Sorry, Dondi, to come so late to the party…
Have just been asking the question about the tares myself, wanted to place a post here asking, but decided to google if it’d been asked before. And HERE it is!!
It does seem to present a special problem for us doesn’t it. For it seems we have here a group whose fate is set from the beginning! By virtue of who “planted” them! There is clearly no hope of redemption in this model; and since there is no hope, why should there be any hint of evangelism….
… And of course in this parable, there is no evangelism. Why bother? It seems that these tares are irrevocably sealed, forever, in their initial condition. No hope of transformation, of redemption, of turning away from their deplorable and pitiable condition.
Quite sad really; no hope, ever.
The fact of tares among the wheat is simply observed, and dealt with later.
It certainly is true that we all too often ask parables to bear far more weight than they were intended to bear. So too here. That this parable denies hope and transformation and redemption (the very heart and soul of the gospel!!) must mean that this is simply not the point of the parable, nor can it by any stretch of the flailing imagination be allowed to assert as much.
God comes to seek and save the lost; Jesus enters our world as the perfect light, which lights every man. Who then is the object of God’s concern BUT what we’re now calling “tares”??? … The very ones we’ve determined are, in the telling of the parable itself, irredeemable.
– Simply makes no sense.
Perhaps then the parable simply conveys a reality with which we are already quite familiar; the fact of evil in our midst that appears to flourish even under the watchful eye of the caretaker. Why has not God acted to root out the evil which all can see is right there? In our very midst?
The evil, if dealt with as we may immediately wish, may in fact have harmful effects on the righteous; the wheat as-it-were. This must not happen and so God allows both to ripen to their true nature into maturity. And only then does the separation occur.
This parable then seems to address the heartfelt (by the faithful of all ages) cry to God: Why do you allow wickedness to prosper right along side righteousness? Trust Me, God says in reply, in due time there will be a separation and order will in fact be reestablished.
… Or something like that…
Bobx3