We talk a fair amount about Wheat and Tares, but sometimes we need to talk about beans and wheat. I’m sharing a guest post on the topic of monoculture wheat (“Monocots”), standing in rows and tangled beans (“Dicots”), growing and giving back at the same time.
Here is the guest post by Amateur Parent:
I read a lot of comments and essays about dichotomous or two-sided thoughts. In religion, sometimes, we feel unease for having seen two sides of a situation when so many around us seem satisfied with a singular or Monocot view.
Dicot and Monocot started out as agronomy terms. A Dicot is any plant that comes from a seed that has two halves … Like a bean. Monocots are plants that come from a seed that does not split and has only one part. Wheat is an excellent example of a Monocot.
Church culture would like us all to be wheat plants — wheat grows from a small seed that never splits in half, wheat grows straight up, and has lots of side stems. Wheat plants produce wheat just as expected. Wheat has been bred to have a shorter and thicker stem. Modern wheat varieties don’t get knocked down as easily by poor weather, and more plant energy can go onto increasing wheat kernel size. Modern plants are all about uniformity and easy harvesting. Because of the shorter stem, when wheat is planted tightly together, a field is stronger against the elements than individual plants are alone.
No matter how you cultivate a bean plant, the seed is going to split. It is not going to grow straight. A bean plant will twist and turn in order to find its best situation. Some varieties like to climb and some have more of a bush shape. Beans have lots of leaves and the pods can be a little hard to find. A field of beans lacks the majestic uniformity of a wheat field.
But ..
Remember in the midst of your dichotomous thinking, that a single bean plant ends up producing much more than a single wheat plant. A uniform wheat field is majestic to look at from afar, but the beans will produce more per acre and their roots bind nitrogen which improves the soil. Beans give back far more than wheat.
Planting beans will enrich the soil so that future wheat grows better. Monoculture planting practices — when a field is just one type of plant — facilities harvesting and makes it easy to find any plants that do not belong in the crop. Monoculture also reduces the micro nutrients found in the final harvest.
Mixing plants within a field is healthier for the land and for the long term health of the plant species but it makes harvesting very time consuming. It also makes a higher quality crop. The extra work makes it easy to resist what is really a better practice and a healthier one.
We have all heard so many church analogies about wheat fields and none about bean fields. Remember that wheat fields fail after a few generations of monoculture unless heavily fertilized and cared for, or alternated with crops that improve the soil. While wheat plants tend to support each other, they also tend to lay over or fall over in large swaths whenever a significant wind blows and or rain falls hard. Their strength is also their weakness.
All plants grow with sunlight, and water. They all grow heavenward, just like people.
I always wanted to be a wheat plant out there with my peers, but I am a bean.
Do you think we need to make room for beans as well as wheat? If asked, what kind of crop do you see yourself as? How do we get people to take the extra effort to accommodate a mixed field and not treat beans as tares?
Wheat & Tares 
Wonderful parable! I have grown up “straight”, but I am not really sure it is that kind of “straight” you are talking about :-). Regardless, I have to say I am much more of a bean. I do think much of the wheat tends to label me more of a “tare”. As a bean I certainly to want a little more sunshine and less wheat looking down on me.
On how to make that happen, the only way I can think is for the beans to gain credibility by showing others in the ward that you love them by serving them extensively so they have no way of saying your heart is in the the wrong place.
Really nice and thoughtful post. Love this line: “They all grow heavenward, just like people.” I agree with the sentiments expressed here, absolutely.
Sadly, however, as much as I deeply believe we DO need to make room for beans as well as wheat, I don’t believe the church, its leaders or its members, wants this at all. For all the good that the church does (and I think it’s a lot, actually), there seems to be such a commitment to and a demand for both conformity and uniformity that any deviation is seen, almost reflexively, as a threat rather than as an opportunity to expand our notions of community.
Some of this is influenced by our (and general Christianity’s) rhetoric: “The way is narrow,” “strait is the gate,” etc. But underneath everything, I think one place where we really fall down is that as a people (speaking generally here) we are much more likely to be slaves to fear than ambassadors of hope. And deviance of any kind (just look at Elder Oaks’ recent conference talk for one example) is not only not tolerated, but actively vilified.
I don’t quite know how we take the (IMHO) pretty expansive and inclusive teachings of Christ and make them into a very long and narrow checklist, but we appear to have done just that. That means that people who are beans, people like me and I’m guessing a lot of other folks on this blog, have to work that much harder to be part of a community that, ironically, often seems not to want us. Truth be told, that depresses me on some days, but then I remember Joseph Smith’s words about enjoying the same sociality in Heaven as we do here, and that comforts me. I’d rather spend an eternity hanging out with hawkgrrrl, Ziff, Andrew S and others here than with a bunch of identical wheat stalks. I hope that means I’ll get to do exactly that.
