Parable of the Sower

Two nights ago I finished Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. It was chunkier than Parable of the Sower and, for me at least, harder to read. 

What I couldn’t get over though was that this book was published in 1998 and the “Christians” were attempting a power takeover of the country as “Christian America.” Their tagline? Make America great again.

I can’t decide if we don’t read or if people are reading and taking notes on how to be the bad guys. 

Lauren Olamina may have been a cult leader in the story but she may live with me forever. Perhaps though, it will not be her, but the harm done in the name of Christianity. 

This book had to make a lot of people mad. The “Christians” in the story were the bad guys. I did put that in quotation marks, not in a “no true Scotsman” kind of way but because they claimed religion and even the Bible but nothing about them looked like Jesus. Since Christian means “little Christ”(and was possibly originally intended as an insult), I cannot accept that as Christian. We should not accept things that do not look like Jesus as Christian no matter how much the people thump the Bible. 

Again, we should not accept things that do not look like Jesus as Christian no matter how much people thump the Bible. 

As someone who loves the church, the message was a warning. Power is not the way of the cross. Forcing other people to agree with you, demonizing those who won’t is not the way of the cross. You are simply absorbed into the work of the enemy that way. 

 I trimmed some thorny bushes beside the stairs in our front yard while muttering under my breath about whoever planted them. “We don’t even need thorny bushes. They did at Acorn, but not here.” If you know, you know.