I would strongly agree that human beings have the capacity for profound good and profound evil. We don't always want to acknowledge this, perhaps understandably because it's an unsettling and frightening prospect.
Psychologists, philosophers, and behavioural scientists often refer to our capacity for destruction as our shadow self. I think that's the term they use in Jungian psychology, our shadow self. And they tell us we should not attempt to deny its existence.
Accepting our darker side allows us in theory to choose the good. But of course, confronting this negative side is not easy. Our shadow side often has the upper hand in subtle ways of which we are sometimes barely aware. Evil, as we well know, often masquerades as good. Good intentions often turn out to be driven by evil desires.
And we continually do we not come across individuals who are not well let me start again confronting this negative side isn't easy I say and we find individuals in all aspects of our life who are not really evil in the draconian sense of that But for all kinds of psychological reasons, they pretend to be good in order to mask malicious intentions.
They often rely on using excessive flattery or they are guilt tripping and continually playing the victim or which could simply be a facade to gain attention and trust. But sometimes when we are confronted with the actions of others, our judgements of them can leave a lot to be desired. Yes, we misjudge people. We're often too quick to condemn.
We misunderstand people's actions and motives. What we perceive as wrong can turn out to be well-intentioned and perhaps even beneficial. And we sometimes end up blaming the wrong people or we unintentionally take down the good people with the bad. So in any community or group of people, it's far from easy to know individually where their hearts are really aligned.
It's sometime difficult to tell where the good or bad resides. And it also begs the question which is quite an uncomfortable question. Do we ever truly know anyone? Do we ever truly know what is really in their heart? Frankly, human nature is a mess. But I think we already know that.
You probably can see where this is going. I'm making the connection here with the gospel reading which offers a very insightful text on human relationships with Jesus relating the parable of the wheat and the weeds or wheat and tears as traditionally known.
Now it ends with judgement. We know that in harsh words. But I want to take a more this worldly or humane view of what I think is going on under some parts of the text. It has some profound things to say about the complexity of human nature, but it also discourages us or discourages the urge to prematurely judge people.
And as with so many of Jesus' parables, he uses agricultural analogies which of course his audience would have clearly understood. So it's important to know the historical context here.
In the ancient world, the weeds mentioned in the text were probably, in fact, some would say almost certainly a plant called Darnel which is found in the Mediterranean. It's a highly toxic rye grass and in the early stages of its growth it looks absolutely identical to wheat.
You can't tell the difference and as it grows its roots start to intertwine with the crop. So if you stood in a field of wheat and darn elk in the first few weeks of growth, you would not be able to tell them apart.
So if you really wanted to upset your enemies, you could by night, as implied in the parable, scatter Darnel seed with their newly sewn wheat and commit a monumental act of agricultural sabotage.
And Jesus seems to be using this parable to highlight the fact that there is an inextricable mix of goodness and brokenness within society and within ourselves. It seems to me Jesus being compassionate and realistic about life and especially and coexistence even though his last words seem quite harsh.
It does not actually condemn the weeds as irredeemable sinners, but reminds us that good and bad are often tangled together within every community and person. Community is complicated, sometimes challenging, but he acknowledges that this is the hard reality of life. Of course, we are not all weeds, but we are not all wheat either. And I suppose what Jesus is doing, the question he's really pointing forward is, well, what are we going to do about it?
We have to learn to accept and forgive this rag of reality in ourselves and in everybody else. And this requires love, requires patience, humility, and dialogue. If we don't respond in this way, we create a potentially dangerous situation. People become very angry. Our sabotaged world, which of course is the field in the parable, is filled with a lot of angry people, not least because they cannot confront or accept or have accepted their own weeds.
I know someone who for fourteen months prayed to God for what they thought was evil domination and God did not remove it. The person had to live, work and perfect to the best of their ability what they perceived to be an evil actor in their body. There are some cases where an unclean spirit can be removed from the body, but in some cases people need to work with this and accept that this is their condition and they are not perfect.
Now, if we accept this teaching of Jesus, it does not mean, of course, that it's okay to be evil or that it's fine to be selfish or that we should somehow turn a blind eye to violence and injustice. I think Jesus is saying that in the process of living in community, we need to have a measure of realism about ourselves and each other.
We have to acknowledge the bad among the good. But we can't go around that pretence that all is wheat and the bad is goodness. But we should not behave like the servants in the parable, impulsively and arrogantly thinking that we can identify the weeds, trying to pull them up and believing that there's a quick judicial fix for everything because in doing so we may destroy much good in the process.
The main fact is we are not perfect. We know that our countries, our institutions, our families and fellowships are not perfect. And it's particularly important to acknowledge that we as Christians are not perfect. The church is not perfect and never will be. Well, in the bigger gospel picture, Jesus sets before us a life project which goes to the heart of the kingdom of God. Learning how to love.
And a crucial element of this project is accepting that if we truly love anybody and I think we all know this, we have to accept that person despite and sometimes even because of their faults and imperfections. And by extension that also includes our families and wider fellowships as well. Jesus seems to be saying in this context, acceptance is the key in learning how to love.
