Flipping the Script on the Parable of the Sower - With Greg Koukl
Jesus was always doing this.
He would take an image everyone knew, turn it slightly, and suddenly expose something nobody wanted to see.
A field.
A coin.
A father and two sons.
A Samaritan on the roadside.
A shepherd with a lost sheep.
He flipped the script on almost everything.
So after my conversation with Greg Koukl, I found myself thinking about one of Jesus’ most familiar parables in a slightly different way: the parable of the sower and the seed.
Usually, when we hear that parable, we focus on the ground. Hard ground. Rocky ground. Thorny ground. Good ground. We ask what kind of hearers people are, what kind of culture we are dealing with, what kind of receptivity exists in the audience.
That matters.
But what if, for a moment, we flipped the script?
What if we looked not at the ground, but at the seed being sown?
Because one of the unsettling implications of my conversation with Greg is this: if Christians really do possess a rich inheritance of truth, wisdom, reason, and grace, then why are we so often sowing things that look nothing like good seed?
Why are so many of our public words thin, frantic, angry, evasive, careless, or absent?
Greg’s diagnosis was simple and devastating: too much Christian engagement is shallow, shrill, or silent.
That triad has stayed with me because it suggests that part of our problem is not only bad soil. Part of our problem is sowing bad seed.
The shallow seed
Shallow seed is truth reduced to slogan.
It is not necessarily false. In fact, it is often partly true. That is what makes it so tempting. But it has been thinned out, stripped of roots, flattened into something easy to repeat and impossible to build a life on.
We see this constantly.
A hard cultural question is raised, and the response is a meme.
A moral crisis erupts, and the response is a catchphrase.
A young person asks a serious question about suffering, sexuality, freedom, truth, identity, or God, and the answer they get is a bumper sticker with Bible vocabulary.
Shallow seed sounds like this:
- “The Bible says it. That settles it.”
- “Just have faith.”
- “God’s in control.”
- “Those people just hate God.”
- “Everything happens for a reason.”
Again, none of these phrases is necessarily wholly wrong in every context. But often they are offered not as the beginning of a real conversation, but as a substitute for one.
They are scattered on the surface.
And surface-level seed does not nourish. It does not penetrate. It does not survive the first serious heat.
Greg made the point that Christians often have the best thinking available to them, but fail to use it. This is one way that failure shows up. We have inherited a vast treasury—scripture, theology, philosophy, moral reasoning, lived wisdom, historical memory—and then we toss out verbal confetti as if that were enough.
It is not enough.
If the question is deep, the seed cannot be shallow.
The shrill seed
Shrill seed is truth weaponized.
If shallow seed lacks substance, shrill seed often has some substance but no seasoning. It is truth hurled rather than offered. Accuracy without charity. Conviction without composure. The right point made in the wrong spirit until it becomes hard to distinguish from mere contempt.
Shrill seed sounds like this:
- “If you can’t see this, you’re blind.”
- “Only an idiot would believe that.”
- “The other side is evil.”
- “You people are destroying the country.”
- “Real Christians know better.”
It is the kind of speech that may energize one’s own tribe while hardening everyone else. It performs strength but does not cultivate understanding. It may win applause, but it rarely bears fruit.
And that is precisely the problem.
A great deal of modern discourse—religious, political, cultural—has become theater for one’s own side. The audience is not the person being addressed. The audience is the crowd behind the speaker.
So the point is no longer to illuminate. The point is to signal. To dominate. To humiliate. To prove oneself uncompromising.
But a farmer who throws seed like a weapon should not be surprised when little grows.
Greg’s whole ministry has been built around the opposite instinct: careful thought, gracious dialogue, and meaningful engagement. Not because truth is weak, but because truth does not need panic to sustain it.
Shrillness often reveals insecurity masquerading as courage.
And in the long run, it teaches younger Christians a terrible lesson: that to be faithful means to be abrasive, and that clarity requires cruelty.
It does not.
The silent seed
Then there is the seed never sown at all.
People stay silent because they love “peace”.
Because they fear social cost.
Because they feel outmatched.
Because they do not know how to begin.
Because the cultural atmosphere is hostile.
Because they have seen too many shallow or shrill performances and want no part of them.
All of that is understandable.
But silence has consequences too.
When Christians say nothing where something true, careful, and life-giving could have been said, the field does not remain empty. Other seed gets there first.
And there is no shortage of sowers now.
The algorithm sows.
The influencer sows.
The ideologue sows.
The grievance merchant sows.
The advertiser sows.
The entertainer sows.
The resentful and the seductive and the endlessly confident all keep sowing.
Silence is never neutral in such an environment.
If we do not plant truth, someone else will plant confusion.
Greg’s phrase “cosmic alienation” comes back here with force. He described what happened when the slogans of autonomous freedom finally failed him. If there is no God, no moral order, no transcendent ground, then one is left alone in the universe—unaccompanied, unheld, self-interpreting, and ultimately isolated.
That is where bad seed leads.
And silence allows that crop to grow unchecked.
What good seed looks like
If this is the warning, then what is the alternative?
What does good seed look like?
Jesus described good ground as the kind that receives, holds, and bears fruit. If we flip the script and look at the seed, then good seed must be the kind of speech that is capable of bearing that same fruit.
Good seed is truthful, but not thin.
Clear, but not cruel.
Courageous, but not theatrical.
Patient, but not evasive.
Rooted, not improvised.
