Weeding

DAILY BYTE

The parable in Matthew 13 calls us this week not to judge who is evil, target them, and root them out, but it is for the good to live with the bad. This is a much more difficult challenge than trying to pinpoint evil and rid the world of it. The master says, if you weeded out the weeds from the wheat, you would uproot the wheat along with it. Somehow the good and the bad live entwined with one another, and that’s how it will stay, as it grows – until – it’s harvest time.

And there is a harvest time. There is a time when someone other than us – the story calls them reapers – experts purely at gathering in grain – decide what is wheat and what is weed. But, this is not ours to judge. That job is thankfully given to someone else. Because as this parable makes clear, if it were our job to judge weed from wheat, we would inevitably fail. Our eyesight is not that good. Our judgment is not so wise.

On Monday, I told you about a monster of a man. Today, hear another story about a man. His father disappeared six months before he was born in a small town to a family of shepherds. His brother died of cancer, and as a baby, he was shipped off to live with extended family until his mother remarried. His new stepfather abused him until he fled to live with his uncle at the age of 10, having been given no proper schooling. Under his uncle’s wing, he became involved in the cause his uncle believed in. He taught secondary school, married, and had five children but had to flee his country. After returning to his homeland and getting further involved in politics, his efforts in creating a modernized public health system were awarded by the United Nations. He also succeeded in diversifying the economy and mechanizing agriculture.

If you were told to choose between this man and the man we heard about at the beginning of the week – if one could be saved and the other one burned, which one would you save? This one, right? He has a family, has suffered and grieved deaths of loved ones. He experienced abuse, and yet he persevered to go on, working positively to help others build a nation. You’d choose him over the murderer and warmonger, right?

There’s only one problem. They are the same person. Both are Saddam Hussein. Both the terrorizing dictator who became for the world the embodiment of evil and also the abused child. The murderer and warmonger and the cultivator of Iraqi health and agriculture. You may be thinking – those good things about him can’t possibly be true – where do you have to scrounge to dig up such nonsense? But, sadly, it was easy. I am in no way condoning the ways he acted to destroy and harm many people. I had simply never looked for anything good in him before.

One who can seem so clearly evil – so definitely a weed that needs to be exterminated – upon hearing more of his story, can become much more complex and more difficult to identify. Perhaps there was wheat growing within him, as well.

Of course, this complexity is not confined to major world figures. The mix of weeds and wheat is alive in each one of us, if we can only confront it.

And so, this parable calls us to realize not only that we should not judge because that task is comfortingly left to another - but that we cannot - because in order to judge righteously, you must know the ins and outs of each molecule, every fiber, every bend from the wind that is found both in plants and in fellow human beings, and while we can try to learn one another’s stories (and we are called to try), we do not have eyes to see everything.

The weed that is described in this parable is a specific weed that looks virtually identical to wheat, especially when the plant is young. So, while it is risky to let the weeds grow because you don’t know how they will eventually affect the crop, it is also dangerous to try to choose between them because inevitably, you would weed out some of the wheat, as well.

Where do you see both weeds and wheat within yourself? How is God cultivating the good within you? How might you begin to look for the good in places and people that at first glance seem so clearly evil?

FOCUS READING

Matthew 13:28b-30a (NRSV)

The slaves said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest...