WHEAT & TARES IN MEMORY [F, 7-16-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

[Sort of following up on the column of 7-16 on Bad Thoughts and Good Thoughts…]

Old age is understandably a time of worry about memory. Our brains become less retentive, especially in the short term, and we have so much in our brains that we are bound to forget some of it. The bigger problem is that there is a lot we’d like to forget and can’t. There are things we have seen, as the saying goes, that “we can’t un-see.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could forget only the bad stuff? That’s not the way it works.

Jesus talked about this in his observations on “the wheat and the tares.” We don’t usually say “tares” anymore, and we don’t usually interpret his words on this as a saying about memory, but I think it applies very nicely. The wheat and the tares, the good memories and the bad, are planted in our brains together. Sometimes the tares get yanked out, as in various dementias, but the wheat gets yanked out, too. It’s best, Jesus says, to let them be as they are, until the harvest.

In modern translations, “tares” is usually translated as “weeds,” which is good enough to get the main idea across. But Jesus used tares intentionally. He wasn’t talking about just any old weed.

Tares are bearded darnels, Lolium temulentum, a species of rye. The seeds are a strong soporific poison. Tares look like regular wheat, until the ear appears. Only then is the difference noticed. So if “the enemy” wants to mess up your crop of wheat, tares are the ideal seeds to sow while the farm hands aren’t paying attention, because they won’t suspect anything is wrong until it’s too late to uproot them without causing damage to the crop you want.

So here is Matthew 13:24-30: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good thoughts in his brain. But while he was being careless with his brain, and not paying attention, his enemy came and sowed bad thoughts. Then when he started paying attention, and he wanted to remember the good thoughts, the bad thoughts came up, too. The doctors said, “We can give you a lobotomy. Then you won’t remember the bad thoughts.” His friends said “Let’s get drunk or high so you can’t remember the bad stuff.” He said, “No, a lobotomy will take away all my memories, and booze and dope will just make it worse. I’ll just have to deal with them together until I die. Then the bad thoughts will go to hell, but the good thoughts will remain, for death does not conquer love.”

That’s not exactly the way Jesus told it, and you probably should refresh your brain about the way he did say it by reading it in the RSV or NIV or KJV or some such translation, instead of the MRV [McFarland Reversed Vision], but it’s the way it goes when we are thinking about individual brains instead of societies and cultures, which was the Jesus’ context.

Bad thoughts and good thoughts don’t always look a lot different from one another. The bad ones want to make us think that they will bring us satisfaction and enjoyment. It’s only when they’ve tripped us up and humiliated us and drenched us in sadness that we realize how we’ve been duped, the way the tares duped the field hands in Jesus’ story.

There are so many times of anxiety and fear and embarrassment and loss and stupidity and pain that I would like to forget. They are stuck there, though, in my brain, along with the times of pleasure and joy and satisfaction and appreciation and thanks. I can’t get rid of some without getting rid of all. I can, though, decide which I shall honor. When a bad memory arises, I offer it to God for repentance and repair. When a good memory arises, I offer it to God in thanksgiving and hope.

John Robert McFarland

“If we accept heaven, we shall not be able to retain even the smallest souvenir of hell.” CS Lewis