“1The
heavens declare the glory of God,
and the
sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2Day to day pours out speech,
and
night to night reveals knowledge.
3There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose
voice is not heard”
Psalm 19:1-3
A Theology of Everything
There
is theology in everything. That is not
to say that we take our theology from anywhere except from the Bible. Nor is it to say that everything is God. As Daniel Hames says:
“Far
from being a sort of polytheistic belief that there is a ‘divine spark’ in
everything, or that everything is god, the Christian view of creation and
indeed all of reality is that it bears the fingerprints of the one who formed
it.”
Rather
it is that in everything we can see reflections of theology, images of God and
his nature. It is somewhat like the fact
that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are both material events which nevertheless
reflect great spiritual realities.
Likewise, the mundane things in life can be seen to reflect profound
truths. The case for forming such a ‘theology
of everything’ is laid out more fully by Daniel Hames in his article on
Theology Network: Why and How to do a Theology of Everything from where the previous quote comes from. What I want to do here is not to cover that
ground again but rather just to offer some of my own application of that
principle.
The wheat
lettuce and the tares nettles.
The
Bible often used weeds as a picture of sin and evil. After all they are a direct result of the
fall:
“17And
to Adam he said,
“Because
you have listened to the voice of your wife
and
have eaten of the tree
of
which I commanded you,
‘You
shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain
you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18thorns and thistles
it shall bring forth for you;
and you
shall eat the plants of the field.”
Genesis 3:17-18
Jesus
himself often used weeds as an image in his parables:
“7Other
seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them… 24He
put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared
to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25but while his men were
sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away… 38The
field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are
the sons of the evil one”
Matthew 13:7, 24-25, 38
So
weeds are clearly an apt picture for sin. What lessons can we then learn from
this picture? In what ways do weeds
really reflect sin and what similarities do they share? I want to consider seven similarities here.
1. Weeds start out
small
Weeds
don’t turn up in the garden fully grown.
Rather they start off small, innocuous and helpless looking. Hard to see and seemingly harmless, yet they grow
and become more established, becoming harder and harder to eradicate and then
seed more weeds. Just so with sin, the
seemingly harmless transgressions, the look, the glance, the thought… are easy
to uproot and yet it seems so harmless to us that it seems not worth the bother
of uprooting them and so we don’t. Then
thought becomes action, action becomes habit.
Our conscience rusts with lack of use and with no more gatekeeper, the
sin keeps rushing in as our heart becomes hard to God and soft and fertile for
more and greater wrongs.
The
lesson is simple: Sin, like weeds, must be stopped in its youth. For
“14…each
person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15Then
desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown
brings forth death.”
James 1:14-15
Which
leads to point 2:
2. Weeds choke plants
It
is a well observed truth which even the least apt of gardeners knows: a garden
chock full of weeds will not grow lovely flowers. Six foot high nettles do not a prize-winning cabbage
patch make. Unless you keep on weeding your
garden then the weeds will grow strong and fast and the plants will wilt and
die, if they ever show at all. Jesus
used this very illustration in his parable of the sower:
“3And
he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow… 7Other
seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them… 22As
for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the
cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it
proves unfruitful.”
Matthew 13:3, 7, 22
Jesus
used the illustration to represent the “cares
of this world and the deceitfulness of riches” but it applies equally well
to sin. Persistent, endemic sinful
habits will choke our good intentions.
Pride blinds us to our faults, selfishness will block any willingness to
sacrifice for others and slothfulness will choke back any attempt to
change. As Jesus said:
“43“For
no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44for
each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from
thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45The good
person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person
out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart
his mouth speaks.”
Luke 6:43-45
Likewise,
you cannot have both flowers and weeds in the same patch, either the weeds
thrive or the flowers do. Never both.
“13No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate
the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the
other. You cannot serve God and money.”
Luke 16:13
3. A field of weeds
can look great from the outside
Consider
these two scenes: A lush green field full of rows of vegetation or a messy bit
of ground with yellowed piles of rubbish decaying in the sun and a few scraggly
seedlings struggling to grow in sparse rows.
The former, for all its pleasant appearance, is full of weeds and latter
is the aftermath of attacking those same weeds.
It
is perfectly possible to have a heart full of sin and hypocrisy and yet seem
fine. It is equally possible for a fruitless
life of separation from God to seem attractive from the outside. It is only when you get into the thick of it
that it starts to sting. Remember Jesus’
words to the Pharisees:
“27“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you
are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are
full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. 28So you also
outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness.”
Matthew 23:27-28
The
lesson to be learned is that dealing with your sin and hypocrisy will involve
breaking your masks, being honest with other people. It will be messy, painful (more on that
later) and it will lose you friends and admirers. So which is more important to you? Popularity? Or Fruitfulness?
4. Weeding hurts
Nettles
sting. Weeding isn’t fun at the best of
times but it’s even worse when the weeds are stingy or thorny ones. I imagine many people have seen a hawthorn bush
in their garden and left it for later because the pain of the thorns
discouraged them from pulling it out.
And meanwhile it grows. Likewise
uprooting sinful habits will be painful.
Unlike weeds, no sin is without its sting or its thorn. They all hurt to remove, and the longer we’ve
cherished them the more painful it is.
