Jacob 5 Allegory of the Olive Tree

Just studying this allegory again…some thoughts come to mind…

It seems that the tree initially grows, because it is good. It is a good thing that grows, and it is a “tame” tree meaning it is defined as something that produces fruit that can be eaten and sustains life.

I grew up in the church, entered into covenants with baptism, priesthood, temple, and mission service…and these things helped me grow and tame me so I was under control with a direction in life…not just wild to go figure things out by trial and error only. The covenants help me grow.

And the church is the same. Whether back in Zenos’ time, or with Jacob, or with Joseph Smith, or with us. The church helps tame us by teaching us and we don’t really think about producing good fruit…it just happens because we are members of the church.

But it starts to get older and decay. (v.3)

Why? What happens that this good thing just stops being good by itself? Why doesn’t it just keep being good?

The allegory doesn’t spend a lot of time on that. It just points out that it happens. There are various reasons why. Not all trees follow the exact same path, some decay sooner than others, some never show signs of decay….lots of situations.

But this situation being looked at showed the olive tree decaying, without reasons why. In some ways…I like that…it doesn’t really matter. There was no guilt or shame … the Lord of the vineyard didn’t pace back and forth lamenting…”why? What happened?” Just…move forward and start digging, pruning, nourishing…just DO something to deal with it.

This is what I draw into my own personal life. There are things that happen out of our control. If we can find some reasons “why” it happened…well…great. Let’s learn from that and fix it or avoid it next time. But some things in life just happen, outside of our control and we can’t spend forever trying to make sense of it…when instead…we should move forward dealing with it.

I like that. I found that things have happened to me in my life despite having temple covenants and promised blessings. All I can do is determine how I will handle a situation and how I will not let it decay my spirit and kill me with rage or vengeance or any cancerous things. No…I dig and work and prune and move forward.

Pruning is another interesting concept in this allegory.

We pruned our orchard back in March.

In the pruning…we chop off this perfectly healthy and growing branches. Why? Why would we not just chop off the sick branches? Because that is what pruning is. Pruning is not a punishment for doing wrong. It is not just dealing with sickness.

Pruning involves a plan. An objective. If we want optimal growth and fruit…we prune things to help the best outcome…even if that specific branch may be good by itself…it may not be helping the overall goal and objective…to get fruit.

Fact is, we need room to grow, so we have to pick and choose (cafeteria style) on some things to let go of, so we have room to grow.

This is also like our lives. By itself…maybe wearing a white shirt to pass the sacrament isn’t a big deal. Other color shirts can look nice too. But there is something about following our leaders and conforming our behaviors, and chopping off our personal desires, that allows an overall benefit to us…even if the one single thing (a branch) is not necessarily “bad.” We can learn to let go to make room for things.

Missionary rules may be like that because they are not inherently truth by themselves. They don’t apply to me. They don’t apply to investigators or members of the Church in general, and they won’t apply to missionaries after their mission. But they apply to a missionary at a certain time as a way to help prune to a purpose. Not all things are good vs bad universally. Many things require context and situations. So…pruning is a way to let go of some things to allow growth that would not be optimal if we did not let go of some things to allow growth.

The most powerful part of this allegory is the Lord weeping.

Why did the Lord weep in vs 41? Why not in vs 3 when it started dying?

I think it is because as we labor and dig and try so hard to nourish something…and then it still goes wrong…it hurts more.

That is an emotional experience we all will experience. And even God experiences. Parents often feel this when they’ve been so invested in teaching children. It hurts.

The beautiful thought I had from this message is that the Lord is invested in me and my growth. He is a God that weeps. I love that thought.

Those are some initial thoughts on this allegory.

Perhaps personal apostasy, church apostasy, dying and decay, pride and sin, …all these things are part of our experience to learn from, but not to be focused on as much as love and work and pruning and grafting in good things, wherever they come from.

Those are my thoughts today from my studies.

One classic interpretation of the wheat and the tares is to think of the wheat and tares in terms of good people and bad people but I really enjoy an alternate interpretation that looks at the wheat and tares as our individual traits. I prefer that interpretation because it gets us further away from judging others (they are tares, I am wheat) and closer to judging ourselves (that time I yelled at my kid is a tare, that time I hugged my kid when they were upset is wheat). I’m human, imperfect, so the wheat has to grow with the tares but the hope is to be all wheat some day. I’ve got to let them grow together and learn from experience which is which… and sometimes the growing is slow.

Could we do something similar with Jacob 5? We read the story and think it’s about good people and bad people. We try to guess which groups are good/tame (us, duh), which groups are bad/wild (them). Maybe even look at the story and try to map it against god’s chosen people and the gentiles, but what if the branches/fruit/whatever represents our individual traits.

If anger gets out of hand and threatens the tree (soul, whatever) we lop it off, graft it onto a tree in the cruddy corner of the garden to let it think about what it did for a while… but then we may later find that “perfection” requires some anger so we graft one of those branches back on the main tree just in time to flip some tables in the temple.

I don’t know. I’m just making stuff up. Jacob 5 never really spoke to me. It always felt like a belabored analogy. I get about 23 verses deep in the chapter then I’m all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YmS_VDvMY” class=”bbcode_url”>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YmS_VDvMY

Fwiw, nibbler’s description is essentially what I have believed for a long time – but I add our ideas and beliefs to the mix, as well.

Racial prejudice? A bitter fruit from a bad limb that needs to be pruned. Our current discourse on modesty and sexual matters? Same. Infallible prophets? Same. All of the “incorrect traditions of (our) fathers”? Prune, prune, prune.

Everyone from orchard country knows you can’t do radical pruning of all branches at once without risking killing the tree. The best pruning happens steadily – and sometimes slowly. It is like weeding a garden (or wheat and tares): If you go too quickly, you end up pulling up good plants and flowers along with the weeds – and it can be difficult to impossible to tell the difference for a while.

In a faith crisis/transition, rushing through a reconstruction process often does the same thing – ripping out both good and bad in a passionate attempt to fix the problem. The key is to prune the branches according to the strength of the root. Patience is a virtue – since the root of “virtue” is “strength”, and patience requires strength.