Free In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike

own. Israel’s own transgressions grieved Him and incited Him to a terrible wrath. Ours is no aloof Lord—no Buddha beyond it all or Zeus making light of mortal travail. Among the world religions Christianity is unique in presenting a suffering God, a God who took human suffering upon Himself and in His agony gave birth to mankind’s salvation. He defeated death, which means He had to lay His hands upon death, as the Old Testament Jehovah laid handsupon Jacob and wrestled with him all the night long. We do not worship a God immensely above us, out of human reach, but One Who does not disdain to touch us, to lay even rough hands upon us, and in that brief Lifetime recounted in the New Testament to descend to our condition, and to speak to men in metaphors drawn from their daily lives.
    “For what does a farmer
do
with tares, with weeds? He
burns
them, to keep his fields tidy and to destroy those weed seeds, which otherwise would find fertile soil and bring forth in the next season a crop of weeds greater than ever. The economy of agriculture demands selection, demands winnowing. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, John the Baptist announces to Judea’s generation of vipers, ‘Every tree which bringest not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’ One greater than he, John the Baptist announces, will come and ‘baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’
    “Pity the chaff, will say some to whom the mercies and the justice of Christ are obscure. Pity the weeds, and the fruitless fig tree. But”—Clarence paused, gazing about, his pale-blue eyes distended, his mouth ajar beneath the drooping sandy mustache—“I suggest to you that men are not plants, they have minds and souls and free wills, they are responsible for their deeds and for the eternal consequences of these deeds. They have
made
themselves chaff, if they are so judged when the great farmer comes with his winnowing fan. The tree has made itself fruitless, the weeds—” His voice snapped on the word; he lost his place, his thought, and looked down into his scribbled text, written in a desperate rush of inspiration last night after dinner, and still could not find it. He looked up,and felt how his pause had drawn the congregation’s attention tighter to him, like a strangling embrace. “The weeds,” he stated levelly, “have grown where they were not wanted, and have elected themselves to be uprooted and cast away.”
    He changed tone, into a matter-of-fact pitch. “Actually, the number of times that Jesus invokes Hell are not many. The most celebrated verses, and the most severe, come in the fifth chapter, and are echoed with variation in the eighteenth chapter and also in Mark. Our Savior is portrayed as preaching:
    “ ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
    “ ‘But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
    “ ‘And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell.
    “ ‘And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell.’ ”
    The words seemed to parch Clarence’s throat, which had become fearsomely dry; not one but several audible, partial throat clearings were necessary before he could proceed to his consoling mitigations: “The word translated here as ‘Hell’ was ‘Gehenna’ in Greek, based upon the Hebrew ‘gehinnom,’ a name derived from the valley of Hinnom, a rubbish dump near Jerusalem. Hell is therefore a trash heap, and the fires of Hell,