Withering on the Vine

 

Jesus said to his disciples:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."

This was last Sunday’s Gospel reading. 

It contradicts the Deist position, that scorns asking God for things in prayer. 

It contradicts the position that everyone is basically good, and everyone is equally a sinner: the “don’t be judgmental” pose. It instead makes a radical distinction, as the Gospels repeatedly do, between good people and bad people: the good bear much fruit, the bad are thrown into the fire.

The question: what is meant by “fruit”? 

If it means “good deeds,” the claim does not seem to work. Surely we all know of bad people, and of course atheists, who do some good things by an objective standard. Hitler was a vegetarian who was kind to his dog. He built some fine highways. The moral law, according to Christians, is binding on everyone, not only Christians.

And why would God “prune” those who do good deeds? “Every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.” It sounds as though he is punishing his followers for doing good.

Nor can “fruit” have the most obvious meaning, children. Everyone can, in principle, have children if they so desire.

I think the passage works only if by “fruit,” the gospel means what we call art. As any true artist knows, you can do nothing alone. The work comes to you from somewhere else. Steven King describes it as a process of excavation. Michelangelo said he freed a figure that was already in the rock. In other words, it is inspired. By whom? By God. By Jesus, the Logos.

Hence, “without me you can do nothing.”

It continues to come so long as you are connected to Jesus as the Logos, that is, so long as you are sincerely aligned with truth, good, and beauty. The last thing an artist can ever do is lie. So long as you are fully committed to this, if you pray for inspiration, it will come. 

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.”

If you are not committed to telling the truth, if you are trying to lie, promote what is sinful, or create something ugly, the inspiration will dry up, like a branch withers. 

“People will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.”

This is not a reference to hell as afterlife. God won’t do this, according to the passage. Their conscience won’t do it. That is what sends you to hell. People will do it. The audience, the readership, human posterity will do it. Their works will fail the test of time, and will not be preserved.

This all no doubt sounds wrong to many: since when were bohemians our standard for morality? Plato calls poets liars; fiction writers write fiction. Since when is this our standard for truth?

But that apparent dissonance is largely the fault of established religion, which is inevitably co-opted by pharisaism. Pharisees will hate the truth, and will malign and slander artists for it.

An art too is of course infested with poseurs. But that is the art that will not endure. 

Individual artists can also hold wrong beliefs, and be wrong in their behaviour. That does not change the equation, so long as they are sincerely seeking the true and the good. The thing is, they are sincerely seeking, not just accepting it from authority without consideration. They are communicating with the Logos, not the local magistrates.

And we cannot always believe what we hear about artists. They are obviously vulnerable to slander from the pharisees, who will see them as a threat, just as they saw Jesus and the prophets. One interesting datum: Jim Morrison, of the Doors, was legendary as a sexual predator. Yet not one paternity suit was ever filed against him. Despite his great wealth. How could that tally? Ray Manzarek, his bandmate and friend, insists he was entirely unlike the common portrayal.

And artists may even promote this reputation as outlaws, as it can gain attention for their art while protecting them from worse attacks. Morrison seemed to.

And if artists lead disordered lives, it may be as victims, not perpetrators. God does seem to “prune” artists. If this seems unjust, it also seems that suffering provokes art, just like pruning forces the tree to turn to fruit. “Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain.” “You have to have suffered to sing the blues.”

This may be the universal justification for the existence of suffering: it leads us to truth, good, and beauty.

If we are not speaking of hell, what does it mean to wither, die, and be thrown into the fire? That can indeed also be a reference to hell in the afterlife. But perhaps we can see it in this life as well. Those who turn away from truth seem to lose all inspiration, and then seem to lose their will. They become like automatons, NPCs, in the grips of some vice or addiction. They live their lives with blinkers on, to avoid truth, and the blinkers keep getting larger until all is darkness, and they live in a deluded world.

In the truest sense, at this point, they have lost their soul. All that is left is ash.

The moral of this story is that we are created to create: made from the clay by the divine potter, and inspired by his own image, to go forth and create as he did.

Everything else in life is zero sum.