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| Scene from "Megamind": "Oh, you don't know what's good for bad." Image source. |
[content note, hypothetical discussion of war, miscarriage, bad things]
Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
I recently wrote a post, Well I believe in God and evolution but I don't call it "theistic evolution", about how I'm not on board with "theistic evolution" because to me it means "God used evolution, so there's no conflict at all between our faith and the reality of evolution." Yeah I believe in God, and evolution, but "no conflict"??? "God used evolution"? Really? We're gonna sign on to believe in a God who chose to create by using natural selection, where progress is made by heartlessly letting the "less fit" creatures die? I mean, I believe it's true, but this is not really a strong point of evidence for my religion, so let's not pretend it is.
In other words, look at all the bad things that happen because the natural world is governed by "survival of the fittest." Good things have come out of it- the beauty of nature, the existence of humans- but I can't believe God would *choose* to do it this way. Why wouldn't They choose some way that didn't depend on so many bad things happening?
Enter the parable of the weeds. The wheat and the weeds are growing together, and the servants ask if they should pull up the weeds, and the owner says no. Let them both grow together.
Good things and bad things happening, intertwined with each other, impossible to separate. And that's how it always is. A good thing that was only able to happen because of a bad thing that happened before. A good thing that causes a bad thing. It's always like that, impossible to separate.
I've heard of women who have a miscarriage, and then get pregnant again soon after, and give birth to a baby- and the timing is such that, if the miscarriage hadn't happened, they wouldn't have gotten pregnant the second time and ended up having the baby they do have. And they have complicated feelings about that- feeling sad about the miscarriage, because they already loved that unborn baby- but are they even allowed to be sad about that? They love the child they do have, and if the miscarriage hadn't happened, they wouldn't have this child.
I think this is probably really common, and people have complicated feelings about it, and I believe what Jesus said, just recognize the good and the bad, but don't try to pull up the weeds. You don't have to have a big unifying self-consistent opinion on the question of "do I wish that hadn't happened?"
Or maybe your parents met each other after they both had to flee their homes due to war. If it wasn't for that war, you wouldn't exist. Are you supposed to feel like "I'm glad that war happened?" No, of course not, that's terrible.
All of us must have something like that in our family tree somewhere. Some horrible thing happened, and our great great great grandfather and grandmother wouldn't have met if that hadn't happened. You wouldn't exist. Are we supposed to ... feel bad about that? No, obviously not.
As if we're only allowed to declare something that happened was bad if there were 0 good things that happened downstream of it. Come on, that's just silly. Something bad happens to you, and what, you're required to live a sad existence forever, in order to "prove" that the bad thing really was bad? To make sure no hypothetical person tries to claim "look, it wasn't actually a bad thing- if that hadn't happened, you wouldn't have been in the right place to experience these other good things that happened after."
There's always wheat and weeds growing together.
Typically when I've heard Christians talk about this, about how bad things can lead to good things, it's platitudes and easy clichés, and I hate that. Claiming that it's all good because it's all God's plan. God let this bad thing happen to you, for grand meaningful reasons, and you're not allowed to feel bad about it, or rail at God about it. You're supposed to just "trust God." God "redeems" the bad things. God "uses them for good." I don't like this kind of language because, in my experience, it's about Christians telling you that you're not allowed to be unhappy about something that happened. It's not *really* a bad thing, because God "used it for good."
Like you're not allowed to point out that there are weeds and wheat in the field. Like you have to pretend the weeds are good because they're tangled up with the wheat.
Life is always like this, a complicated tangle of "good" and "bad" things. Evolution is like this. To ask why God would "use evolution", rather than using something that was all good- well, nothing in life is like that.
This parable that Jesus tells- I read it as an insight he is making based on his observations about the world. I don't read it like "here is an authoritative decree from God about how God is totally on top of all this and is choosing to allow it to be this way." He says, let the wheat and weeds grow together, not because there's some grand beauty in the concept of "balance" and it's "supposed" to be that way, but just as a person living in this world and trying to make sense of it. How are you supposed to feel, about terrible things that happen to you, which later put you in the right circumstance to have really amazing good things happen to you? Well, that's how it always is. You don't need to try to pull up the weeds. You don't need to choose between "I wish that hadn't happened" and "actually it's good that that happened."
This isn't really an answer to the problems I raised about theistic evolution. I'm just pointing out that the phenomenon of bad things being necessary and direct causes of good things isn't just about evolution- everything is like that. Where is God in this? Did They want it to be like this? Is it also like this in heaven?
And my point is not "there's a deep artistic beauty in how the good and bad things are mixed together, bringing balance to the Force"- no, the bad things are still bad! We still don't want them to happen! When you experience some kind of tragedy, are you comforted by the abstract concept of wheat and weeds growing together? No! This is still a problem that God has to answer for. Bad things are still bad.
But my point is, everything in life is like this, Jesus knew that too, and maybe evolution isn't all that different.
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Probably I should also note that Jesus gives his interpretation of the parable of the weeds in Matthew 13:36-43, and it has some aspects which are different from my interpretation. The main difference is he says the weeds and wheat are people- "people of the kingdom" vs "people of the evil one." That's fine but you can also interpret them as good and bad things that happen.
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