Article September 24, 1990 Issue

Feelings: separating the tares from the wheat

The aim isn't to wipe out good human feelings but to lift them higher through spiritualization of thought.

Hugh Pendexter III

One often hears people talk of feelings or emotions as if they were something disreputable, as if, somehow, they had a special aroma of mortality. In fact, like the human intellect, the human emotions can be symbolized by the tares and wheat in Christ Jesus' parable. (See Matt. 13:24-30.) The "field" can be thought of as individual human experience, which is an apparent mixture of good and evil desires and actions.

In Christian Science we understand the wheat to represent spiritual qualities, that is, whatever is of God, good. The tares are the temptations and limitations associated with the flesh and material world. In the sight of God, all that matters—all that exists—is the wheat. But to human sight, our experience looks like a mixture of divine qualities, such as intelligence, love, health, purity, holiness, and wisdom, with discords such as foolishness, hatred, apathy, sickness, immorality, and inharmony.

According to the parable, our job is to identify as quickly as possible the Godlike qualities, which we nurture as our eternal heritage, and to weed out of thought and totally destroy the ungodly qualities. As explained in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, "Mortal belief (the material sense of life) and immortal Truth (the spiritual sense) are the tares and the wheat, which are not united by progress, but separated."

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