The Trouble with Red Hats

stories, parables & verse

In a village not too far away, the people are all divided. The community that once thrived is now broken, divided and poor, because the people no longer work together.

All the men, and women, and even the little children in this village wear hats. The hats are made of hide and fur, and so all the hats are brown. Or at least they used to be.

One day a few years ago, a man had traveled away from the village and had entered a city where red dye was very popular and available everywhere. A shopkeeper there had offered to dye the man's hat bright red for a certain price. It sounded like a lot of money to the man, but the desire to have a bright red hat soon overtook him, and he could not refuse. He paid the price and in a few days he had his new red hat.

When he returned home, all the people were amazed and mostly delighted to see the red hat. Everyone complimented him on it. People would stop him on the street, or come over to his house, and ask to touch and handle the hat. They all agreed that it was much softer and warmer now that it was red.

The village people were so busy talking about the red hat that the water seemed to boil faster, the bread seemed to rise faster, and even the work went quickly. Life suddenly seemed easier and better. Soon it was decided that the goats were giving more milk. And were the chickens not laying more eggs?

Several of the more influential women declared a holiday, to celebrate the arrival of the red hat. The man had become a village hero. And many even wanted to make him the chief man in the village. No one could stop talking about how the red hat had changed everything for the better in the village.

But not everyone was pleased at all the attention the man with the red hat was getting. A couple of the wives began to complain to their husbands, "Oh, if only you had brought home a red hat."

Others said, "I think that hat is ugly. Blue is a much nicer color for a hat." And then one man, the oldest man in the village, had an old hog that died. It was, after all, very old. But the man blamed the red hat.

In the months that followed, several others began to come home with red hats. And then a few men who traveled to other cities began wearing blue hats. And some of the women also began wearing hats of different colors. All of this caused more celebrity at first, but then things began to slide back to normal. It was no longer an amazing thing for people to wear hats that had been dyed.

So the water took longer to boil again, since no one was talking as much. And the chickens and goats seemed ordinary again. Hardly anyone felt like keeping the holiday that had been established for the first red hat.

And in time, some of the people (who never traveled to cities where dye was common) began to complain about all the artificial colors that villagers were wearing. It all seemed indecent to them.

"Whoever saw a red rabbit?" said one man.

"Or when has there ever been a blue deer or elk?" said another.

“Brown was good enough for my grandfather, and it’s good enough for me,” said the loudest of them all.

The group of Uncolored Hat Wearers began to get together just to talk about how unnatural and harmful all those colors were. And the more they reasoned among themselves, the more they were convinced that it was not only unnatural, but it was very and deeply wrong to wear a hat that had been dyed. And so they began to talk more and more to the others in the village.

Several young men of the village were converted over to this way of thinking. They took their red and blue and yellow hats and burned them in a big public fire. And then some of the more influential women also went back to wearing natural browns and grays, as before.

In fact, the grayer the hat, the better these new converts felt about themselves. And so, within the group of "Natural Colors Only" there grew up a smaller, more elite group of "Gray Is Better Than Brown, Because It's Plain And Unpretentious." Gray just seemed to be more purely natural, more honest.

"After all," one of them exclaimed, "Why should any man or woman want to stand out from the others, or to draw attention to themselves?"

At first these changes went along without much real bother to anyone. People just wore whatever they wanted. But then the "Gray Is Better Than Brown, Because It's Plain And Unpretentious" group became more and more vocal, and more insistent. They stopped doing business with the people who wore hats of various unnatural colors. And they even stopped talking with them. Whole families were soon being divided over the issue of hat color.

When any stranger came to town they were nearly pulled apart by the warring groups, as each group tried to persuade the newcomer of their own point of view. And all groups would often claim new-born babies until the child had reached an age of decision. It was heartbreaking for many of the children to have to choose sides and lose good friends, or lose the closeness of family.

Now, I know what you're thinking. What foolish people! Why would they sacrifice their own love and their peace of mind over such silly things as the color of a hat?

Sad, isn't it? So why do we do such things?

Only in Jesus Christ, and in fellowship with Him do we begin to discover the life and light and love of God -- a love that reaches out to all human beings everywhere. In Jesus we all become one family, whoever trusts in Him. God has broken down the walls that divide, making all who know Him into one group.

So then what God has made into one, let no man try to divide up again.

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