Be Changed to Bear Good Fruit
In the parable of the sower, Jesus teaches his disciples that as the word of God is preached to people, some will disregard it. Some are going to be excited about it, but as soon as sacrifices are demanded from them, they will give it up. Some will learn about the word, but the attractiveness of the secular world will keep them busy and far from following it. And finally, some will listen to the word, have faith on it, deep their faith through the word and then bear fruit. In the book Parable of the Sower, this parable is used as the motivation behind the plot. The message lurking underneath the surface is: “where we live is no longer safe, we need to find a better place to go and bear fruit there.” The different ways people absorb the truth explained by Jesus is also present in the characters of the book since only few were prepared when the eminent disaster came. Why would one deny an obvious reality? Perhaps, because facing it is too painful. It is ugly outside the walls of their neighborhood, and one could be paralyzed just by thinking about what could go wrong. In the middle of this chaos, one way they chose to deal with fear and anxiety was to rely on guns to protect their fenced neighborhood. In my PhD dissertation I analyzed a policy prohibiting gun carrying in Brazil. This policy caused an annual decrease of 4,400 gun-related homicides, especially of young black males living in dangerous areas. The main hypothesis explaining these findings is that there is a lack of police investigation and prosecution of murders in dangerous neighborhoods. This absence of action creates a double problem: people fear being killed, and at the same time, feel encouraged to carry guns and, if necessary, kill others as they will likely not be prosecuted. Similarly, Lauren Olamina lives in a world where people don’t trust public security and are eager to arm themselves, so murder rates are very highAs everyone walks on a tightrope over an abyss, her father says that teaching how to be prepared for chaos is more effective than alarming people about it. We professors also rely on teaching instead of scaring students about the dangers of the world. By providing our students tools, we hope they choose wisely whether they want to stay fixed on who they are, unwilling to talk to those that disagree with them, or be willing to change by learning from others and become better versions of themselves. Lauren believes that God is change and is both shaping and being shaped by people, while Christians believe that God is always the same but can change people for the better. Either way, one can get to the conclusion that being changed is the mechanism to bear good fruit.