Don’t Let the Evil One Take Root in Your Child’s Heart

The Parable of Weeds Among the Wheat is a meaningful lesson for parents to constantly bring to mind in their mission of raising virtuous children in a deceitful world. 

Less remembered than the often quoted Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-23), the Parable of Weeds Among the Wheat (Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43) can be just as powerful. Jesus tells a story of how those who were responsible for guarding the good soil in which the Word of God was planted failed in their duty to protect. This failure allowed the enemy – aka Satan – to sow his lies into the hearts of those who heard the Word of God. Those weeds/lies took root and began to grow.

Jesus goes on in His parable to explain how it is difficult to separate the wheat from the weeds as they first develop. However, at the “harvest time” (aka end of the age), the “reapers” (aka angels) gather all that is contaminated to be burned in the fires of hell. Fortunately, the uncorrupted wheat/people that can be distinguished from the weeds/lies will thrive.

Deceived by Lies

When Christians hear the Word of God, their hearts seek to follow it. Regrettably, many will struggle due to the debauchery of society and the confusions and lies sown by our sinful world.  They try their best to stay in good soil but get deceived by the evil one. It becomes difficult for them to distinguish the truths Jesus teaches from the lies that not only the secular culture advances but also some ignorant or disreputable clergy endorse or at best remain silent.  Some of Christianity’s truths vs. the world’s lies include:

Lie = Christians can be pro-choice

Truth = The true term for ‘pro-choice’ is ‘murder-supporter’ so Christians can only be pro-life

What concerned Jesus 2,000 years ago in His parable is just as true today. Satan leads people to believe his lies over the Lord’s truths, and this is especially damaging when it’s the hearts and minds of children that get contaminated. Moms and dads are primarily responsible for guarding children from being infected by the evil one. As described in the Parable of Weeds Among the Wheat, parents must not fall asleep in their duty to protect, lest the enemy will sow weeds.

Protect Youngsters’ Eyes and Ears

A fundamental way to keep the weeds/lies of the world from intertwining with the wheat/children is for parents to be cautious in what they allow their kids’ eyes to see and ears to hear. Unfortunately, too many moms and dads allow their children unfettered access to devilish social media interactions. They hand them smart phones and allow online access to X-rated sites via laptops and devices without establishing rules and setting up parental controls. Similarly, parents all too often allow their youngsters to waste hours each day playing violent video games or listening to music with disgusting lyrics. (For information on how to set up rules and controls for safer internet access, see previous articles here and here.)

By allowing over-exposure of the culture’s depravity, indecency, and self-indulgence, parents are allowing worldliness to choke out the godliness that they should be bringing to light in their kids’ manner of living. Saint Paul described “worldliness” as exchanging the truth of God for a lie and worshipping and serving created things rather than the Creator. Worldliness is an enormous problem with the 21^st century population, especially the youth and young adults. 

Parents must be vigilant in limiting the ways the evil one enters their children’s daily lives. As importantly, they must also put effort into exposing their sons and daughters to good things such as weekly Mass attendance and daily prayer time. When parents fall asleep in this parental duty, destructive weeds will slowly but surely penetrate their youngsters’ hearts. These weeds/lies will take root, the good fruit Christians should be working at producing. 

There Is a Hell

As Jesus tells us later in His parable, destructive weeds end up in hell:

 ^“Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.” (Matthew 13:40-42)

Knowing God’s kingdom is where we want to live eternally, and not in the “furnace of fire,” we must try our best to resist temptations by shielding our eyes and closing our ears as much as possible to the sins of the world. We also must stay on the narrow path that leads through the narrow gate, even though it will be less popular and more difficult to follow.

It was about 300 years after Jesus’s earthly life that St. Basil the Great explained more about the easier, wider path that too many people take:

“Hell can’t be made attractive, so the devil makes attractive the road that leads there.”

Do You Want to Grow Weeds or Grow Fruit?

Moms and dads might want to further explain to their children the message of Jesus’s parable by imagining one’s soul is like a garden. A garden is meant to look and smell beautifully and be filled with life. In order for this to happen, a garden must be maintained. If a garden has been untended for a period of time, it will require a lot of work to restore it to its full beauty and fruitfulness.

Restoring will include determining which plants are fruit bearing or have the potential to bear good fruit. These are worth saving. Conversely, which weeds are threatening the good plants and need removing?

The weeds are one’s sins. They need to be uprooted. In addition, the gardener needs to watchfully guard against their future return. Like with weeds, sins that have had a place in our lives for a long time are difficult to destroy. And if one is hasty with uprooting them, they will quickly grow back.

It’s common when parents ask their youngsters to go out to the yard to pull weeds, kids will just remove whatever is visible above ground. Having done so, they assume the weeds are gone. But just days later, they return. This is because weeds – like sins – spend a long time growing beneath the surface. They develop strongly enough to break through the soil and choke the rest of the garden. For this reason, a productive uprooting of each weed means digging beneath the surface so one is pulling not just the visible leaves but the whole root system.

Raise a Counter-Cultural Family

Sins, too, develop deep root systems. To root out the sins so they have less of a chance of returning, one must undo whatever allows them to take root in the first place. This involves staying away from things, circumstances, and people who tempt a person into sinning. In a kid’s life, this might look like the need to push away from screen time, to stay away from that unsupervised party or to leave that public school, and to not hang out with beguiling and delinquent friends.

Jesus’s Parable of Weeds Among the Wheat teaches us that good and evil are growing alongside each other throughout our lifetime. Moms and dads are especially called to keep their youngsters from seeing, hearing, and believing the deceptive lies that the enemy is sowing. This involves staying awake, remaining vigilant, and counter-culturally preaching truths. Our Lord desires that we are to overcome the world through and with Him. 

^“I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)