[OBW]

Despite my general withdrawal from these sites, I have not stopped reading them altogether. And as this post seems to misunderstand what I said, I will try to restate it.

I did not say that leaven cannot be something evil. I said that in this case, the parable defines the Kingdom of God as being the leaven that is put into something else — the dough. In this particular use, leaven = Kingdom of God.

And while you are correct that within the outward expression of the Kingdom of God we may find things that are not ultimately a true part of that kingdom, those things are not the leaven. The Kingdom of God is. And if the Kingdom of God is the leaven, then the leaven referred to here is not temporary. It is permanent. Yes, those other parables may refer to things that get swept along with the Kingdom for a while. But those are not this parable. In this case, the leaven is the kingdom, therefore the leaven is not something bad.

What I wrote does not deny that there is reasonable consideration that the reference to "all kinds of fish" in this other parable could refer to things caught, at least for a time, that are not kept. The problem with taking that analogy to conclusions about what is kept or thrown back or whatever, is that the parable does not actually discuss that, therefore no basis to conclude what that part of a more robust metaphor of catching all kinds of fish could mean. Maybe there is a different metaphor to hint at the handling of things "captured" that are not really intended (if that is a fair word to use). This one did not go there.

I think that the problem with this parable of the big catch of fish is that we tend to read more into it than was provided. We take the fact of a net coming out of the water with edible fish, inedible fish, seaweed, old boots, etc., and presume that it is commenting on what to do with the unwanted stuff. But all it does is say that there is a net that is trying to catch fish and that you will find all kinds. It doesn't even mention whether the various kinds are a collection of good and bad fish, or just that there is diversity in the fish.

And so, in response to your last paragraph (an inadvertent strawman), I did not dispute Paul's use of leaven in a negative sense. I simply pointed to the tendency to presume that because he did so that all references to leaven must be negative. And I challenge you to conclude how this parable can be using leaven in a negative sense other than to misread it again as Lee did and conclude that the Kingdom is the dough and the leaven is something bad mixed into it. That is a linguistic impossibility. The parable does not say that.