What is the Gospel anyway?

Sholem aleycham and vee geyts!

I've been doing some thinking this week about the parable that the Lord tells in Matthew 13 about the guy who finds the treasure in the field, sells everything he owns, and buys the whole field to get the treasure. If you want to read it it's verse 44, but I warn you, there's not much more to it than I just said.

I never liked this parable much. Why would the guy buy the whole field if all he wanted was the pearl? I always figured either the past owner of the field didn't know the pearl was there, so the guy bought the whole field so he could get the pearl cheap (so Jesus was teaching us to scam people), or that the past owner did know about it, and the guy just went nuts and bought everything for fun (and the Lord was teaching us to waste our money on stuff we don't want or need). Neither of these lessons ever sat well with me.

So, this week I was thinking about it and I think I've figured out what it really means, at least to me. Something that rubs some people the wrong way is that there's too much periphery in the church. Boy Scouts and visiting teaching and service projects and seminary and Relief Society get together to knit night and on and on. That stuff is not what saves us, so why should we have to do it? The answer is right there in verse 44. In order to get the pearl (which Christ tells us is a symbol of the Kingdom of Heaven), we have to take all the things that go with it. The guy couldn't just buy the pearl, he had to get the whole deal. Field and all. So, the Gospel itself is the things that will actually get us to Heaven (the Atonement and not much else), but if we're in for a dime we're in for a dollar.

Well, that's my whole spiel. Time for me to get to my Sunday full of meetings. I just have to remember...not to complain...because it's all important...

Herschel