you can with water, organic fertilizer, and so on. Now, like a lottery, there is no guarantee that by simply buying the ticket, you will get the result you want. When you buy a lottery ticket, you are simply buying the possibility of winning a prize. Each lottery ticket also comes with its own set of risks. Let’s look at the rewards and risks for buying each of these lottery tickets. If you buy the first lottery ticket, you cut down all of the trees. The reward is that you get to have a bonfire and then plant new fig trees that will hopefully yield new fruit and allow you to continue with business as usual. The risk is that we could have a mudslide, and our entire farm is ruined-house and all. Now, let’s say you decide to buy lottery ticket number two instead. You decide to take care of your trees for a year and see if those special nutrients help the trees to bear fruit. The reward is that it works and you get a great harvest next year. The risk is that you don’t get a harvest and you have wasted all of that time and organic fertilizer in caring for the trees.”
“Okay,” says Jane, “but how I am supposed to make a decision now?” “Well,” says Sharon, “none of us ever know what is really going to happen in life. You don’t know with complete certainty which of these lottery tickets might be a winner. What you do know is that each lottery ticket has some potential rewards and risks. What you have to decide is which set of rewards and risks is the better bet. In other words, which would you rather risk: a mudslide or wasting your resources for a year?” Jane had made up her mind, but instead of telling you what decision she made, I will let you finish the end of that story.
Now, I want to tell you another story, but this story isn’t the product of your pastor’s wild imagination. This story actually occurred. The story begins in Corvallis, Oregon. In a local high school there, a physics and chemistry teacher named Greg Craven was sick and tired of all the shouting and disagreement over global warming. On the one side, there was a United Nation’s panel of the world’s leading scientists saying that the “evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming.[i] Even the CIA has long seen global warming as a huge security threat.[ii] Yet, on the other side, there was a senior senator saying that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetuated by the American people.” This senator had a list of 400 scientists who agreed with him. Greg therefore asked the question, “What is a harried lay person supposed to do?” If the global warming predictions are at all accurate, we don’t have time to wait for this seemingly unending shouting match to come to a resolution. Greg has made it his mission to give ordinary people a set of easy to use thinking tools so that they can draw their own conclusions in the face of all the claims being thrown at them.
For Greg, there was a moment of revelation that put him on this path. It was the day he first used a standard tool of logic called the decision grid and applied it to the global warming debate.[iii] What he got was similar to Sharon’s lottery tickets, except without all the organic fertilizer. According to Greg’s lottery tickets, we could buy ticket number one which would mean that we pooh-pooh the claims about global warming. You cut down the trees and don’t worry about CO2. The reward is that we continue life as it is and we have a big party with a bonfire to celebrate that we made the right decision because nothing bad happened. In terms of a worst-case scenario, the risk is complete ruin. Sea levels rise, droughts strike our nation’s breadbasket, floods and storms hit us, the global economy is wrecked, and so on. Alternatively, we buy ticket number two and greatly reduce our CO2 emissions. The reward is that we prevent the doomsday scenario despite having to pay some substantial costs along the way to convert our society into a less polluted one. In the end, everyone agrees the price was worth it. The risk is that we instead find that we made a mistake and never needed all the green technology and sacrifice. We wasted money, created more regulations, and reduced liberties. In the very worst-case scenario according to some predictions, this causes a recession.
Now, as Greg himself admits, all of this is a big oversimplification. To be honest, I also find the global warming scientists simply more persuasive. Scientists like James Hanson have a good track record for making climate predictions and their views have been well-tested by peers within their field. Nevertheless, the question that Greg ultimately posed with his decision-making grid wasn’t who do you believe? The global warmers or the skeptics? The question instead was “What should I do right now, given the risks and uncertainties?” Do we want to risk the recession that skeptics would have us believe will happen if we take action? Or, do we want to risk ending life as we know it with the complete environmental and economic ruin that global warming scientists claim will happen if we don’t take action? I will let each of you decide for yourself which ticket you want to buy. Most people tend to buy the same one.
Greg’s mission is to get as many people as possible to decide for themselves what lottery ticket to buy because he can’t wait for the shouting match to decide the potential fate of his daughters. He has already been highly successful in his quest. He posted a video on YouTube explaining his decision-making grid in relation to global warming and it became an overnight hit.[iv] It has now been viewed more than 7 and a half million times. Greg’s video not only shows the power of a small act, but it shows a respect for people and a belief in their capacity to form their own conclusions.
To me, Greg and Sharon both acted in the spirit of Jesus. Jesus told parables like the one about the fig tree to provoke us into thinking and making decisions for ourselves. The parable of the fig tree never tells us what the farmer did to this tree that symbolized the potential fate of Israel. Would Israel realize it was being given a second chance and bear the fruit of repentance? If Jesus had lived during YouTube, think of all the viewers he would have! The challenge for us today is not to have a faith that tells everyone what to do as if we own the copyrights for the Idiots Guide to Heaven. Rather, our job today is to get people thinking on their own and acting in whatever way they think will benefit not simply themselves but the greater good. Therefore, let us all live in the spirit of Jesus. Let us all be Gregs and Sharons. And, let us all do our part to bring about a world that is full of delicious fig juice! Amen.
[i] UN News Centre, “Evidence Is Now ‘Unequivocal’ that Humans Are Causing Global Warming-UN Report,” (February 2, 2007), <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?Cr1=change&Cr=climate&NewsID=21429>.
[ii] Jarred Schenke, “The CIA and Global Warming,” Associated Content, (October 17, 2008), <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/72279/the_cia_and_global_warming_pg2.html?cat=37>.
[iii] What follows utilizes Greg Craven’s book What’s the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate, (New York: Penguin, 2009).
[iv] Craven’s original video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
