If I may digress momentarily from my usual Law School and Linux rants, I have an allegory I would like to analyze. For anyone unaware, my undergraduate background is in philosophy. One of my favorite courses was philosophy of religion. You have been warned. d^_^b

In The False Gods We Worship, President Spencer W. Kimball notes (of Americans generally and, I suspect, of Latter-day Saints in particular):

We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel--ships, planes, missiles, fortifications--and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan's counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior's teaching...

Although I could, I will not turn this into a critique, either of our country's present obsession with warfare or of successive church leadership's more favorable appraisal of war. Rather, I should like to focus on the idea of being "anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God."

What if we apply this message to religion rather than international warfare? Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the enemy of the church consists, generically, of all evil. I think it is useful and informative to ask which is more important: to be pro-good, or anti-evil?

Now, do not mistake this for a false dichotomy; I do not think these concepts are mutually exclusive. However, I think it may be taken as given that there is enough good to do in this world to keep a person occupied at every moment of life, and similarly enough evil in this world to combat it every hour until death. Consequently, the "opportunity cost" of any individual pro-good activity naturally includes anti-evil alternatives, and vice versa.

That said, given a choice, which ought we choose? This is what I mean when I ask which is more important. Because, to be perfectly candid, I think most religious people are choosing the wrong one. I do not think this is any particular individual's fault; rather, it is a fairly collective trend. I think 21st Century Christianity as a whole is more anti-enemy than pro-kingdom of God (though it is entirely possible that few religions ever truly escape the anti-evil trap).

I won't go into too much detail, but lest I take a major premise as given, merely consider the major issues argued by religious groups in 21st Century America. Abortion, homosexuality, pornography, sex education, evolution. To a lesser degree, drugs and violence, usually as they relate to movies and video games. Do religious organizations pour millions and billions of dollars into global charity? Absolutely. Do they preach love and kindness? Make no mistake, the love of Christ is not overlooked! As I said, I am not presenting a dichotomy. But listen. The loudest leaders do not espouse progressive goodness. The common believer views salvation as an achievement of exclusion, a pursuit not of doing good but of avoiding evil.

I can speculate as to why. Much of Christianity de-emphasizes good works for various biblical reasons, but Christian canon is more expansive than the Pauline epistles. Eight of the Ten Commandments are anti-evil rather than pro-good, but Christ himself boils those down to two--both, pro-good. Historically speaking, pro-good has always been a little esoteric and largely a matter of individual conscience and personal freedom. Most religions praise such concepts in theory, but in practice organized religion ultimately prefers conformity. It is a matter of expedience, I suspect; when one is in the business of saving souls, it is easy to believe that quantity trumps quality. Elder Boyd K. Packer once asked, "How can we give solace to those who are justified without giving license to those who are not?" Church leadership teaches the rules, not the exceptions; individual conscience and personal freedom are rife with exceptions.

As Robert Pirsig so artfully put it, "Nothing disturbs a bishop quite so much as a saint in the parish."

I found a useful metaphor in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, though it requires some reinterpretation. In the Parable, the wheat are the people of God and the tares, ah, less so. d^_^b Because tares are virtually indistinguishable from wheat until harvest time, the planter allows them to grow up together, then separates them out in the end and burns the tares as he gathers the wheat.

Rather than using the field as a metaphor for the world, let us use it as a metaphor for the life of a single human being. Our good works are the wheat we plant; our sins, the tares; the harvest, our eternal reward.

If we accept the suggestion that no one is perfect, then everyone has a problem with tares. An anti-evil approach to Christianity is to dig out those tares (in the case of some Christians I know, dig them out and salt the earth that grew them!). But if one spends one's whole life digging tares (now I'm using a false dichotomy d^_^b) one will have a barren field, at best. Conversely, if one spends one's entire life planting wheat, one's harvest will be significant. For in the end, the Lord puts the tares to the torch--whether you have many or few. Obviously, if you spend your time planting tares or, worse, uprooting wheat, the conversation changes significantly. But the greatest harvest does not go to the one with the least sin. It goes to the one who planted best.

We might extend the metaphor to consider the "choking" effect tares might have on a crop of wheat, but this would deviate from the original metaphor. The planter did not seem overly concerned with the negative impact tares might have on his ultimate yield; he was far more concerned that in uprooting the tares, the wheat would also be damaged before it had time to yield anything at all. This was because the wheat and tares were so hard to tell apart--and here we have another interesting question. How often do we believe ourselves to be uprooting tares (in our own field or in the field of another)? It is true that an expert can tell the difference, but I would submit that few people, if any, are so discerning. Anti-evil thus runs the risk in many cases of in fact being anti-good! I think excellent examples of this abound, most particularly wherever religious people reject free speech and expression in an attempt to crush immorality. How many stalks of wheat come up with those tares?

Love your neighbor. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Be a good parent. I am so weary of going to church and hearing sports metaphors. We're all on the same team here, and the opposition is rendered irrelevant insofar as we are pursuing loving relationships with our fellow beings. The cure for evil is not to do battle with evil; the cure for evil is merely to do good--and not in any self-righteous sense of rote and ritual. The cure for evil is to busy ourselves planting wheat in our own fields and in the fields of others, and to let God worry about the tares. We're ill-equipped for it.