The Tree
If you want to find out what is wrong with the world, want to find out that life has meaning and value, how to make the most of your life, you will be interested in the following letter.
I write this letter to you because I have discovered something
which I value highly and believe that our culture has made it
difficult to find that valuable discovery - which is not really
hidden at all, but nearly impossible to find. I really hope that
you, my friend, can find "The Tree".
THE TREE
An old Arab sheik named Vogen had a slave named Drog and Drog was not to Vogens liking. It wasn't that the slave had done anything so terribly wrong, just petty taking of others food, being cold to the sheik's honored guests, being hard to locate whenever an unpleasant task needed to be done, and such other things as would make a slaveholder less than confident in his slave.
One day Vogen threw a large party. Everyone for 50 miles around was invited and they all came - 37 people, for that was not a populous part of the desert. The party was a huge success and everyone had a great time until it came time for the dessert.
The dessert portions seemed smaller than planned, Drog was late in serving them, and Drog also seemed terribly uncomfortable. When one of Vogen's wives said she had seen Drog "stuffing his face" between courses of the meal Sheik Vogen's rage could not be stopped.
After his last guest left he ordered Drog to come before him and after hearing the "I'm sorry"s and "it will never happen again"s, all of which had been used on previous occasions, Vogen ordered slave Drog to prison in the nearby village (120 miles away) for as long as, according to the sheik, "It took for the flesh to rot off your accursed bones"! Away went poor Drog.
After a year had elapsed you, the reader, might think that poor slave Drog (who had not seen the light of day since his being imprisoned and indeed would never see "light of day" again for he was now blind) was long forgotten by the great sheik who of course had many slaves better than Drog and, by the way, whose house had been running amazingly smooth and efficient since Drog was sent away. The fact that his slaves had since seemed more timid and reserved did not even come to his attention. But, Vogen did think about Drog.
You see, Sheik Vogen, began to feel a little like he had put his brother in jail. Drog was an amicable fellow and his cheery disinterest had caused him to be more of a friend to Vogen than the other slaves in spite of Drog's weaknesses. If Vogen wanted a diversion in a game or with his falcons it was Drog who he would call on. All this made Drog a little more "family" than the other slaves. Vogen was beginning to feel, not so much guilty for throwing Drog in prison, as lonely.
During one long hot day (they are all long and hot on that desert) the Sheik began to ponder idly as to how he might return Drog to himself without damaging his reputation or his own pride. At that instant a slave approached him with an letter. Sheik Vogen took the letter and read the following:
Having never been a sheik before you , the reader, might have a misunderstanding as to the effect of this letter on Vogen. For, though it ripped at his very heart and caused him to walk alone in the desert in private tears for some time, he still could not order Drog's' release. There are some disadvantages of being a great sheik among sheiks.
In reading the letter many times as he walked the hot sand and longing for a solution to his problem his moist eyes paused on the word "escape" and suddenly Vogen yelled, "Thats it, he can escape"!! Vogen remembered that in the garden of the prison there was a great tree of a variety not found anywhere in the whole country but in that one garden and though the garden has a high wall around it the tree's branches go far out over freedom and can easily be climbed even by a blind man. Only prisoners with short prison times are allowed to work in the garden and the dread of capture and long imprisonment keeps those prisoners inside more than the wall and are not even guarded well.
Before daybreak the next morning the sheik's fastest camel was bearing a letter to the prison warden ordering him to allow Drog to begin working in the prison garden immediately and that he should only be confined at night. The camel also bore his most trusted servant who faithfully directed the camel and carried in his mind a message to be given to Drog in strictest confidence and privacy, which he was sure that he could do immediately following his presenting the letter to the warden. The message was short and easily remembered.
Drog, you will shortly be sent daily to the prison garden to
work.
In that garden is a tree.
Find that tree and escape is yours.
One week later on the servant's return Sheik Vogen embraced his faithful servant who reported that he had accomplished the mission as requested. Vogen knew that in weeks or months he would see Drog at his tent door and informed the rest of his house to keep an eye out for Servant Drog and that he was to be notified immediately on Drog's arrival and that on that day a feast would be held in Drog's honor.
