"Fool! This very night your life will be required of you!" [View all]

[Brigid]

Earlier today I saw the most amazing short animated film. It was aimed at kids, but DUers would definitely appreciate it. It was a brilliant blend of two Bible stories: the parable of the rich fool and the incident in which a young man asks Jesus to demand that his brother split the inheritance (a vineyard) with him.

It went like this: A man owned a vineyard. He had a reputation for growing and selling the finest grapes. After he died, his two sons were to run the vineyard together. Things soon went downhill: the younger brother discovered that his older brother was mixing in bad grapes with the good ones and jacking up prices (he later switched to selling the grapes at half price to undercut his competitors and then buying up their vineyards). Then he destroyed his workers' homes to make room to build bigger barns. When his overseer objected, pointing out that winter was coming, he said, "They'll have plenty of time to make new blankets." He spent his time indulging himself, until one night he died (this is where the "Fool! This very night your life will be required of you!" comes in).

I was just stunned. The unscrupulous, greedy older brother was the best portrait of a one-percenter I ever saw. And do his business practices sound familiar? I wonder if even the filmmakers realized what they had created.