WHY is there so much evil in this world? Why do good people find themselves in the midst of bad people? Why can’t there just be a pure world where the righteous are not challenged by the unrighteousness around them?
These are basic questions addressed by this Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 13:24-43). To start with, we should say that God is not the author of evil; the devil is. In the creation story in Genesis, we read that God saw everything that he had made and it was very good. He, therefore, did not create anything bad. It was sin, the disobedience of God’s law, which distorted many things in this fallen world.
The gospel tells us that like a sower, God sowed only good seeds in his field. However, while everyone was asleep, the devil came and sowed weeds all through the wheat. Hence, as the crop grew and bore fruit, so did the weeds appear.
The slaves in the parable asked the sower, “Do you want us to pull out the weeds?” Exactly our question and aspiration today. We want evil, his minions, and all their works exterminated from this beautiful world. We want only the good people to stay, and all bad people to be extinguished from our sight, if possible. Thinking highly of ourselves as the wheat, we look down at the weeds and wish they are all plucked out.
Notice how Jesus, the sower, answered: “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
The weeds, the bad people, will not go unpunished, but God, in His mercy, is giving them all the chances to repent and be counted among the wheat. “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Earlier on, the prophet Ezekiel wrote, “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel” (Ezekiel 33:11)?
If God is patient to others, we must remember that he was the first patient with us, too. The just God is also a kind God, the First Reading (Wisdom 12:13, 16-19) tells us. And so like the psalmist in this Sunday’s psalms (Psalm 86) may we all declare, “Lord, you are good and forgiving.”