I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 13-14.

    I was going to completely skip over the parable of the sower because I have thought, written, and heard so much about it. However, as I read it this morning, I saw something to which we need to give some thought. When Jesus was asked why He spoke in parables He answered that was because only those who genuinely wanted to understand would understand. I think part of what He meant was that it was harder to make a parable mean something other than what it was intended to mean. If you don’t understand a parable, you, usually, will not think that you do. However, the point for us to recognize from what He said is that those who do not want to understand will not understand, no matter how we say it. No matter how carefully we choose our words those who want to misinterpret them will do so.

    The parable of the wheat and the weeds and the parable of the fishing net have related lessons for us. Actually, they share a common message in addition to each having their own message. Their common message is that if we try to distinguish between those who will accept God’s call and those who will not, we will cause a lot of people who would otherwise answer God’s call to miss it. My understanding of the first informs, and is informed by, my belief in non-resistance. If we attempt to “pull” out the weeds, the bad apples, we will also destroy some who will produce a crop for the Lord. Until it is time to harvest (and only God knows when that is) many weeds look just like the good plants and many good plants look like weeds. There is a motto associated with the military, “Kill them all, let God sort them out,” which reflects the same idea, only in reverse. Jesus’ message in this parable is, “Don’t kill any of them, God will sort them out.”

    While the parable of the wheat and the weeds teaches that it is not our job to sort the righteous from the unrighteous, the parable of the fishing net tells us to take a more active approach. In the latter parable Jesus teaches us to actively gather in everyone, even those who we “know” will not accept God’s gift. It may be possible to gather only those who will choose to do God’s will, but doing so will mean leaving behind many who would choose to do so if given the opportunity. Like the commercial fisherman, to whom it is worth the effort of throwing away the worthless fish in order to maximize his profit collecting a larger number of marketable fish, we should be willing to “waste” effort on those who will never come to the Lord for the sake of those we would otherwise miss.