Public invitation to the wedding feast Matt 22:1-14

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The passage where the groom goes out and invites all the random people in his village implies that it is a good village with good people. Psalm 101 states the norm of life for rulers, which involves purging evil from the realm on a daily basis, so in God’s village, there aren’t evil people there. Even when an evil person tries to sneak in because they think everyone is welcome, they get booted out because they don’t have any good in their life to show for themselves.

The “garment” is a metaphor. God sees your soul and knows whether you are good or evil without needing any sign, proof, or whatever. Goodness shines out of a person’s heart when they live a good life. It also something that you have to make an effort to do. You can’t do nothing and still cultivate good, ie. the parable of the three servants given talents, the last one burying it, doing nothing, and getting rejected for doing nothing.

Also consider the part where he says “I was hungry, but you didn’t feed me, so I don’t know you.” or something like that.

The wedding party is a metaphor too for a life filled with joy, love, and happiness where everything is the best that it can be.

(The part where it says “good and bad alike” or something similar depending on your version, is about people who are good people at heart, but probably a little fucked up according to whatever the cultural/societal norms are. Maybe drug users/dealers, maybe local gangsters, maybe disliked people who are rude but honest, maybe prostitutes, maybe people with opposing religious beliefs than the those of the village. These people aren’t condemned to the darkness just because they don’t follow normal social rules and keep to their own instead, so you can even stretch that meaning to apply to the fact that other religions than Christianity aren’t condemned in general. That is actually current Christian doctrine (not condemning other religions like Hinduism and Islam), but maybe not widely known because of the cultural history of Christianity which taught that there was no salvation but Christ for quite some time.)