Sowing good seed often starts with:
- “Tell me what you mean by that.”
- “Help me understand why that seems persuasive to you.”
- “May I offer a distinction that might matter here?”
- “That concern is real—but I don’t think your conclusion follows.”
- “If this were true, what would it imply?”
- “What do you think a human being is?”
- “What kind of freedom are we actually talking about?”
- “Can I show you why Christians have thought differently about this?”
- “That is a hard question. Let’s not answer it cheaply.”
That kind of speech does not feel as dramatic. It does not trend as easily. It does not produce instant tribal gratification.
But it does something better.
It invites thought.
It opens space.
It lowers the emotional temperature enough for reality to be considered again.
It treats the other person not as a target, but as a moral agent.
It gives truth a chance to be heard as truth.
This, it seems to me, is part of what Greg has spent his life trying to do. Not simply to accumulate answers, but to help Christians actually use what they have inherited.
That is a different skill.
To possess answers is one thing.
To deploy them well is another.
To know truth privately is one thing.
To sow it publicly in ways that bear fruit is another.
We may be sowing beneath our inheritance
One of the reasons it can seem like we are going backwards is that we are often sowing beneath the level of our inheritance.
The Christian tradition has thought deeply about freedom, truth, dignity, evil, justice, suffering, sexuality, power, conscience, and the good life. It has not answered every question in a simplistic way, but it has accumulated a profound moral and intellectual treasury.
Yet too often we act as though we inherited almost nothing.
Instead of arguments, we offer reactions.
Instead of wisdom, we offer vibes.
Instead of patient reasoning, we offer volume.
Instead of disciplined witness, we offer either performance or retreat.
Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants we hide them in shame.
Then we wonder why the field is filling with other growth.
This is not just a failure of messaging. It is a failure of stewardship.
If God has entrusted something true and life-giving to His people, then we are responsible not only for preserving it, but for planting it well.
That means understanding it deeply enough to speak it responsibly. It means refusing both laziness and panic. It means resisting the temptation to turn every public exchange into either a sermon grenade or a disappearing act.
Good seed requires cultivation before it is ever sown.
The field is not the only problem
One advantage of flipping the script this way is that it keeps us from blaming everything on the culture.
Yes, some ground is hard.
Yes, some environments are hostile.
Yes, some hearers are distracted, suspicious, or overgrown with thorns.
But if all we do is complain about the soil, we may never examine the quality of the seed in our own bag.
Maybe the culture is difficult.
But maybe our words are also underdeveloped.
Maybe our witness has become performative.
Maybe our confidence exceeds our preparation.
Maybe we have inherited riches and learned only how to spend them carelessly.
That possibility should humble us.
And humility would be no bad thing just now.
Because a humble Christian witness is not a weak one. It is often the only kind that can still bear fruit in an age saturated with noise.
The warning at the end of the field
The parable of the sower is not sentimental. It is agricultural, and agriculture is unforgiving. Seeds either live or they do not. Crops either come or they do not. Fruit either appears or it does not.
The same is true of our words.
If what we sow is shallow, we should not be surprised when there are no roots.
If what we sow is shrill, we should not be surprised when the hearer recoils.
If what we sow is silence, we should not be surprised when something else fills the ground.
And if we continue that way long enough, then Greg’s deeper warning comes into view.
Alienation is what happens when truth is absent, mishandled, or withheld. It is what happens when people are left to make meaning in the dark. It is what happens when freedom is severed from reality and dignity is detached from design.
It is, in a sense, hiding in the darkness.
Leaves wilted.
No fruit on the branch.
No rootedness by living water.
No harvest, only the appearance of life.
That image seems important to me now.
Because a civilization can look lush for a long time while slowly drying from within. It can have wealth, stimulation, movement, self-expression, and endless speech, yet still be withering morally and spiritually. The signs are not always dramatic at first. Often they look like confusion. Then fatigue. Then loneliness. Then the inability to say what a human being is, what freedom is for, or what truth demands.
At that point, the field has not merely been neglected. It has been badly sown.
A final word
So perhaps the question is not only:
If we really have the answers, why does it seem like we’re going backwards?
Perhaps the harder question is:
If we really have the answers, what kind of seed are we scattering?
That is a more uncomfortable question, because it puts responsibility back on us.
Not all of it.
Not every outcome.
Not every heart.
Not every field.
But some of it.
And maybe that is exactly where fruitful witness begins: not by obsessing over the hardness of the ground, but by asking whether what we are sowing is worthy of the inheritance we claim to carry.
Sneak Peek
Next on Created in the Image of God, the conversation continues in two directions that connect naturally with these questions of formation, rootedness, and fruit.
On Sunday, October 4 at 7:00 a.m. US Central time, I’ll be speaking with Andrew Arndt—pastor, author, and spiritual formation teacher—about the work of the soul and how prayer, contemplation, and the life of the spirit can shape us from the inside out. From the wisdom of the Christian contemplative tradition to cultivating a deeper, more rooted, and transformative life with God, it should be a rich conversation.
Then on Tuesday, October 6 at 8:00 p.m. Central time, I’ll be joined by Molly Engelhart—chef, farmer, entrepreneur, and regenerative agriculture advocate—to explore the connection between food, faith, and the healing of the land. From soil health and regenerative agriculture to stewardship, sustainability, and living in deeper alignment with the natural world, this promises to be timely, practical, and deeply connected to the question of what kind of fruit our lives are actually bearing.
