The Tares

 

 

Matthew 13:25

 

But while the man slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

Looking in the Wrong Place

 

Last night I had a revelation. I would love to tell you that while my dog was digging in the back yard, he came upon golden tablets which answered all of life’s questions but I found no golden tablets, however I did find some tares.

 

Yesterday, in some ways I did walk in the woods. It had been a terrible day. Week actually. One after another things were piling up to bring me down. Late last night I retrieved my Bible, My Book of Mormon, and a twelve pack. I thought that by careful research, and ardent prayer some divine answer would come to me from the great beyond like a mystic Mr. Clean, and all my questions would be answered. After about an hour there was no connection either between the two books or between myself and heaven. All that was left was a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and an empty cardboard box. The Great Beyond was beyond me!

 

I theorized that it was statistically impossible to search those books, drink all that beer and not find one solitary bit of inspiration. Was God mad at me? Was I  damned? Then it came to me.  Not in a vision but that quiet inner voice that we never tell anyone about. You know. The one you can’t hear, but you do. The one that gets you accused of talking to yourself when you get caught mumbling to yourself on the porch? Yeah. That voice. No bushes around my house burst into flame. There were no flashes of light. No “personages,” appeared.  I heard no audible voices, I just understood in the quiet of the night, “The Kingdom of God is within you!” And it hit me. All my life I had been looking in the wrong place!

 The Treasure 

 

 

Suddenly, I was the man who found that treasure in the field, and was willing to sell all he owned just to have it. But he didn’t have to sell anything. He already had that field! For the field, that “Kingdom of God”  was within him as it is in all of us. It was a Christmas present. The Garden was called Eden and had always been there. We could have seen it, had we only looked.

 

But, our gardens, like so many others was covered with tares that had been sown since the day of our birth. And besides that, garbage had been thrown over the fence into it by passers by. Some with no thought about us, but there are others deliberately trying to get our crops to fail, and it was the tares, choking the wheat growing in our field of life. Garbage we can pick up. Tares we have to pull up, and Tares can hide in plain sight. For that we need eyes that see, ears that hear and a hearts that know. And the voice began to teach. 

 

You can’t “learn” anything. You can only be made aware of what is already there. You are born with all the software you need, you just need to know how to run it! When a baby first opens its eyes and sees the world, it knows that there is a world out there but it has to relate with that world, to get the big babies to bring food. It already knows that it needs to be fed. The trick is how to do it. 

 

 

 

Tilling the Garden

As we progress through life we come upon people who try to teach us how to till our garden and get fed, but those are their answers, not ours. While some have good intentions there are others who only have their own agendas, and these agendas little by little, will cause our gardens to be sown with tares, and though we can smell the flowers we can’t see them so we forever reach farther and farther out for spiritual water or intellectual fertilizer that we hope will make the garden grow. When all we have to do is pull up the tares, take them to the road, lock the gate, and VOILA! There it is! Your own personal garden. It had been there all along. You would have seen it had you only looked!

Dangerous Tares

 

So, what are these tares? Tares are anything that replaces what you know to be true. Anything that doesn’t allow your garden to grow. You are born with seed. Your gift.  The seed that will become you. Your own inner truth. You may not know who or what that big baby is, hovering over you, but you understand that if you make enough noise your seed will take root. Life is good. 

 

Then you show up the first day of school with your bright shiny face, knowing that up until now you could always ask that big baby at home, the one with the long hair, and she will cook a hotdog for you. But now, there is another big baby, big baby “B” who tells you that big baby “A” is not big baby at all, that only she, “B” and a whole bunch of unseen big babies have all the answers, a new understanding of the world that you thought heretofore you had all figured out! Well, Big Baby “B”had just sown your first major tare in your garden and you’re too fascinated with all the greenery of a Tare called “education” to realize that’s it’s all just a bunch of weeds and cow flop . . . Because now you’re becoming “educated!” A very dangerous Tare is education.  Education is a two edged sword. Used properly it can defend you, but if false pride overtakes you it will turn and cut you. Great intellectual atheists mock believers with arrogance and pride and their words are so funny and insightful but their golden tablets are made of fools gold which is worse than useless. But there are two more Tares that form an unholy trinity and like education they can be good or bad. If you buy totally into just one it can be a long way home but if you buy into all three at the same time, well, frankly you can’t get there from here! Tares will tear you up!

