The kingdom of heaven may be compared to Birmingham Education Authority, tasked with sowing good seed among the children of the city; but while everybody went about their business, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat; their scheme – to spread extremist Islamic views in the city’s schools – they called Operation Trojan Horse. One day the alleged scheme came to light. And the people of Birmingham protested, saying, ‘We expect our schools to promote ‘British values’ of tolerance and fairness; how, then, did these extremists infiltrate them?’ The government answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The Prime Minister reinforced his commitment to assert ‘British values’ with a ‘muscular’ approach against ‘preachers of hate’. But others warned of the dangers of a witch-hunt, of upsetting the delicate balance of Birmingham’s racial ecology, of the dangers of trying to get rid of extremism by adopting extremist ways oneself. And if anyone had asked him Jesus would have repeated what he first said all those years before, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest’.
One of the most pressing questions facing the world today is, How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves? This is the question provoked by the parable of the weeds and the wheat. …
- from my talk today, The Trojan Horse and the Weeds and the Wheat – how can we oppose evil without being made evil ourselves? The 'pressing question' is Walter Wink's, from Engaging the Powers; Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. This seminal book has underpinned my theology for the past 20 years or more; I was redirected to it again by Paul Neuchterlein’s Reflections and Questions on today’s reading in his Girardian Lectionary, Year A, Proper 11a.
