n Kenya (just a few months ago) I stood before a group of young girls—tall, slender,  beautiful Masai girls—who had been brought into a very special refugee center. They had been brought there for their own safety, and for education; for the healing of the mind and the body. They were aged between 8 and 12 and had been sold by their parents into marriage. Not sold with the intention to be married in a few years. No, they were married. (The Kenya government is trying to put a stop to this abuse of children.)

I’m told that when they first came to this center, run by Adventists, they were so shy and timid they wouldn’t speak to you or look you in the eyes. They were children who’d been robbed of their freedom—freedom to be and to become something more, something better, something greater. It occurred to me that the church is meant to be a place of refuge for people battered and bruised by the experiences of life.

Purifying Is Not Our Job
Jesus had much to say about how we relate to people.

He could say the most amazing things! Things we were not used to hearing, certainly not from religious leaders. We are surprised and, I suppose, a bit shocked. He seemed to read us like an open book—really, quite uncanny! And He had the habit of telling stories to teach us whatever lesson was on His mind.

Jesus had the remarkable gift of being open, generous, and receptive to people who were obviously full of mistakes, flawed as could be; and He did it without in the process destroying the clear lines of distinction between right and wrong, or implying that mistakes are inconsequential. Ordinary people, and that covers most of those who came, may have felt very inadequate and unworthy in His company, but they never felt rejected. And this is where He differed from most of us.

Most of us, when confronted with the shortcomings and mistakes of others, may be inclined to want to tell them off; may feel the inner pressure of speeches of the “don’ts” and “you should not have” kind, by which distances are established and people are made to feel like failures—and pushed away. We are often caught in the difficult tension between our relationships to issues and standards, on the one hand, and our relationships to people, on the other. I’m unable to read the gospels without being forcefully struck by the fact that at the end of the day, it mattered enormously to Jesus how we treat people; that Jesus had more to say about relationship values, about what we do to each other, or about what we should do but fail to, than He did in formulating dogmatic statements. It’s on this matter of “relationships” within the church that I believe Jesus is seeking to say something in a story to which I find myself occasionally drawn.

The story is recorded in Matthew 13:24-30—the parable of the weeds. It deals with  critical issues of value-judgements which we sometimes make of one another, even in the same community of faith.

The background to this story is probably found in the teachings of Jesus regarding His kingdom. He taught that the kingdom of God was to come, and yet the “kingdom is at hand.” In a sense the kingdom had arrived, and the followers of Jesus were already here and now citizen of it, and, at least proleptically, were experiencing in this life the blessings of the eternal kingdom.

But it was observed by many, and no doubt commented on by some, that the group of people who seemed to gather around Jesus in his goings and comings in Palestine was a very mixed lot—and some of them a bit disreputable. Granted there were some whose lives had clearly changed; one could see that. But then there were others who seemed distinctly out of place; and one wondered, and some may well have asked Him: “What are You going to do about this? Are You not going to have some screening and separate at least some of them out from Your followers? If this is what Your Kingdom is made of—well, it’s all a bit disgusting! I mean, look at them!

When are you going to set your house in order?”

May I suggest that it is precisely in answer to such questions that Jesus told the story of the tares?

The first we notice is that the “Owner” of the field—and the “field” here is the church, or the community of believers—is not responsible for the presence of the tares (or the weed). They’re just there, as a reality of life; as an expression of the inevitable cross-section of humanity as we find it in the church. And we come to the heart of the story when Jesus answers this specific question: “What shall we do with the weeds? Shall we remove them?” And to that He says clearly “No, that would not be a good idea.”

He does not even encourage the idea of just investigating to determine what is what. He is actually quite final about leaving it alone for the time being.

The story is unusual, for surely it would be normal to do what you can to deal with the weeds; get rid of them somehow. But the Lord of the harvest says: “No, not now. I will take care of them myself later.” The “wheat” and the “tares” represent the mixed humanity that makes up our community; those who are “of the world” and those who are “of Christ.” They have seemingly the same spiritual “Sitz” (the same spiritual setting)—they grow up next to each other. And, yet, some are good and some are potentially very destructive.

