Weeds

 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison. (Deuteronomy 29:18)

          Today’s subject is an “Oh, hey” idea. Skipping laborious details, I was trying to pull some weeds. On in particular had come up through the spaces between the wood of a back step and that stinker was saying, “You and what army?” The thing is, it wasn’t very tall above the wood, and I know the weed in question can get quite tall.

          It came to mind that the poor guys whose job it tends to be to try to keep this place from becoming a solid mass of weeds, and probably the people whose place it is – have been weed whacking it – cutting it off at the level of the top of the wood. That’s the fastest, most effective way of making a place look good, unless I’m the one using the weed whacker. I just can’t figure them out. I know how they’re supposed to work, but they don’t work for me. I can’t seem to do a typical cigarette lighter, either. Good thing I don’t smoke.

          As I continued pulling, I reached the understanding that gardeners the world over (probably) understand. If you pinch a plant back, it gets bushier. The roots and the stump continue to grow, and new shoots come out. The shoots are comparatively easy to tear off the plant. But those roots? They aren’t going anywhere!

          And that’s where the “Oh, hey” comes in, because what’s true of the weeds around our houses is also true of the “weeds” in our lives and in our neighborhoods and societies. People say we should “Live and let live” or come to the realization that we need to walk away and let people be wrong, but when we do that, the “weeds” spread. And if we use a social weed whacker, they just get stronger and more entrenched, more difficult to remove.

          There’s another bit of wisdom that weeding has made painfully clear. If you let a weed grow, you end up with seeds. Sandburs are the worst! Almost as bad, but in a different way, are the seeds of the Bidens Alba. They have two little “teeth” that stick to clothes. They don’t hurt as much, but you’ve got to get them out of your clothes before you do laundry, or they end up on all your clothes. There’s another flat seed that somehow sticks to clothes, too. And then, there’s the problem of whatever the seeds were on one patio area. They might not stick to clothes, but there had to have been thousands. Maybe a million or more. I know about that. I put in two bronze fennels, and now there is bronze fennel in my yard, my neighbor’s yard. I collected a gallon of seeds late last summer.

          Now, just imagine that the weed in question were poisonous, like poison ivy, giant hogweed, or caster seeds. Skin contact with giant hogweed can result in massive blisters. Caster seeds are the source of ricin, a deadly poison. They’re not something you want to let grow in your yard or neighborhood. This is what today’s passage is talking about. If you let a poisonous weed grow in your life, in your family, in your neighborhood, or in your society, not only will you endanger yourself and everyone else, but it’s a weed. It will spread.

          If you “weed whack” it, cutting it back to the level of the porch or so that it’s not noticeable from the street, you’re likely to end up with plants that are so entrenched that it will take an army to remove them, or with so many seeds that you’ll never  be safe.

          There is, of course, a difference between the Old Testament society and ours. We don’t really have the option of tearing people out of their homes and either killing them or kicking them out of our community. The problem, and the poison, is the ideas that they plant. Our battle is not with flesh and blood, but against ideas. We just can’t afford to let those ideas take root or produce seeds. And it won’t do to “whack” those weeds back so we can’t see them. That will ultimately make them more difficult to remove.

          And – that is just as true in our own lives as it is in society.