Stillin - that's a good question. I think I would ask it too.
Tammy: You know you can ask your questions of Him even now. He does hear. He hears because He is alive. All you have to do is “Ask, and you shall receive,” but you have to “listen” very carefully. You know this, yes?
I think some of the answer is that God was not willing that any innocent be uprooted with the guilty.
Yes, that was/is exactly His reason so to speak; however, the real reason is that he doesn't want those that "belong to Him" to be uprooted. The "weeds" are not His. Remember, there are "children of God" and then there are "children of the devil" obviously both living among each other. You can read about that in the letters of John.
But what about the innocent who have been harmed by the guilty who are allowed to remain?
Your statement here can be taken two ways—one, the innocent who remain—or two, the guilty who remain. Correct me if I err, but I think you mean “guilty who are allowed to remain”—yes?
I would ask this question of Jesus, but I think I might be starting to understand something.
Then ask Him now. Listen. . . .
Who are the guilty and who are the innocent?
Good question and I think it depends on your meaning of the terms. You might need to define your terms first before you ask the question. Because ALL are guilty. ALL have fallen short of the glory of God. No one is innocent. No one is good except God. This is the overall reality of things; however, I think you might mean more general and relative terms when you ask this question—you know—in comparison to. . . .
What guilty person today is not a result of the harm done to them? Harm from family, from society, from strangers?
There are some, perhaps. But for the most part, we are all a product of the world we are each responsible for creating.
This is very true. No matter how good we are, no matter how innocent we are, we are still ALL guilty of harming someone, somewhere, in our lives. Have we asked forgiveness of those whom we have wronged? Have we asked forgiveness from God for having done so? Do we forgive others who have harmed us? Remember, our being forgiven is conditioned upon how we forgive others.
Perhaps that's why forgiveness from God is a gift given freely. Because so few people have that face of evil.
Most people are just lost; a product of what we have allowed to become of humanity - by ignoring those
who have needed help; by refusing to understand or forgive or help heal those who have been hurt; and by
whatever other reasons I can't currently think of.
So I guess what I'm saying is - we might think we're pulling up the weeds in this figurative garden;
but those weeds might just be a product of what we, ourselves, have created.
Remember: There are some in the congregations who probably would be delighted in pulling us up out of the congregation as weeds. Sad, isn’t it. If we do not think we are weeds and others do. And who gave "us" authority to pull up weeds? Who? On the contrary, His directive is NOT to pull up weeds. Remember: it is Jah who is the "gardener"--not you, not me.