 

Besides education the other two Tares are religion and psychology. Right away the preachers are condemning me to hell, and the psychologists are diagnosing me. But, it won’t work on me. Do you want to know why? Because they can’t sow Tares in my garden. I have a lifetime supply of “RoundUp!” THAT’S why!

God is not religion. People fail to separate the two. Religion is an attack on our personal relationship with the Almighty. Each relationship customized for just that person. If you heed that inner voice you have peace. If you don’t you have chaos. It’s as simple as that. No one can tell you what fills your “God Hole,” You just know! 

Psychology is not a science. It is an effort to circumvent Religion. Psychology and religion circle each other like two black holes. Endless therapy with no solid answer, and endless sermons that are misinterpreted by big baby “C,” the very Reverend Gotta Makea Buck! God is left in the waiting room and the active shootings go on and on while each one contributes one more passage to the DSM. a new medication is introduced, and the Tares grow and grow. 

 

When Joseph Smith came up with his gig he had simply walked out into the woods and found his garden. So did Martin Luther, Ghandi, and Mohammed. So, how do you tell people about this? Well, you gotta market it. Gotta have an angel. Won’t work without an angel. Smith went one better. His angel was a prospector! There was GOLD in them thar hills! Because that’s what people EXPECTED in 1823! Mohammed’s angel just whipped him all over a cave. That’s what HAPPENED on caravans, and Ghandi made salt and fooled around with his teenage nieces, because that’s what you DO when you’re the most interesting guru in India.

 

People will buy the fruit they are most familiar with. They will feel comfortable with anything that seems to fit their own inner truth that they came equipped with. Then, with a little smoke and mirrors they will abandon their garden and be led to other truths that will come from outside purveyors and while appearing to be roughy the same as theirs but is really Truth 2.0. It’s no longer their truth, it has become someone else’s truth! Like wearing someone else’s shoes. See how easy that was! Making you think that these ideas had been your ideas all along. And the boot seems to fit. All you have to do is lace that bugger up! It’s known as an Aha Moment or a Moment of Clarity in psychological circles but the only thing that becomes clear is the roar of your “Prophet’s” jet as it leaves the runway with your money! Praise de Lawd!

 

 

 

 

And why do I pick on the tale of golden tablets? Because it is a perfect example of a fairly good set of beliefs getting properly bastardized by aggressive marketing and human greed. When Joseph stumbled down from that hill he had it pretty well together. All the churches were full of it, which they were, money buys everything, which it will, and if you can nail two things together that have never been nailed together before you’ll get that jet! We need to get back to the actual teachings of Jesus.

 

Joseph Smith quickly found out that nobody was listening to him about his Imaginary friends because they were too busy down at some tent revival, waving their hands in the air like they don’t care and shouting “Hallelujah” while some tap dancing preacher passed the plate! So what did Joe do? Well, he had to market it! People don’t want to hear that some fairly intelligent young man came upon some inner truths while sitting under an apple tree. No! An angel gave it to him. He was too stupid to figure anything out for himself. Everybody knew that. Eventually God Himself had to come down and even bring His kid and first cousin, and gave him what? GOLDEN TABLETS?