So
first costly, and now painful. I’m not
doing the best job of selling this then.
But it is vital that we understand that fighting sin is a struggle. So often we think it will be easy, try, fail
and give up in discouragement. We need
to realise that it will be a long, slow, painful fight. Our fallen human heart loves our sins and it
hates to see them go. We love their
pleasures and that makes it so difficult for us to fight to remove them. Don’t be deceived: fighting sin is not easy, nor is it enjoyable, but it is necessary.
5. Growing weeds is
easy
Standing
in stark contrast to the pain and difficulty of keeping them out, growing weeds
takes no effort at all. You don’t need
to plant them, water them or feed them.
All that you need to do is to stop pulling them up and they’ll take over
pretty quickly. Weeds are the natural
state of the garden – just take a look at any abandoned stretch of ground and
you’ll see what I mean. Likewise sin is
the natural state of the fallen human heart.
As soon as we stop tending our hearts, stop studying the word, stop
praying for help and forgiveness, stop listening to our conscience and guarding
what we watch and read and do. As soon as
we lose sight of God, even for the briefest of moments, the devil will jump in
with his sin filled seed packet and the weeds will start to grow. The only solution is, in the words of that
esteemed theologian Mad Eye Moody: “Constant
vigilance!”. Keep on watching and,
as we considered in point one, keep on plucking them out as soon as they
appear.
6. Weeds don’t stay
in your garden
Weeds
spread. And not just from rose bed to
border to rockery but from garden to garden, field to field. Why is this relevant to sin?
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.”
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.”
John Donne
Just
as a garden full of weeds makes it harder to keep the gardens around it weed
free so the sin in your life will
affect those around you. No man is an
island, no man stands alone. All sin has
ramifications far beyond those you see.
All sin causes harm far beyond that which it causes to you either from
the direct effects of sin, or from the spread of it. There are many obvious examples: like people
who starve because of the selfishness of those who have plenty; or the victims
of murder. But there are less
immediately obvious examples too: like a cruel word spoken that fosters hate or
anger in someone’s heart; or passing on gossip to people that pass it further,
spreading the judgemental attitude attached to it. Even things we view as our private problems,
like struggling with lust, affects others.
Every click on the internet only serves to encourage those who make the
content you watch, perpetuating the cycle of objectification and leading so
many other people astray. What’s more,
the taint of hypocrisy often persuades us to stay silent when we should speak
out, leading to people not hearing the good news that they need to hear. Sin is no private matter.
7. Weeds keep coming
back
The
fight against sin is looking pretty bleak at this point. But I’m afraid not
only is it easy to be lulled into a false sense of security; not only will any
weeds choke your good intentions; not only is it costly, painful, and easier
just to give up; not only will any failure in the fight hurt those around you
but the fight is also futile. My friend,
you can pull out every nettle in the garden, sooner or later they’ll be back in
force. Sin is a persistent thing and for
as long as you live you will never, ever be rid of it. It will always be back, always be attacking and
always be there, looking over your shoulder and just waiting for a moment of
weakness.
So
why bother? I’m not saying all this to
be discouraging, but rather to paint a realistic picture of the problem we
face. This bleak reality is why the
grace of God is so important to grasp.
If you hold any delusions at all about earning favour by killing sin
then when the weed you thought dead comes back and takes over it will crush you
with the weight of guilt and hopelessness.
But only remember the grace and the love of God. Remember that the blood of Christ covers all
your sins, even the recurring ones. To
the judge of all, the weed choked garden of your broken heart appears to be the
finest of rose beds because all that he can see is the beauty of Christ that
covers you. So fight sin, but fight it
in the knowledge that every time you fall, you will rise. He will pick you up and if he has to, he will
carry you. There is no sin that the
Christian cannot come back from. No
number of failures that God cannot forgive.
He paid an unimaginable price to make you holy and acceptable to him and
he will have what he has paid for. Christ did not die to forgive you for past
sins, leave you on your own to struggle and then abandon you when you
fail. No, he paid that price to bring
you home, to make you new and he is with you every step of the way.
A
true understanding of the price that bought your freedom, of the grace that was
given to you, will act like holy weed killer for your soul. Sin cannot exist in the light of the beauty
of Christ because sin is placing something else before him and no one who truly
sees him; his grace, his love for us, his suffering in our place; can ever do
anything but love him above all. In this
life we will never see him fully but oh, pray that we may see him better. Pray that God would instil such a grasp of
his glorious grace that we would never, ever forget it. It is the only way that we will ever triumph
in any meaningful way in this life: fixing our eyes on Jesus and weeding with
his glory and his grace in mind.
“1Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2looking
to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right
hand of the throne of God.”
Hebrews 12:1-2
Amen.
Further reading/listening:
Considering the Beauty of holiness as opposed to the ugliness of sin, great post from Not at the Dinner Table.
<<I know this is a horrendous gap between posts but
unfortunately the very job that inspired this post from long hours of weeding
also left me very tired and not at all in the frame of mind to tackle such a
weighty issue. Still, it came together
in the end and hopefully I’ll write with increasing regularity as I get back
into the swing of Uni life. Hopefully.>>
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