Yesterday I wrote about the importance of a Kingdom focus and quoted Pastor Brad Edwards of Lafayette, Colorado:

If secularism is the pursuit of the Kingdom without the King, Evangelicalism has come to worship the King without the Kingdom. –Brad Edwards, September 8, 2020

Later on in the article, he paints a provocative picture of a fruitless pear tree:

In an interview on the podcast I co-host, Everything Just Changed, Brandon Washington, the founding pastor of The Embassy Church in Denver, CO, tells of how his HOA recently hired a tree trimming service for their neighborhood, but they refused to prune one particular tree in his front yard because it was a pear tree and fruit trees weren’t included in their fees. Confused, Brandon explained to the arborist that this tree hasn’t borne any fruit in the 7 years he’d lived there, at all. Not a single pear...

Some fruit trees (e.g. pear) are both pleasing to the eye and easy to maintain, and would be ideal decorative species if not for the messy and inconvenient fruit that regularly falls to the ground, clutters neat suburban lawns and, if neglected, will rot where they lay. Thus, “domesticated” fruit trees had the fruit-bearing genes bred out of their DNA so they could be visually pleasing and conveniently maintained with little effort. Domesticated suburbanites wanted a fruit tree (King) without the fruit (Kingdom), and literally remade it in their own image. –Brad Edwards, September 8, 2020

I never heard of such a thing so I looked it up. Sure enough, although the terms are different, the concept is the same: there are ornamental pear trees that don’t bear fruit.

If you aren’t a fan of fruit or dislike the mess it can create, there are many showy non-fruiting tree specimens to choose from for your landscape. Amongst these, there are several cultivars of ornamental pear trees. – Amy Grant, Gardening Know-How: Learn about Ornamental Vs. Fruiting Pear Trees.

Nice to look at, but no fruit. Jesus was not a fan of fruit trees without fruit:

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” (Mark 11.12 – 14, ESV)

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15.16, ESV)