Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The Devil, Satan, Old Scratch, Old Nick, Lucifer…He has many
names, but is he real? Can educated people living in the 21st
century possibly believe in such a thing? Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia became a bit of a laughing stock a few years ago
when he admitted in an interview that he believes the devil is, “a real
person.”
For
instance, popular blogger Hemant Mehta, “The Friendly Atheist,” wrote, "Scalia believing in the devil?
Not as a metaphor, but as a physical being? Seriously?! It's frightening to me
that anyone would believe that." Of course Justice Scalia probably doesn’t
mean what Mehta thinks he means.
When Christians say they believe in a personal devil they
don’t mean a funny fellow with horns, red tights, and a pointy tail any more
then they believe that God is a kindly old man with a long white beard who
lives in the sky. Misunderstanding and caricature certainly play a role in the
incredulity many people have to accepting the idea of a devil, but I think much
of it can be traced to a general skepticism modern people have towards
spiritual realities. Our default belief is to say that only the physical world
is real. If we say we believe in God, however, we admit that there is more to the
world than meets the eye.
We have to get one thing straight though, God alone is
uncreated. God has no opposite, and none of his creatures is equally bad as he
is good. C.S. Lewis writes, “No being
could attain a ‘perfect badness’ opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for
when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory,
energy, and existence itself), there would be none of him left.” The Church
teaches that the Devil is a created being—an angel to be precise—a spiritual
entity in rebellion against its creator who maliciously seeks to oppose the
work of God in the world.
This article of faith actually makes compelling sense of the
world. Our newspapers and history books are full of horrific stories of war,
genocide, and unspeakable human cruelty. All around us it seems as if there is
a malicious evil power at work in the world. Perhaps no example is more
startling than the rise of National Socialism and the resulting holocaust that
occurred in Germany, one of the world’s most cultured and advanced
civilizations.
If you think the devil is a naïve and simplistic fairy tale,
perhaps you should ask yourself if you are not the one being naïve and
simplistic? Can such obvious evil as the holocaust be explained merely in terms
of social and psychological dysfunction?
As Christians we have even more reason to believe that the
devil is real. Not only has the Church throughout history warned us about him,
but Jesus did too! In today’s Gospel
passage, Jesus tells a story about a man who sows good seed in his field.
However, during the night when everyone is asleep an enemy creeps into the
field and sows wild seed among the wheat. The wild seed is often translated as
weeds or tares, but the Greek word more precisely refers to a ryegrass called
Darnel. Darnel is a weed that is poisonous to eat and that is nearly indiscernible
from wheat until it is mature. The situation described by Jesus here is
actually not an unusual one. Many commentators point out that in agrarian
societies such as Jesus’ own, it is not uncommon for vandals to seek to
undermine the crop of their enemies or competitors by sowing bad seed in their
fields.
Why does Jesus tell this story? The main focus of Jesus’
ministry was to announce that the Kingdom of Heaven—the long awaited time where
God’s righteous rule would be established on earth—was now at hand.
In this chapter in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells many
parables to explain to the people the nature of the Kingdom. One thing that
Jesus wants us to know is that although the Kingdom has been inaugurated in his
coming, there is a gap between its beginning and the time of its ultimate
consummation. There is a period of sowing and growth before the harvest.
Jesus actually gives us an explanation of this particular
parable. He tells us that the field is the world, and the one who sows the
seeds is the “Son of Man,” Jesus’ favorite designation for himself. The enemy
that sowed the wild seed is the devil, the enemy of God’s Kingdom. The seed
that the Son of Man sows is the Children of the Kingdom, the Church, but Satan
has sown his own seed in the same field, and these seeds are his own children.
We shouldn’t imagine that Jesus is saying that these people
are literally Satan’s offspring, but rather they are the ones in whom Satan’s
evil seed has been sown. No one was created to be a weed, and in fact most of
us are a mixture of wheat and weed. There is wheat that is slowly becoming weed
and weed that is slowly becoming wheat. St. Augustine writes, “There is this
difference between people and real grain and real weeds, for what was grain in
the field is grain and what were weeds are weeds. But in the Lord’s field,
which is the Church, at times what was grain turns into weeds and what was weed
turns into grain, and no one knows what they will be tomorrow.”
Just prior to this
passage, Jesus told a similar parable about a sower sowing seed under a variety
of different conditions. In that parable, the seed was “the word of the
Kingdom.” Similarly we can say that just as Jesus sows the word of life in the
gospel of the Kingdom, Satan sows his own poisonous lies.
Those in whom Satan’s lies have taken root are his children
just as those in whom the gospel has taken root are children of God.
Jesus once rebuked the Pharisees by calling them “children of
the devil.” The reason is that although they claimed to speak for God, they
were really serving the devil in opposing the truth. Just as Satan comes on as
an angel of light, so do his children often come on as truth tellers or even
servants of God. Like Darnel, they may appear as wheat, but by their fruit you
shall know them.
In Jesus’ parable, the slaves of the householder suggest that
the weeds be pulled up and destroyed, but the householder says that is better
to let them grow together, lest in pulling up the weeds the wheat be uprooted
too. Throughout history there have been misguided attempts on the part of human
beings to take it upon themselves to root out evil from the world. Examples include
Inquisitions, witch trials, and even ethnic cleansing.
The problem is that, because of the weeds in our heart, our
attempts to act as judge are all too likely to be oppressive, playing into the
devil’s plan to disrupt and destroy God’s Kingdom. Even as we speak a
fanatical, jihadist, sect of Islam has gained control of Mosul, a city in Iraq,
and is attempting to purge it of infidels by driving out Christians, all under
the pretense of serving God.
Throughout Church history this parable has been used to
condemn the execution of those who were considered heretics. For instance
Martin Luther said, “This passage should in all
reason terrify the grand inquisitors and murderers of the people, where they
are not brazened faced, even if they have to deal with true heretics. But at
present they burn the true saints and are themselves heretics. What is that but
uprooting the wheat, and pretending to exterminate the tares, like insane
people?”
Only God is righteous enough and wise enough to judge. Only
God’s word is sharp enough to divide even spirit from soul, and joint from
marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
C.S. Lewis has said that there are two errors that we are
prone to fall into when it comes to the Devil. One is to ignore him, and act as
if he doesn’t exist, but the other is to take an unhealthy interest in him,
seeing his handiwork under every bush, obsessively seeking to root him out, and
living in constant fear and anxiety about him. The devil is equally happy with
both errors.
Jesus’ council to us is to not be anxious or afraid but to have
patience and resist the temptation to pull out the weeds. Although our enemy
currently sows mischief and confusion, his doom is sure. Christ has already
vanquished him through his death and resurrection, and his servants—the wicked
powers and principalities—have been disarmed and unmasked. They may do harm in
the present, but they cannot ultimately frustrate God’s Kingdom. On the day of
the great harvest all the forces of evil will be thrown into the fire and
destroyed once and for all.
