“Deep roots mean a good, healthy plant. Shallow roots mean the plant will die.”
I was talking the other day with a man of God who used to be a successful farmer. Now, you would think I would have discussed this series on the parable of the soils with him before writing it. No, that would have been intelligent. Instead, I processed more of my thoughts as we discussed it on Friday morning.
For security and safety purposes, I won’t use his real name, so let’s call him Bob. Bob used to own and run several farms. He had several employees and they planted and harvested and were very successful.
He had read these blog posts, and he thought they were very important. (Whew! I’m glad the farmer didn’t point out all the ways I was wrong …) He agreed that the parable was correct; plants with deep roots are strong and produce good fruit. Plants with shallow roots spring up quickly and have bad fruit and eventually die.
He also brought out another danger with shallow soil – the water. If you irrigate plants with shallow soil, you will flood the soil and drown the seed or plant in the process.
While the parable doesn’t bring this out, I found it enlightening. The parable dealt with the heat of the sun as hard times, persecution, etc. If we deal with the symbol of water as the “water of the Word,” then it brings a new dimension to the danger of shallow soil.
A shallow faith cannot handle the water of the Word of God. It cannot handle deep truths, hard truths from Jesus and the scripture. Those hard, difficult truths (as well as hard, difficult times in life) are meant to drive the roots down deeper for water, meant to drive our faith down deeper for greater truth, a truth not based on feelings or philosophy but the reality of Christ.
The truth of the water of the Word will overwhelm and confuse a person with a shallow faith. The Word will not be able to sink down deep and help create a strong, durable faith, and therefore deep truth will do the opposite – it will drive a person to reject faith.
This is why we must be sure new believers, all believers, are not coddled with half-truths or feel good messages. We cannot simply “tickle their ears.” The Truth of Christ challenges us to a radical, all or nothing faith, a faith that drives us to self-sacrificial action and obedience for the Kingdom of God.
By the way, I took the opportunity to go over the rest of the parable with Bob, my farmer brother. It is good when brethren can talk and encourage one another.
Peace.
Leave a Reply