“Let both grow together until the harvest.” (Matt. 13:30)
Expanded Passage: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-40
I remember having a moment as a teenager when it dawned on me how few people thought the way my family and church did. Even within Christianity, many of the views and practices of my small holiness church were pretty unusual among American Christians. The thought occurred to me, “How amazing that I just happened to be born into the church that has all the right understandings! What are the odds?”
It is human nature to surround ourselves with people who think and behave like we do. The more we do it, the easier it is to consider people who are different as weeds. We are right; they are wrong. We are the righteous remnant; they are the sheep that have gone astray.
The problem is that there seem to be just as godly, just as fervent and convinced, believers in pretty much every church group there is. I later concluded that God must care much more about our hearts (1 Sam. 16:7) than what is going on in our heads. There is just too much disagreement among people with the same fervency of faith.
There are weeds and wheat in the church. We do not always know which is which. In fact, one of the scariest aspects of Matthew’s Gospel is that sometimes the weeds think they are wheat (Matt. 7:21–23). Lord, reveal our true nature to ourselves.
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5).
Ken Schenck is vice president for university partnerships with Campus EDU. He previously served as vice president for Houghton College (NY) and dean of Wesley Seminary (IN).
© 2024 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
