Parable of the Unwise Haberdasher

It was the day before the Sabbath and Jesus was in Jerusalem, where he had been attracting large gatherings. And someone in the crowd asked of him, ‘good teacher, tell us a parable that will help strengthen our faith and teach us to live a morally upstanding life.’

And Jesus replied, ‘my friends, I will do so. I will tell you the Parable of the Unwise Haberdasher.’ And Jesus comported himself with care and began to tell the parable.

A haberdasher has a stroke of good fortune and finds three sheets of fine material.

The first he sells to a young man who wishes to make a smashing pair of cargo shorts.

The second piece he sells to a rich heiress who wants to make a jacket for her ridiculously small dog.

The third piece he keeps for himself.

After laying it flat on a work table in his establishment and smoothing out the creases with a hot iron, he climbs upon the table, lifts up his robes and takes an almighty dump directly onto the material. Having done this, he carefully pulls the corners together to form a kind of sling, and then starts dancing and swinging the material around his head whilst reciting a strange incantation about brown cherubs.

He does this for about two hours.

But he’s so immersed in what he’s doing (he’s ‘in the zone’, as it were), he accidentally lets go of one of the corners and the contents of the makeshift sling go flying everywhere and make an awful, awful mess.

He looks in dismay at what he’s done and thinks, ‘why have I done this? The other two bits of cloth I sold and made a tidy profit, but this cloth I defecated on and waved in the air like I just didn’t care. Now I have a ruined cloth and my own shit to clear up. Dear God, I have been most foolish in what I have done and I repent of my actions!’’

God then spoke to him from his throne in heaven and said ‘My forgiveness is always available for those who repent. You are thus forgiven, my son.’

Having finished the parable, Jesus looked at the crowd. ‘This man had lost sight of what he was good at: selling cloth to his consumers and making a tidy profit. He’d forgotten this simple fact and instead did something weird with his poo. That was a mistake. But in doing what he did, he had obtained something special. He had obtained full forgiveness from God. That prize is available for everyone gathered here today. For those who have ears, let them hear.’

On hearing the parable and absorbing its contents, one group present said that if this one particular man deposited his faecal matter on expensive material, and then worsening the situation by accidentally scattering said faecal matter during some bizarre dance ritual, but in doing so attained forgiveness from the Lord, then all people must do exactly the same thing if they are to attain forgiveness as well.

But another group thought it important not to take everything in the parable literally. It simply warned against recklessly attempting something outside one’s area of expertise that would likely result in sinning. This is what the parable meant. What it did not mean was to go out and make some kind of workplace dirty protest in an effort to garner God’s forgiveness. That was just stupid.

In the end, the two groups could not agree on which interpretation was correct, so decided to have a war about it.

Thousands would die in a bloodbath over one man and his turds.