Sour Grapes

Today I spent some time re-reading Aesop. Every time I pick him back up, I am reminded of how well the stories he recorded so completed defined humanity, and how quick we are to forget his wisdom. They’re the sorts of tales that just don’t stay with us too long because his insights are too penetratingly simple.

Today’s reading was old favorite I had forgotten, entitled The Fox and the Grapes:

One hot summer day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been hung over a lofty branch. “Just the things to quench my thirst,” he said. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed taking hold of the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”

This is one of many stories attributed to Aesop – a collection of old sayings and proverbs from a time that has long since passed us by. The proverb from which this story was driven (or perhaps the proverb that arose after) went something like this: “When the fox cannot reach the grapes, he insists they were not ripe.”

I can’t even begin to explain how often, as a pastor, I have witnessed this phenomenon. It plays out in our day to day lives in so many ways – from relationships, to employment, to politics, to the creative arts, and perhaps most interesting to me: in our spirituality.

I see two extremes of this phenomenon (modern psychology calls it “cognitive dissonance,” but I see no good reason to muddy up such a simple truth). The first extreme that I notice belongs to that of the true believer. Men and women so convinced that their destiny is set that they stop trying to accomplish anything.

These dear souls are the “God willed it” crew and for whatever reason have surrendered the best parts of themselves over to fate without putting up much of a fight. Worse, they not only stop trying, they conclude that what they were striving for was a “bad” thing.

• “My daughter is always in a hurry to get off the phone with me. I just shrug it off. Until God changes her heart, I believe a conversation with her is pointless.”
  
• “That job I lost last month sucked anyway. Until God gives me another one, I will stay home and wait on the right one.”
  
• “It just wasn’t God’s will for us to fall in love. Dating sucks anyway. Why would anyone bother?”
  

Now I’m not one to say exactly what God wants or doesn’t want for people in their employment or relationships with others. I think there are some basic principles to go by for sure, but no real specifics. Even so, I feel pretty confident that giving up on anything and using God as a personal scapegoat is probably, according to Aesop anyway, “sour grapes.”

There are exceptions of course. Some people work so hard to attain something they get psychotic. In relationships, we sometimes call them “stalkers.” In the work force, we call them over-compensators. People do get out of balance in the other direction, but I’ve found them to be far less frequent than those who just throw in the towel and say, “No big deal, the match was rigged anyway.”

It’s one thing to not be able to reach your goal. Heck, I’ve got a dozen that I likely won’t reach without miraculous intervention. The story of the Fox and the Grapes isn’t about things that are just simply out of our reach. It’s about drawing the wrong conclusions about the thing we were reaching for to begin with.

You see the Fox would rather draw conclusions about the grapes, than to seriously consider his own stature or limitations.

That brings me to the second extreme I encounter pretty regularly in my line of work. This type is the opposite of the true believer – it’s the perpetual skeptic.

The perpetual skeptic believes that just because he’s been unable to reach any spiritual fruits, they must not be real. It doesn’t matter that other people around him might be enjoying them. Actually the only time the beliefs of other people matter to him at all is when he sees an opportunity to point out how sour he believes the fruit to be.

He’s the embittered atheist who not only refuses to jump up for the fruit, but draws the wrong conclusions about a fruit he cannot reach. Unable to evaluate his own stature and limitations, he determines that the fitness of the fruit is solely dependent on where he’s standing. Concluding that the fruit is bad, he then makes an attempt to ruin the meal for everyone else.

Certainly there are exceptions here as well, just as above. Some unbeliever’s spend their entire lives without a shred of concern for what other’s might be believing or doing. They live a “no harm, no foul” life and leave the true believers to enjoy whatever it is they seem to be enjoying. There’s also the unbeliever who quite rightly challenges the believer in issues of injustice, prejudice, or hatred. For these, I doubt the parable applies at all.

But there are many, I meet them constantly, who are motivated in a much different manner. They’re not simply non-religious, they are spiritual antagonizers. One gets the feeling when conversing with them that they aren’t so much out to convince you that your grapes are sour; they’re embittered that you’re eating at all.

Aesop’s conclusion to his parable is very simple: “It is easy to despise what you cannot attain.”

I don’t think it even has to be that harshly worded. The Fox doesn’t despise the grapes. Instead, he has convinced himself that he never wanted them in the first place. It reminds me of the saying:

“The danger of starvation is not just trying to live without food. The real danger when you are starving comes after you have convinced yourself that you are no longer hungry.”

I think, spiritually speaking, that defines much of my generation.