A Ramble About Pulling Weeds

I was out watering my gardens this morning, as I do every morning. I skipped over the raspberry bushes because they're past bearing fruit at this point in time, and started on watering the bean plants I have in the back of the house.

These bean plants were experiments of sorts. With our bean plants in the front, I carefully built rows and planted the seeds like I was taught in horticulture class in High School. With the plants in the back, instead of building rows with a hoe, I just scattered them over tilled soil to see if they would grow. When they didn't grow that way in the time it seemed like they should, we decided to cover them over with mulch made from old grass clippings that smelled like horse manure. A few days after, they sprouted aggressively, and they are now two or three times the size of the bean plants in the front.

As I watered, I began pulling some weeds that were obnoxiously big. It's my own fault that they got that way, because I didn't pull them earlier when they were small, and, truth be told, I don't get out and weed as often as I should. So with the hose in one hand, I begin to use the other to get down to the base of the weed and yank it from the ground. The first one popped out without issue. Seeing my success, I go on to another. No problem. I then go one to the culprit that caught my attention to begin with.

I can't see the bottom of the plant because it's buried in among the bean plants. Trying to be as careful as I can I follow the stem of the weed with my hand, feeling it all the way down to the base of it's stem. I then get my hand around it and pull. Up it comes...

Except it wasn't the weed that I had been trying to pull. It was a bean plant. It was a big, healthy bean plant with many seed pods on it that weren't quite mature, and blossoms which promised to turn into more seed pods. I looked at that weed with disgust, but I had no one else to blame but myself for the death of the bean plant. I was so intent on getting that weed, I had killed the plant I was trying to save instead.

One of the biggest problems with battling false or heretical doctrine is that more often than not, that heretical doctrine is wrapped around, or growing very close to a very real, and healthy faith in Jesus Christ, accompanied with all the actions which underscore that faith. I one Mormon missionary I spoke to some time ago who told me his story. He had a girlfriend who was Baptist, and with whom he was quite serious. She came from a wealthy family, and he got along well with her family. The time came for him to go on his mission, and he was torn. He was told by the girl and her family that if he chose to go on his mission for the LDS Church that it would be over between them. He told me that when it came down to it, He had to choose between Jesus Christ and his girlfriend. He chose Jesus Christ. This was a healthy plant regardless of the weed which was wrapped around it.

Jesus told a parable about wheat and weeds. He said:

“He put another parable before them, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” So the servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”'” (Matthew 13:24-30, ESV)

In context, as He explained it later, He was talking about people, and how the world, His field, would come to have both the sons of the evil one and the sons of the kingdom sown in it. But this passage has often come to my mind when thinking about all those people who believe something that has been regarded as heretical or false doctrine. We all accuse each other of this at some point in time. The Catholic labels the Protestant as heretical, the Protestant labels the Catholic as heretical, they both label the Mormon as heretical, and the Orthodox labels all of them as the much more more polite term “heterodox.” And we all seek to correct each other's dogmatic faults and bring them in line with our own. But in the process of doing so, I have seen people walk away from Christ altogether, not knowing what to believe or why, because their faith was so integrally tied to their Church and its dogmas.

The lesson of the bean plant tells me that sometimes it is better to leave the weed alone and let the plant you want flourish. Water it. Care for it. Isn't it better to tolerate a few weeds, than lose your harvest altogether?