The Tares

Matthew 13:25

 

But while the man slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

 

Last night I had a revelation. I would love to tell you that while my dog was digging in the back yard, he came upon golden tablets which answered all the questions of life, but, like Joseph, I found no golden tablets, but I did find some tares.

 

Yesterday, in my own way I did walk in the woods. It had been a terrible day. One after another things were piling up to bring me down. Late last night I retrieved my Bible and My Book of Mormon, and a twelve pack. I thought that by careful search, and ardent prayer some divine answer would come to me from the cosmos like a cosmic Mr. Clean, and all my questions would be answered. After about an hour there was no collation either with the two books or between myself and heaven, and all I had left was a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and some beer.

 

I theorized that it was statistically impossible to search those books so intently and not find one solitary bit of inspiration. Perhaps God was pushing me away. Maybe I was damned. The answer didn’t come to me in a vision. I saw no flashes of light, no “personages,” I heard no voices, I just recalled, from my mind, “The Kingdom of God is within you!” I had been looking in the wrong place!

 

 

 

 

Suddenly, I was like the man who found that treasure in that field, selling everything I owned to buy that field, but I didn’t have to sell anything. I already owned the field. For the field, that “Kingdom of God” really was within me. The Garden had been there all along. I could have seen it, had I only looked.

 

But, the field was covered with tares. When it had been sown at my birth, various things had been thrown into it by passers by. Some with good intentions, others just trying to get my crop to fail, but it was still just tares, restricting the growth in MY field. So I penned the short article “The Truth!”

 

You can’t “learn” anything. You can only be made to understand what is already there. You are born with all the software you need, you just need to “learn” how to run it! When a baby first opens its eyes and sees the world, it knows that there is a world there. It just has to “learn” how to relate with that world, to “learn” how to get the big babies to bring food. It already knows that it needs to be fed. The trick is to get everyone else in the room on the same sheet of music.

 

 

 

 

As we progress through life we come upon people who try to teach us how to control life, how to cultivate our garden, but those are their answers, not ours. Little by little, our garden is sown with tares, and though we can smell the flowers we can’t see them so we forever reach farther and farther out for spiritual or intellectual fertilizer that we hope will make the garden grow. When all we have to do is tear out the tares, take them to the road, lock the gate, and VOILA! There it is! Your own personal garden. It had been there all along. You would have seen it had you only looked!

 

And what are the tares? Anything that replaces what you know to be true. Anything that doesn’t allow your wheat to grow. You are born with that seed. The seed that will become wheat. Your own inner truth. You may not know who or what that big baby is, hovering over you, but you understand that if you make enough noise food will come.

 

You show up the first day of school with your bright shiny face, knowing that should you ask, that big baby at home, the one with the long hair, will cook a hotdog for you. Now, you meet another big baby, big baby “B” who tells you that big baby “A” is not big baby at all, that she, “B” and a whole bunch of unseen big babies have a whole new understanding of the world you thought you had all figured out! Well, she just sewed a whole bunch of tares in your garden and you’re too fascinated with all the greenery to realize that’s it’s all just weeds and cow flop . . . but now you’re becoming “educated!” Two of the most dangerous tares are education and religion. If you buy totally into either one it’s a long way home and if you buy into both at the same time, frankly you can’t get there from here!

 

 

 

 

Two things are doomed to failure. Religion and psychology. Right away the preachers are condemning me to hell, and the psychologists are diagnosing me. But, it won’t work on me. Do you want to know why? Because I won’t let them into my garden, and I have a lifetime supply of “RoundUp!” THAT’S why!

 

When Joseph Smith came up with his gig he had simply walked out into the woods and found his garden. So did Martin Luther, Ghandi, and Mohammed. So, how do you tell people about this? Well, you gotta market it. Gotta be an angel. Won’t work without an angel. Smith went one better. His angel was a prospector! There was GOLD on that thar hill. Because that’s what people EXPECTED in 1823! Mohammed’s angel just whipped him all over a cave. That’s what HAPPENED on caravans, and Ghandi missed meals and fooled around with his teenage nieces, because that what you DO when you’re the most interesting guru in India.

