The Plaster Mold: A Religious Fable

By David Ryser

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined.  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.  And no one after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, “The old is good enough.”   (Jesus of Nazareth, Luke 5:37-39 NASB)

There once was a man who, while shopping at an Arts & Crafts store, came across a plaster mold that was on sale at a deep discount.  He examined the mold closely, but could not determine what shape the mold might produce.  Being a curious sort, the man decided to purchase the mold intending to pour hot wax into it in order to see what the result might be after the wax had cooled.

So the man bought the mold and took it home.

Taking the mold into his workshop, the man proceeded to melt some cheap wax over a low flame.  Then he poured the melted wax into the mold and waited for it to cool.  When the wax had cooled and hardened, the man popped the wax out of the mold and onto his workbench.

He looked at the formed wax…and gasped!

Staring up at him from the table was the face of a gargoyle!  It was ugly!  Hideous!  Fiendish-looking!  The man was repulsed by the wax image, so he destroyed it.  Then he began to consider how he might change the figure produced by the mold into something beautiful.

And he had an idea.

“I know what’s wrong,” he thought.  “The problem is that I used an inferior wax the first time.”  So he resolved to use a higher quality of material on his next try.  He purchased some more expensive wax, melted it over a low flame, and poured it into the mold.  As the wax cooled, the man eagerly anticipated the beautiful image that the mold would produce as a result of this effort.

The wax cooled and hardened.

The man popped the wax out of the mold.  Looking up at him from the table was the face of a gargoyle!  A gargoyle as ugly as the first!

In fact, the faces were identical.

Determined to produce a thing of beauty from the mold, the man decided to switch the material he would pour into the mold on his third try.  So he procured some inexpensive plastic, melted it over a low flame, and poured it into the mold.  The plastic cooled and hardened.  The man popped the plastic out of the mold.

Another gargoyle!  Identical to the first two!

The man was disappointed, but undaunted.  He made several more attempts to produce something beautiful from the mold…using plastics of higher quality (and greater cost) each time…but the result was always the same.  In the end, an ugly gargoyle face stared up at him from the table.

Finally the man conceded defeat.

“The materials I have been using are not good enough, not pure enough, not valuable enough,” he reasoned.  “If I would use silver or gold, the mold would produce a thing of beauty.”

And then, because the man had neither silver nor gold, he hung his head…and he wept.

The moral of the story:  It doesn’t matter what move of God you put into the religious system…the power, the people, the hearts, the anointing, and the giftings…because as soon as the move cools and hardens, what is left will look exactly like the old religious system--the system is incapable of producing anything else.

Responses to this article are welcomed.  You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com