 

So, he wrote a book, or rather God wrote it. Thats the number one problem with writing a religious book? First off YOU can’t be the author. GOD, in some magical, mystical way is always the author. You’re just the secretary. Now this is not to say the book is not inspired. Who do you think planted the seeds in your garden in the first place? Call it  the Bible, The Book of Mormon, the Qu’ran, or The Karma Sutra; the song remains the same. So everybody gather down by the river and listen up. When you begin trying to talk your way into someone else’s garden you have to come up with a prophet, a guru, or even a Rock Star. They’re all the same . It can be Joel Osteen or Billy Joe Jim Bob down at The First Self Righteous Church and Hamburger Bar. Can’t be saved without a prophet!

 

If I were to say at this point, “If you believe that, have I got a bridge for you, and it’s on sale” the Mormons will try to buy it, the Catholics would try to out bid them, and the Muslims would fly a plane into it! There is no bridge and there never were any golden tablets people! Those were just a fire that you burn in your crazy mind! Those are misdirections. You will see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear, believe what you want to believe and call it faith. The human brain is designed to connect the dots and it don’t matter if the dots are real or imaginary so long as you have faith! Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?

Magic Quarters

 

Penn and Teller have a routine. Teller begins to snatch quarters out of thin air, dropping them into a tin cup. It has to be a tin cup so you can hear the loud “clink” as it hits. He does this many times, and while at first you think it’s all a sham, after about a buck fifty or so you start to believe in the quarters. They are real after all and Teller simply doesn’t have “something up his sleeve.” After several more “clinks” he reaches forward to a man in the front row, takes his glasses from his face, shakes them over the cup and . . . CLINK CLINK, and rattle, rattle, rattle, two quarters fall from the glasses into the cup. Verily Verily I say unto you, I have been to Penn and Teller’s show and I have seen the quarters! Just like Joseph Smith’s witnesses saw those golden tablets. Would I lie to you? Well, of course I would!  But I HEARD the clinks. They SAW the tablets and I saw the quarters fall. Well, of course we did. Because that’s what we EXPECTED to hear and see! Our brains connected the dots. Filled in the gaps. The God of the gaps! And made us think that we had arrived at The Truth by our own volition. Those golden tablets were there! There was a buck seventy-five in that cup. Only one thing keeps getting in the way. Quarters or Golden Tablets! THIS IS PATENTLY IMPOSSIBLE!  

 

 

 

Many are called but few are chosen 

 

At this point most of you have left this article and unsubscribed. Many are called, but few are chosen. I am not an atheist! When I gaze upon my Mercedes I logically conclude that there must have been a factory. I KNOW there was a salesman because he got my money. When I gaze upon a leaf I also understand that there must be a Creator. To deny that is as illogical as believing in golden tablets. Joseph’s original conclusion that all the churches were false was spot on but the edited version of HIS truth was all marketing and with the addition of bells and whistles such as golden tablets and angels it became a lie!  God made man. Man made religion, and religion made theology. Theology is man’s feeble attempt to explain the unexplainable. Where the truth falls short a lie will always fill the gaps and that friends and neighbors is the God of the Gaps, the father of all lies! And he uses Tares! He gives you Tares and calls it spinach. Well it ain’t spinach, and you ain’t Popeye! 

 

Psychology is just religion 2.0. Psychologists hold onto their beliefs as firmly as Baptists hold onto fried chicken. Psychological theory has progressed all the way from, “Do you love your mother” to “Why do you love your mother?” Religion and psychology try to attain the same thing. To get a person to find that inner truth in a  garden full of tares. But, that will never work. That won’t fill the plate, and weeds will never taste like watermelon. Joseph gave us golden tablets and psychologists give us golden diagnoses. Neither dog will hunt. What works today will fall apart tomorrow. The garden is always there under the Tares. You could have seen it had you only looked! The Catholic will find themselves back in the confessional, the patient will end up right back on the couch at one hundred dollars an hour and the cursing the day of his birth because he denied the garden even existed and ate weeds all his life. You must remove the tares. Until you understand that, your seed will fall on rocky ground. You must find that garden, clear the tares, and lock the gate. Then, and only then will your garden grow! He’s been there all along. You could have seen Him had you only looked.