 

People will buy the fruit they are most familiar with. You will feel comfortable with what roughly fits the inner truth that you came equipped with. Then, with a little smoke and mirrors your truth will absorb these variations from outside purveyors that while appearing to be roughy the same is really Truth 2.0. It’s no longer YOUR truth, it has become OUR truth! GOLDEN TABLETS!

 

 

 

 

And why do I pick on the belief of the tale of golden tablets? Because it is a perfect example of a fairly good set of beliefs getting properly bastardized by aggressive marketing and human greed. When Joseph stumbled down from that hill he had it pretty well together. All the churches were full of it, which they were, money was the key driver, which it was, and the people as a whole needed to get back to the actual teachings of Jesus, which they did.

 

He quickly found out that nobody was listening because they were too busy down at some tent revival, waving their hands in the air like they don’t care and shouting “Hallelujah” while some tap dancing preacher passed the plate! What to do? Well, you gotta sell it! People don’t want to hear that some fairly intelligent young man came upon some inner truths while sitting under an apple tree. No! An angel gave it to him. He was too stupid to figure anything out for himself. Eventually God Himself had to come down and even bring His kid and first cousin, and the angel brought what? GOLDEN TABLETS!

 

So, he wrote a book. Know what the problem is with writing a religious book? First off YOU can’t be the author. GOD, in some magical, mystical way is the author. You’re just the secretary. Now this is not to say the book is not inspired. Who do you think planted the seeds in your garden in the first place. But a Bible, The Book of Mormon, the Qu’ran, The Karma Sutra; it don’t matter. When you begin trying to incorporate all these individual gardens into a collective farm right away you gotta have a bookkeeper, be it the Prophet, The Pope, An Imam, or Billy Joe Jim Bob down at The First Self Righteous Church!Can’t get saved without a program!

 

If I were to say at this point, “If you believe that, have I got a bridge for you, and it’s on sale” the Mormons would ask the price, the Catholics would try to out bid them, and the Muslims would try to find it and fly an plane into it! There isn’t a bridge and there weren’t any golden tablets people. Those are misdirections.

 

Penn and Teller have a routine. Teller begins to snatch quarters out of thin air, dropping them into a tin cup. It has to be a tin cup so you can hear the loud “clink” as it hits. He does this many times, and while at first you think it’s all a sham, after about a buck fifty you start to believe the quarters are real after all and Teller simply has “something up his sleeve.” After several more “clinks” he reaches forward to a man in the front row, takes his glasses from his face, shakes them over the cup and . . . CLINK CLINK, and rattle, rattle, rattle I might add. THIS IS PATENTLY IMPOSSIBLE! But, you HEARD the clinks. You SAW the quarters fall. Well, of course you did. Because after all the other “quarters” that’s what you EXPECTED to hear and see! Those golden tablets HAD to be there. Why, we heard them when Joe shook the box, didn’t we . . . DIDN’T WE???

 

 

 

 

At this point most of you have left this article and unsubscribed. Many are called, but few are chosen. I am not an atheist! When I gaze upon my Mercedes I logically conclude that there must have been a factory. I KNOW there was a salesman because he got my money. When I gaze upon a leaf I also understand that there must be a Creator. To deny that is as illogical as believing in golden tablets. Joseph’s original conclusion that all the churches were false was spot on. His edited version that HIS truth was THE truth was spotty at best, and with the addition of peripherals such as golden tablets it became spot off! God made man. Man made religion, and religion made theology. Theology is man’s feeble attempt to explain the unexplainable.

 

Psychology is just religion 2.0. Psychologists hold onto their beliefs as firmly as Baptists hold onto fried chicken. Psychological theory has progressed all the way from, “Do you love your mother” to “Why do you love your mother?” Religion and psychology try to attain the same thing. To get a person to find that inner truth and somehow clear the garden of tares. But, that’s too simple. That won’t fill the plate, and it certainly won’t get the insurance company to foot the bill for a psychologist’s time. Joseph gave us golden tablets and psychologists give us golden diagnoses. Neither dog will hunt. What works today will fall apart tomorrow. The Catholic will find their self back in the confessional, and the patient will end up right back on the couch at one hundred dollars an hour because they haven’t removed the tares. Until you reconnect with that basic truth, that garden, that basic YOU, all your seed will fall on rocky ground. You must find that garden, clear the tares, and lock the gate. Then, and only then will your garden grow!