Parable Of The Vineyard

MELVIN M. NEWLAND, MINISTER

RIDGE CHAPEL, KANSAS, OK

(REVISED: 2022)

TEXT: Isaiah 5:1 7; 1 Peter 2:9; Matthew 6:10; 1 Corinthians 10:6

A. 18 years ago, down in TX, I spent 6 days on jury duty, most of that time as a juror in a child custody case. The father of a 12 year old boy was seeking primary custody of his son from the boy's mother.

It was quite an eye opening experience, & I want to tell you about it. The mother, 31 years old, had 5 children by 4 different men, & was never married to any of them. She & her children had moved often, living with different men each time.

At times the children had been parceled out to live with her mother who had had 3 children without benefit of marriage, or with her sister who had 2 children & had never been married, either.

This young mother had been arrested frequently for public intoxication, & had disappeared for days at a time, leaving her children behind.

She had often been fined for public intoxication & for traffic violations, but had never paid any of the fines. So there were outstanding arrest warrants with her name on them.

Even though some of these warrants were 5 years old, she had never been served, possibly because then the court would have been responsible for taking care of her 5 children. And the mother knew it.

Shortly after the boy in question was born, the boy's father had moved away & straightened out his life. He started attending church, began a business, developed a good reputation, & gotten married.

He acknowledged his responsibility for the boy & for years had regularly provided child support. As a result, for most of the boy's life, the father had been allowed custody of the boy each summer.

But when the boy was 10 years old the mother told the father that she would never let him see the boy again. So he began this child custody lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the mother & her 5 children & her sister with her 2 children were living together in welfare provided housing.

A few months before this trial a man had moved in with her, & a couple of weeks before this trial started they got married. Five days later, both of them were arrested for selling cocaine.

And it wasn't for the first time. A month before that he had been arrested on exactly the same charge. Now he was in jail again. But the authorities dismissed the charges against her so that she could take care of her children.

Of course, I'm skipping a lot of sordid details, but you've heard enough to get the picture. So when the case was turned over to the jury, I assumed that it would take just one vote to turn the boy over to his father. But I was wrong! The first vote was 9 to 3 for the mother!

As we discussed it, I was amazed that more than half of the jury saw nothing wrong with the mother's lifestyle, the large number of men she had been involved with (a lot more than just those who fathered children by her), & her many arrests for public intoxication.

“After all, I like to party on weekends, too!” said one juror. Another juror, a social worker, said, “There's nothing wrong with her. That's the way everybody lives today.”

Only one juror on her side expressed concern at all about the drug dealing & the items seized by the drug agents. Here they were, living on welfare, & in their welfare-provided housing they had 4 expensive TV's, 4 top of the line VCR's, 3 camcorders, numerous cameras, gold jewelry, lots of cash, & many other costly appliances, some of which were just stuck away in the closets.

One juror said, “After all, we don't know that these items were bought with drug money. Maybe she just saved money from her welfare checks. Anyway, there's no evidence the boy has been harmed. He makes average grades in school, so the way she lives hasn't affected him.”

Yet, his report cards showed that 7 of his last 10 teachers in elementary school marked him “unsatisfactory” in “Conduct” in his attitudes & actions at school.

The jury foreman was an Asst. Principal, & he & the social worker were the most vocal in saying that the mother's lifestyle had no effect on the boy. He also said the boy’s “unsatisfactory” marks in “Conduct” were probably the result of poor teachers rather than anything the boy did.

“Besides,” he said, “we had lots of drugs in our house when I was growing up, & I don't see anything wrong with that.”

Their primary argument, though, was that taking the boy away from his mother & turning him over to his father might harm the boy emotionally. They argued that they didn't want to witness the terrible scene when the verdict was read if we gave the child to the father.