The Parable of the Green Striped Monster

Almost a year ago, an acquaintance—we'll call him Ian—shared with me that someone he knew was getting into a field that Ian thought he had no business in. When I asked Ian whether or not he planned on sharing this opinion with the person in question, he decided to tell me a story—a parable, if you will. I don't recall this story word-for-word, nor do I know if it was Ian's personal invention or something he'd picked up along the way. Either way, it goes something like this:

Years ago, there was a tribe of people who were completely isolated from the outside world. Their village was pristine and peaceful. Everyone was happy, and everyone got along. One day, a young boy was playing in a field and he saw a terrible monster! It had a curly tail, green skin, and vicious-looking stripes all along its body. It looked like nothing the boy had seen! He ran and told the elders about this beast, and they came, and they too were frightened by this strange creature. They decided to build a fence around this section of field, and to cut it off from all the village. And for a time, all was well again. But then another monster just like the first was found in another field. The elders did the same. As time went on, more and more of these monsters appeared, and the elders simply blocked off the sections of field in which the monsters lived. There was plenty of open field still, so there was no problem.

One day, a missionary came into the village. He looked around and saw strange renderings of a bulbous-bodied beast on fences surrounding fields and asked the villagers what this meant. They told him they were monster fields, and that no one dared go in to face the beasts. He asked the villagers to show him these creatures anyway, and with trepidation, they complied and opened the gates of one of the fields. They did, and he looked through the tall, unkempt grass that had grown up inside the fence since the villagers had closed it off. He searched through and finally saw...

...a watermelon.

“You fools!” he exclaimed, taking out a trail knife. He cut the watermelon from its vine, cut out a slice, and took a big bite.

The villagers who had come with him looked on with terror. The green monster had been nothing, but this thing was worse! It looked like a man, but it showed no fear! It had killed the monster without a second thought, and now, look how it smiled even as it ate the flesh of its prey! Surely this thing “missionary” was the worst of all monsters. So that night, while he slept, the elders cut off his head and placed it on a spike to remind the villagers of the only thing worse than the green monsters.

Some time later, another missionary came to the tribe, and seeing his predecessor's head impaled, he was quite wary. So too were the tribesmen and elders, remembering the monster who had come in the form of a man not long before. They were even more nervous when the missionary asked, as before, about the drawing, and then asked, as before, to see this monster. But when they took him to see it, unlike his predecessor, he peered through the grass and turned back saying, “You're right, this is a very dangerous beast, and we must work together to find a way to rid your village of this menace.”

So the new missionary began working with the people. He began to teach them about watermelons, and what they were like, and what they, in fact, were. And as the years progressed, the villagers understood, and began to take down the fences, and to cultivate watermelons. They even grieved having killed the first missionary, as he was clearly innocent of the charges they had lain at his door.

At this point, Ian explained that rather than the first missionary, who lost trust by his bull-headed approach, he would rather be the second missionary who, with compassion and tact, showed the tribe the error of their ways by working with them.

At the time, I was just getting to know Ian, and so I didn't respond critically to his story at all. I regret this for a number of reasons. First, as I'm sure you noticed, this was an awfully long story when he could have just said that he would only try to reveal to his friend this mistaken career choice rather than flatly tell him. But what I have an issue with is the story itself. Aside from glaring plot holes (how did watermelon's show up out of nowhere, why did the tribesmen kill the missionary—the greater monster—but not the watermelons, and how did the missionaries speak the native language early on when the tribe was completely isolated) the moral of the story is wrong. Ian asserts that the preferable missionary was the one who lied politely but smartly and saved his own skin, while the admittedly careless but truthful missionary takes on an inferior quality.

Admittedly, a third missionary would be best: one who truthfully says “this is not a danger to your tribe,” but does not so bluntly and daringly jump to eating what the villagers feared. I'd like to be that missionary. But out of the two Ian told me about—I'd rather be the missionary who didn't lie, even though it cost him his life. He wasn't brave, didn't think he was risking his life, but he nonetheless told the truth while his successor lied. And we don't know that the second missionary was acting out of any noble motivation when he lied: he had seen the first missionary's dismembered head and may have simply feared for his life to do anything other than agree with the tribe at first.

Ian, so far as I know, never told this friend of his that he was going into the wrong field. In actuality, I probably wouldn't either. But while Ian probably thinks it's some sort of virtue, I consider it a personal failure that I wouldn't have the courage to tell my friend the truth. Just like I never told him the truth that his story was a load of bull.