The Parable of the Wrong Apples

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, how can we back the rebels in Syria when their motives are so unreliable?”

Josh spoke thus:

There was an apple tree that grew the wrong apples.

Nobody blamed the apple tree.  The apple tree was an apple tree.  The apple tree grew apples.  

“That’s what apple trees do, they grow apples,” the apple grower said about apple trees.  And growing apples was what apple trees did.

“If you go to the Caucasus region of Eurasia,” the apple grower said, “You can see where apples first grew.  Not these apples, of course.”

By “these apples,” the apple grower meant Golden Delicious apples.  Golden Delicious apples, the apple grower said, were first grown in West Virginia.

“The apple,” the apple grower said, “Is an immigrant.”

The Golden Delicious, strictly speaking, wasn’t an immigrant, having been first grown in West Virginia, but it came from immigrant stock.  All apples were from immigrant stock.

The farmer resisted making a joke about green cards for apples.

Although the apple tree grew the wrong apples, the apple grower had let the tree grow as it grew.  He called the apple tree his free range tree.

The apple grower knew that the apple tree could grow the right apples, if the apple grower wanted it to.  He was an apple grower.  Apple growers knew that grafting the correct apple branches onto an apple tree was how you got an apple tree to grow the correct apples.

The apple grower resisted making a joke about racial purity.

The apple grower just thought that among his Golden Delicious apple trees there should be a free range tree.

The apple grower’s sibling, an accountant, saw this as wasteful.  The apple grower’s other sibling, an accountant, saw this as messy.  The apple grower’s third sibling, an accountant, saw this as lessening the apple grower’s potential.

“There are no Golden Delicious apples grown in the Caucasus region of Eurasia,” the apple grower said. 

“Your problem is that you think of apples as art, not as a business,” the apple grower’s sibling said.

“Your problem is that you see apples as beautiful, not as profitable,” the apple grower’s second sibling said.

“Your problem is that to you the Caucasus region of Eurasia is one great free range tree,” the apple grower's third sibling said.

“And the free range tree is your favorite,” the apple grower’s three siblings said together.

“And that is why you will all invest in me,” the apple grower said.

The apple grower’s three siblings replied, “Precisely.”