After several hours of enjoyable work in the garden my thoughts have turned to weeds. There seem to be a dozen for every beneficial plant. They havc been defined as "any plant that you do not want where it is." That is pretty broad. I would limit the definition to a plant that serves little or no useful purpose and robs vegetable and flower plants of growing space and nutrients. If you do not believe that just let your garden become infested with weeds and you will see that the plants you want will wither and die.
Jesus referred to "weeds" as "tares" and gave us a parable about them. He said that we have to let the tares grow for a little while or risk taking out the good plants with them. You can easily see that he is talking about mankind, explaining why the evil are allowed to co-exist until the time of judgment. This also leaves us with the challenge of discerning good from evil and choosing the right.
Some weeds have some "redeeming features" and we are tempted to save them. There is a bracken fern in our yard that has a nice yellow flower at the top. However, it is a weed and will soon choke out adjoining plants. Unfortuneately our Supreme Court has allowed some weeds to fester by using this same kind of thinking. Some years ago they paved the way for pornography by allowing books and pictures as being protected by the first amendment even though there were clearly pornographic materials in them. The phrase they came up with was "redeeming features." As long as the book has redeeming features we have to allow all of it even though some of it is pornographic. What nonsense. What fuzzy thinking. Yet this kind of thinking has led to our being inundated with highly objectionable materials.
Many try to justify their own misconduct by pointing to all of the good things they have done. In effect, they are saying, I am a good person even though I do evil things because I am doing good for mankind. Some of our politicians fall into this trap. They say: " I make good legislation and help the poor so the evils I do in my personal life should be allowed." One flagrant example of this is the conduct of Pres. Clinton in the White House. He sent a message to tens of thousands of young people that the perversions he was engaging in were all right. Undoubtedly at the judgment seat he will plead for mercy citing all of the good things he did as President. I do not pretend to judge but it seems people like this are those about whom Jesus said: and many shall say unto me in that day, Lord have we not done many wonderful works ? "and then I will profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me ye that work iniquity. (Matt 7: 21-23).
May we all have the judgment and wisdom to recognize the evil and root them out of our lives together with the things they teach and profess. Down with the weeds; long live the fruits, vegetables and flowers.
5 comments:
Thank you for this great post. My friends and I were talking about this just today on the way home from the zoo. It seems that people try to justify evil behavior just by saying everyone is doing it. That's like saying I should give up and let my ivy take over my garden, just because there is more of it than the other plants. But I know it will kill the other plants and do damage to my house. There has to be a standard, a true right and wrong. Otherwise, we will all be taken over by lawlessness and corruption.
What a timely blog! The other day I was talking to someone who was telling me about all the good things they were doing, saying that was essential to get to heaven. I asked about proper motive being necessary to have good deeds be counted for righeousness. It caused confusion in the person's mind, because they considered the act of doing good all that was necessary. Your blog puts the lie to the rationalization that is going on big time in our culture. Thank you for your good direction and insight.
Being able to judge the good from the evil is one of the great purposes of life. The Gods possess this ability and we are admonished to learn it for ourselves. There is a great power in this knowledge. We need this disernment more than ever in the world we live in.
I worry for the younger generation because so much evil is being accepted as good, how are they to judge? Thankfully the Light of Christ is given to every man and woman and that will never change.
This is probably my favorite of all your blogs. Bravo. It's all true. If we don't practice the power of discernment it will atrophy.
Grandpa- Aaron and I love this and agree! You should have seen the weeds in the yard of the house we are in now!! But they are gone. We just had to save the one that was actually a palm tree, though it looked like a weed.....appearances can be deceiving.... Anyway you say everything in such a way that really illustrates great and true principles. We miss reading your great words of wisdom!! Sharla and Aaron
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