Is that not humanity as you and I know it?

The parable says much about how the Lord views humanity, and about the realities of life in the church. Since we all claim Him as Lord and we belong to His spiritual family, we need to hear and understand what He says to us on this matter, for I think He says something that’s important to us.

1. The church is a very mixed lot. I am not saying that that fact is either good or bad; I am just saying that that is reality; that is the way it is. And it will be like that until the Lord returns. Yes, I believe that through the Spirit’s presence and workings the church will become a purer and holier community, and we will increase in commitment and devotion to Him as Lord, and we will become more useful to Him, and we will also learn from our past mistakes—and I myself will grow and, I hope, become a better person. But I have little sympathy with those who maintain a doctrine of a pre-Advent infallible purging of the church that motivates them to initiate a process of uprooting “tares” at any cost, instead of leaving that difficult task to the work of the Spirit in the human heart. It is a fact of life that goodness and badness, saints and sinners, victory and defeat—yes, wheat and tares—are close neighbors.

2. You cannot always tell the two apart. Therefore, we should not engage ourselves on a mission to try to identify “wheat” and “tares” in too doctrinaire a manner, particularly when it comes to evaluating the lives of fellow-travelers within the church.

And when the presence of the “weed” (the tares) is called to the attention of the landowner, he readily acknowledges that “yes, it’s true,” and that it is the enemy who is responsible. Well, they ask, shouldn’t we deal with them; pull them up and throw them out, and in some final manner take care of these destructive elements. And the troublesome and challenging response of the Lord is: “No, do not go and weed in my garden; when the moment is right, I will take care of it Myself.”

The Landowner is not questioning, nor am I, that there are people, possibly many, within the church, who are strangers to the Lord. They may at one time have known Him, but for one reason or another they’ve become weary of the walk, or they’ve lost sight of the goal, or have found other things or persons more interesting. And yet they find it convenient to stay, or possibly they feel more secure, or possibly a job is at stake, or possibly major family issues come into tension. Or just simply that it is less embarrassing to continue to occupy space in the pew and show up within the church and its fellowship than it would be to leave. These are the sad realities.

To these realities the Lord says: “Let them be. To ostracize them, or freeze them out, or to go on a general cleaning-up exercise is fraught with too many risks. I will do it Myself in My own time.”

And that makes us ask: “What do You mean that the risks are too many or too great or too high?” And in answering this question we must acknowledge values that are sacred to humanity, values that we have no right to infringe on without doing damage to ourselves, to one another, and to our communities. Rights that are self-evident and inalienable. These are values that I believe our Lord wants us to respect. And freedom, with all its unsettling potentials, is one of them. Even the freedom to go astray.

So you do not misunderstand me, I must differentiate between what I believe the Lord is trying to teach us in this story, and the flagrant abuse of the church’s identity, standards, and mission by someone who ostensibly claims to belong to the church but who is increasingly showing himself or herself hostile and destructive to the church, its message, and its mission. Such a person does not belong. The church has a right to say so and take actions to signify that. (We call that “church discipline.”) It is always sad when that has to happen, but also that is a course which Scripture signifies, on occasions, as being necessary. That fact, however, must not skew the greater reality and much more frequently occurring phenomenon of day-to-day interrelationships in which spiritual high-handedness is manifested.

But back to the question: Why are the risks deemed to be too high?

First, they are too high because of my own humanity. Am I, as the spiritual guardian of the church, all-knowing? Is it not possible that I might make a terrible mistake in assessing another person? Do I really think that I know fully and accurately what goes on inside another person? Surely only God knows. And is it not possible that when an individual becomes difficult in the church, obstreperous and rebellious (and particularly if that individual is a teenager), is it not possible that that behavior is as it is precisely because God, somehow, is getting through to them, touching their lives? Only God knows how much latitude He will put up with. I don’t.

