In Jesus’ parable of the tares and the wheat, the farmer’s field hands may have wondered, “What was he thinking?” when the farmer told them not to bother pulling the tares (weeds) growing in his wheat field. Wait to pull them up at harvest time, he said; just don’t take them to the barn. He didn’t worry over the tares; he simply refused to give them power (see Matthew 13:24-30).
Jesus lived close to the land. He would have understood that weeds compete with crops and could potentially reduce crop yields. But he also knew that tares and wheat (both species of grass) could be hard to distinguish at younger stages. So instead of inadvertently pulling up wheat in an effort to get rid of the tares, the farm hands in Jesus’ parable were to put the tares in their place, in a bonfire, and the wheat crop would be fine.
This attitude toward the tares only makes sense if the farmer was convinced that the tares had no power to harm the wheat. I think Jesus uses this parable to teach us that evil, or error, has only the status we give it. He gave it no status. It isn’t right to ignore evil, but one must both recognize and prove that evil is incapable of having any effect on good, or any good effect.
