“Parker’s Back”

From an exposition of Matthew 7:1-6

Flannery O’Connor was my favorite fiction writer partly because she was a Southerner, from Georgia, and wrote about Southern culture and religion; she was also religious, a traditional Catholic and a critic of modernity. She wrote a wonderful short story entitled “Parker’s Back” that begins:

Parker’s wife was sitting on the front porch floor, snapping beans. Parker was sitting on the step, some distance away, watching her sullenly. She was plain, plain. The skin on her face was thin and drawn as tight as the skin on an onion and her eyes were gray and sharp like the points of two ice picks. Parker understood why he had married her – he couldn’t have got her any other way – but he couldn’t understand why he stayed with her now. She was pregnant and pregnant women were not his favorite kind. Nevertheless, he stayed as if she had him conjured. He was puzzled and ashamed of himself.

For the full exposition of Matthew 7:1-6, click on the YouTube link at the bottom.

Parker’s wife, Sarah Ruth, was the daughter of “a straight gospel preacher,” but from a family so strict they believed even churches were idolatrous. So, Parker and Sarah Ruth were married by a lady clerk at the county office who led the vows “from behind the iron-grill of a stand-up desk and when she finished, she said with a flourish, “Three dollars and fifty cents and till death do you part!” and yanked some forms out of a machine.” Sarah Ruth is always “sniffing up sin” since “she did not smoke or dip, drink whiskey, use bad language or paint her face.” All Parker heard at home was Sarah Ruth reminding him of what the judgment seat of God would be like for him if he didn’t change his ways. He tried to subdue her by suggesting his woman boss was after him, telling Sarah Ruth that his woman boss had once told him, “I hired you for your brains.” Leaving out the part she added on the end, “So, why don’t you use them!”. That wasn’t working on Sarah Ruth anyway. Every time she would just respond that he was tempting sin and he would have to answer at the judgment seat of God. Miserable with her, we wonder why he married her, until we learn that Parker’s mother, in an attempt to save him from a life of increasing drinking, carousing, and fighting, tried to drag him off to a revival meeting so he’d get saved. He doesn’t think he needs saving from anything so he lied about his age to get in the Navy and away from his mother. In the Navy he adds tattoo after tattoo. He gets out, goes back to the country, and meets Sarah Ruth. From the beginning she condemned his many tattoos, which she criticized for being “vanity of vanities.” He eventually gets it in his head, out of desperation, to get a tattoo that he is convinced she will like – an image of God, of Jesus. Looking at the samples the tattoo artists has, Parker chooses a stern, other-worldly looking Christ, in Byzantine iconic style, with eerie, all-seeing eyes, to cover his entire back. The tattoo is so elaborate it takes two days to put on and once it’s done, he finally makes his way back home, convinced that finally Sarah Ruth will love it – the image of Christ – and so love him.

For the full exposition of Matthew 7:1-6, click on the YouTube link at the bottom.

But when he shows her the tattoo, she at first says, “It ain’t nobody I know.” Then he explains, it’s Christ, it’s God. To that, Sarah Ruth screamed, “Idolatry! Enflaming yourself with idols under every green tree! I can put up with lies and vanity but I don’t want no idolator in this house!” She grabbed a broom and began to thrash him across the shoulders with it. He being too stunned to resist, just took it until she had nearly knocked him senseless, beating the tattoo, causing welts to form on the face of the tattooed Christ. The story ends, “She stamped the broom two or three times on the floor and went to the window and shook it out to get the taint of him off it. Still gripping it, she looked toward the pecan tree and her eyes hardened still more. There he was . . . leaning against the tree, crying like a baby.”

Sarah Ruth had gotten the idea that to be a Christian was to be the judge and so, at the end, she beats Christ, the image on her husband’s back not intended to be an idol but a gift to her of something that he thought – in his ignorance – she would love. But she doesn’t know Christ or love and so she beats him.

A lot of people have gotten the idea that to be a Christian is to sniff up sin like a hound dog sniffs a scent; track it down; intent on finding where the sin is and digging it out. Even if they can’t get others to live right before God, they’ll so frighten and intimidate them, that they’ll get them to at least look right, not realizing, that’s not really their job. God does not call us to be judges. He can do that well enough without our help.

Here, in this passage, we see that Jesus tells us to leave God’s job up to God. Let God be God. Often, those who like to talk the most about the final judgment (like Sarah Ruth) are those who forget who the final Judge is! It’s not that judgment is wrong. It’s just not our job. Our job is to trust God.

For the full exposition of Matthew 7:1-6, click on the YouTube link at the bottom.

We are not to judge because judging usurps God’s place. When we try to take God’s place, He will judge us for that. “with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged,” by God (Mt 7:2). “With the measure you use, [God] will . . . measure to you.” If we try to take God’s place by judging, God will judge us for that. If we went around, like Sarah Ruth, sniffing out sin from everyone, then God will sniff out sin in us. Only, He’ll do it perfectly.

Sarah Ruth was so judgmental she even separated herself from all the churches, seeing them all as idolatrous. She had no Christian community. Her attitude had obliterated it. There are lots of Sarah Ruths out here. It gives some people a thrill to be able to sit back and declare that this person or that church or denomination is sinful and apostate and we need to separate from it. And sometimes that is necessary. But be careful that you don’t become a speck inspector with a log in your eye: totally unqualified to practice discernment.

Just this past summer a so-called “discernment” book – Shepherds for Sale – reached the number 12 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. It criticized the teachings of several prominent evangelical teachers, claiming that they had sold out to leftist politics. It was speck inspecting. Sarah Ruth would have loved it. But I know one of the people the author was finding specks in and I knew she (the author) was wrong. Several other people listed long examples of factual errors she made. She, like Sarah Ruth, had a log in her eye and so wasn’t able to be a good speck inspector, even though her major point – that some Christian leaders give into pressure to support bad causes – is true. She should get the same judgment she meted out to others, which was harsh.

• I wrote about that book and its supporters here: “Shepherds for Sale and the evangelical civil war.”

For the full exposition of Matthew 7:1-6, click on the YouTube link at the bottom.

Judgmentalism is poison to the church because it elevates ourselves, as individuals, over everyone else, like Sarah Ruth with her ice pick eyes, peering out with eyes hardened all the more to the people she just beat. It plays into our fatal tendency to exaggerate the faults of others, and minimize the gravity of our own. It cuts us off from our brothers and sisters in Christ, obliterating community.

Only God is the judge. He can take a dog or pig and declare him or her to be clean. He can save a Parker, or even a Sarah Ruth. Let’s let Him do that. Only God is the judge. And He has, already, judged all the sins of His people in Christ on the cross. We can try to play God and pretend we haven’t sinned so much; we can try to acquit ourselves. But that is hopeless. Our only hope is that the Father in His mercy judge Christ for our sins, and judge us as innocent as Christ. He will do that if you trust Him, if you let God be God.

For the full exposition of Matthew 7:1-6, listen:

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church is Danville’s & Caswell Count’s Reformed Church.