Second, they are too high because today is still the day of salvation. We may have been able accurately to identify and  label the “tare” and isolated it, but we must not forget that God has not yet finished His work. Again, let me clarify: I’m not talking about those in our churches who are openly abusing and flagrantly defying the standards of the Word of God and of the church, and who must for their own salvation’s sake be placed under church discipline. Of that the Bible speaks clearly. I am talking about the much larger number of persons who are not that easy to identify, and who may be spending their time on the brink of the kingdom of God. We have many youth who disappear from the church because they were made to feel unworthy and unwelcome in the church. We made them feel spiritually unsuccessful. The church is saying to them: “God does not like you very much!” We presume to know the mind of God too readily! Is it possible that God is more generous than we are?

Listen to these words from the inspired pen of Ellen White:

“Although in our churches, that claim to believe advanced truth, there are those who are faulty and erring, as tares among the wheat, God is long--suffering and patient. . . . He does not destroy those who are long in learning the lesson He would teach them.. . . . The church of Christ on earth will be imperfect, but God does not destroy His church because of its imperfections.” “There is to be no spasmodic, zealous, hasty action taken by church members in cutting off those they may think defective in character.” (Testimonies to Ministers, pp. 45,46) And one more:  “I warn the Seventh-day Adventist Church to be careful how you receive every new notion and those who claim to have great light. The character of their work seems to be to accuse and tear down” (Selected Messages, vol. 2, p 69).

Third, the risks are too high because the church itself is harmed by people probing even delicately into, and having opinions about, the lives of other people. And our lives are so intertwined that the damage can spread very widely. The climate can become such that even good people are made to feel insecure in their own spiritual home, and the whole lifestyle of the church becomes cramped. Something terrible happens to the church. The church is meant to be a place where people should feel at home, feel warm and wanted, feel safe, secure, accepted and free. Instead, the church community becomes a most unpleasant place.

Fourth, weeding in the garden is too risky because I, the investigator, am myself harmed by these activities. My misguided “mission” alters my own character, and my personality becomes unattractive. By going around and actively nurturing opinions about the quality of other people’s spirituality, something happens to me. And if you don’t think so, just look around. I am reminded of the words of a former teacher of mine to a man who was being “hard” on being right, and somewhat self-congratulatory of his own accomplishments: “So you are perfect, but do you have to be hostile about it?”

Places of Healing
What kind of a spiritual climate are we creating in our churches? If your church is not the most appealing and attractive spiritual fellowship in your community, what are you going to do to change that?

Our churches and congregations are meant to be places of healing and renewal. They must  be:

1. Attractive places so unbelievers will be drawn to them. They must reflect values and a quality of human relationships that are appealing and that can fill the void many feel.

2. Places where the believer feels at home, secure, free and accepted. Not a battlefield, but a “city of refuge”—which was also God’s design. Can that be said of the church in which you and I worship?

Or, is the spirit in your church different?

I am concerned about the spirit we maintain in our churches. Our churches are not to be exclusive clubs for those who are good enough, or worthy enough. It’s sinners whom God is constantly justifying, and they are never good enough. They are meant to be received warmly in our churches, for that is their rightful home. I will be frank with you: I would hate to spend my time surrounded only by people who thought that they had everything worked out just right. They become arrogant, clinical, and judgmental of those who have still a lot of growing to do, and acceptance by them is always conditional on whether “you will respond constructively to their instructions on how you should shape your life.” And yet Christ accepted us all “while we were yet sinners” (Rom. 15:8). Acceptance is the breath of humanity. Where acceptance is denied our breathing falters. The air becomes thin and life itself becomes unbearable.

But this is not easy. As responsible church leaders we know and at times feel the tensions between the things we should deal with in the church and the things we somehow must allow to stay; or that we must leave with the Lord to find His own time, or a better way to deal with. We as church leaders are human; we love the Lord, we love the church and the truth. We are jealous and protective of these, but also we belong to fallen humanity, and we may not get it right always. Our being jealous for the truth and the Lord must not lead us to intrude or invade the space and freedom of others. Their fundamental freedom must be respected.

It is within our reach to create and shape the spiritual environment of our communities for the future. My appeal is that we create a “good” home for the future in which people can communicate, understand each other, respect each other’s space, and acknowledge that the Lord is ever at work making something better of what is flawed.

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Jan Paulsen is the president of the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in Silver Spring, Maryland.