Unfortunately, there is but one bit of information that Drog, never having been outside the country, did not have. He had never seen a tree before that was anything more than what we would call a bush. Remembering back when he could see (before he was blind) he envisioned leaves and stems, buds and branches. Every day he would wander from one fence wall to the other, cross at marked places to the opposite wall taking note in his mind everything in the garden, walking all day, everyday, searching for the tree that would somehow give him liberty so he could go home. The guards had long since gotten bored of his ramblings and teasing him. They didn't really even notice him wandering around anymore unless he bumped into them.
He would have given up long ago had it not been for the eternal longing in his heart to again be home but if you, today, go by that inhabited spot in the desert that holds his prison you will see, yet now, Drog studiously walking the prison yard looking for the saving tree. All he ever found besides the vegetables , people and equipment of the garden was a big rough cylindrical thing of whose meaning he did not understand and had been avoiding it ever since he early had bumped into "THE TREE" at the beginning of his search.
The End
"The Tree" of course is a parable and I hope it helps you to understand something quickly that has taken years for me to understand.
I believe that our culture once held strongly to the concept of truth in science, society and and all parts of life. In my studies of noted thinkers over the last one hundred years I read of warnings that we were departing from the standard of truth. From what I have found out I believe they were correct. Truth is sometimes bitter, sometimes difficult, sometimes doesn't confirm our dreams of what we want the world to be like. Truth is demanding, critical, doesn't allow us to do some things we want to.
Wouldn't it be nice to escape truth? Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where if you smacked your head on a low tree branch, it wouldn't hurt? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell an easy lie and nobody would be hurt or cheated? Wouldn't it be nice to not have demanding parents wanting us to grow up to be something? Wouldn't it be nice to explain creation and the meaning of man without talking about God? Well, that's what some late 19th century philosophers dreamed, too. Only they were dead serious and "Existentialism" was born.
"Truth is like a stream of water," they said,"one can never take his toe out of the stream and dip it back into the same water again in the same place". Truth became fluid. Truth became whatever we felt it should be. Truth died.
Now we spend billions of dollars searching the skies for any little evidence that there may be some beings or proteins out there that would give us meaning. We spend billions of dollars searching the billions of years into history trying to find the beginnings of the universe and the meaning for life. We have situational ethics, abortion, cultural studies, the search for universal respect, a desperate need to enforce tolerance and diversity, Doctor Kavorkian, political correctness, AIDS, taxes to build this whole house of cards, and still no meaning and little hope.
My heart aches for my neighbors and the people of the world. They search daily and have no meaning and there is no escape to reason, meaning, hope and joy because they keep bumping into the tree but have been taught to ignore it, "its just a bothersome thing in our superstitious past", and "we couldn't go back even if we wanted to."
The truth is if you ignore God, you ignore truth.
I ask that you please except the possibility of a God. If you find any evidence of God, follow it, test it, and if the idea seems solid philosophically stand on it.
Yes, life is not what I want it to be, but I believe there is a God who made this whole situation and if I can ever fit in, He would have the solutions I need to give life meaning. I feel enormously rich and valuable with the God I have found in the Bible. Life has meaning and value.
I heard that the famous Atheist Madelyne Murray O'Hair wrote in six different places in her diary, "Somebody, somewhere, love me!" She spent her whole life seeking love and meaning but it seems that she refused to acknowlege "The Tree" which is ,of course, God.
Notice in the following scripture passage that if you want to find the meaning in life you must first be willing to give up your life.
Mark 8:34-38
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and
said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me.
35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever
loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.
36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit
his soul?
37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and
sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he
comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
(NIV)
If there is no God then there is no such thing as wasting time for we are all an accident anyway and your search for a nonexistent God won't be any bigger waste of time than anything else you could do. If there is a God, however, anything you do is a waste of time until you discover the truth of Him.
Climb "the Tree". He is that big Thing you keep running into whenever it is quiet, you're alone and you feel uncomfortable. He is the big hard Thing you run into in the middle of some personal disaster. He is the solid strong Thing that is beside you when you stand atop a mountain and gaze at an amazing creation. He is the big strong thing that understands you because He made you like Himself, able to contemplate eternity. Come climb "the Tree" and see what it is like out here. You will be criticized, ostracised, and ignored but it's worth it. I have been both inside and outside the wall and I much prefer the freedom of the outside. Come, see what it's like. Climb "The Tree!"
c1999
Don Gander