As a child, one of my most despised yard work chores involved rooting out dandelions. My mother gave me one of those tools that looks like a long screwdriver but with a forked V on the end of it. She was most particular that I was to dig the dandelions out by the root and not merely cut them off at the level of the soil. Of course, what I created was a trail of divots pockmarking our yard and I drew maternal criticism on that additional front.

Yet, for me, it wasn’t just that I hated to have to do the manual labor (and do it wrong and then have to hear about it), but that I actually loved dandelions! I though they were wonderful bright spots of yellow in an otherwise dull see of green. Plus, I loved blowing on dandelions at the end of their lives and watching the cool little gray parachutes launch out in all directions!

Now, for those unfamiliar with the word, “tares” are bible-speak for injurious weeds (the dandelions, in my mother’s opinion, would qualify). With this in mind, consider these two passages–the first comes from the Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 13:

Jesus taught another parable, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field: During the night, an enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and then departed. Now when the wheat grew up, so did the tares.

The servants of the householder came and said to him, “We know you sowed good seed in you field. Where did these tares come from?” He responded, “An enemy has done this.” The servants asked, “So you want us to go and root up the tares?”

He responded, “No! The problem is that if you root up the tares, you will end up pulling out the wheat as well.”

The second passage, which alludes to this biblical text, is from Butler, and he is talking about the great good works of St. Eustathius, who came to power as a bishop in the 300s in Antioch, which at that time was the third largest center of Christianity in the Roman Empire (after Rome and Alexandria), after Christianity had been declared the official (if not fully embraced) religion of the Roman Empire:

St. Philogonius, bishop of Antioch, a prelate illustrious for his confession of the faith, in the persecution of Licinius, died in 323. One Paulinus succeeded him, but seems a man not equal to the functions of that high station; for, during the short time he governed that church, tares began to grow up among the good seed. To root these out, when that dignity [the See of Antioch] became again vacant, in 324, the zeal and abilities of St. Eustathius were called for . . . .

It certainly didn’t take Christianity long, once it achieved power, to veer away from the teachings of Christ that were  decidedly un-fun (you know–things like not judging, giving what you have to the poor, living only for the day and not the future, serving God and not money, and this whole tares things). It became–and sadly still is–very important to Christians to decide who or what are “injurious weeds,” and then devote themselves to uprooting such people, without regard to any destruction this causes. There simply is no faith shown that God can do whatever sorting out might be necessary, and instead there is this deep-felt jonesing for getting rid of that which destroys some spiritualized aesthetic–a quest for orchestrated purity or uniformity. This widespread and disgusting desire for control takes hold, far more insidious than a field of dandelions and even ragweed could ever be, and consequences to lives be damned. Jesus’s words of warning about how what is good gets uprooted with what is not any time that people go out into the fields with the idea of purifying them of tares are not only ignored but are turned upside-down, and ripping out the tares becomes a valued activity!

Just go back and read those two texts, above. Christianity really should decide if it even matters what Jesus had to say about anything important.