“Easy harvesting” of wheat seems to be an interesting part of the parable. If we are focused on the harvest, uniform wheat branches can help increase yield, and farms or mission presidents or apostles would focus on that. One way to measure success, which can become a measure of what is important to preach to all.
In 1950s, there were tenfold increases in rate of wheat yield annually, but by 2000s, for various reasons, there is little to none yield increase for wheat farmers.
It forces farmers to consider other crops. Wheat is not all there is to harvest.
If that analogy fits church harvesting souls, perhaps the field is no longer white, like it used to be, but new thinking is needed to accommodate changes in the environment. New measures of success can be considered. Other crops are of value.
The time for uniformity, correlation, efficient harvesting has passed. That worked a generation ago. Perhaps it no longer yields the same harvest.
Brother Sky, while I agree with your thoughts, I also believe in natural laws, or god’s will, can reveal the path needed forward. Mormon leaders are slow to change rhetoric, but through revelation can change to meet needs.
They may resist, and want the golden years of correlated wheat stalks to harvest because it is easier that way, if the ground no longer yields the fruit, they will change, and follow God’s will on what is important to His work and glory.
That is my hope. As reality sets in that not all people are like wheat, they will eventually concede to a need to allow for others, or they will see smaller and smaller harvests.
As much as they would love to prescribe things one way…they are not totally blind to reality and what is happening in the world. They have just invested a lot in combines and large machinery. Makes it hard to change policies quickly.
Like polygamy, they eventually have to discard what is not sustainable. It just takes them a while to see it and accept others.
I love the parable and the comments!
This reminds me of something I once heard John Dominic Crossan say concerning the parable of the mustard seed. Jesus said the Kingdom of God was like a mustard seed. Well, to ancient Jews, this was a really weird image. Mustard was considered very much a weed that was hard to control. What do you mean the Kingdom of God is like a weed? That’s hard to control? It’s a really weird image.
If Jesus has said the kingdom of God is like a giant sequoia, everyone would have nodded, and said, “Oh yes.” But a weed? You mean like a dandelion? That’s a strange image.
I like this very much! It’s so much more honoring of differences than the wheat/tares narrative. (Tare-ative?)
As the mother of a large family, I feel like I begin to understand what a challenge it is to try to care for and lead a group of very different individuals. Having nice, uniform plants easily harvested with large combines certainly does sound nice–it’s easier work than working with a mixed field, and corraling the plants into neat rows makes me look like an ever better farmer.
But I’ve also been the mother of a large family just long enough to see how attempts to make humans uniform don’t suit the plants, don’t challenge me as a cultivator of plants, and eventually sucks the joy out of the field. Whether it backfires immediately, with the defiant weeds sprouting in areas around tired plants left unseen and unheard, or if it’s wheat plants so spindly from the conformity they can’t keep growing upward without support in a slowly fading field, eventually these mass-production methods don’t work, besides the fact that so many people don’t enjoy them. What brings joy also tends to be, in the long run, the most effective method–at least so far as my parenting experiences have shown.
I certainly identify with the bean plants, and was one who tried to self-prune in order to appear more wheatlike, and ended up pruning away my own blossoms and preventing my own fruit. Now I feel I’m finally coming into my own, and it’s been quite an experience, to grow up to the sky and see, juxtaposted, the faces of the upset farmers, frustrated with how my presence fouls up their plans and fine, large, polished machines…and behind them, the loving sun, shining down on us all.
It does seem that Pres. Uchtdorf sees the value in diversity, but he seems to be alone in this.
Thanks for a fresh look at a parable near and dear to the heart of the blog!
I don’t know if it’s a fad, phenomenon, or a real thing, but we seem to be living in a gluten-intolerant world. What a relief to have the bean alternative, but can the church adjust?
I really, really liked this.
Most excellent. Was Joseph Smith wheat or bean?
Thanks Stephen!
I really like this twist on the parable, especially the idea that the bean plants enrich the soil making all the plants healthier. In the original parable, the tares were allowed to grow with the wheat because of the danger of mistakenly pulling young wheat, not because they offered anything good. This has been a lot of fun to think about. Thanks!
I’m late to the party, but thanks for the shout-out, Brother Sky! I always enjoy your comments, and I’d love to be in a ward with you too!
Loved the parable.
Definitely a bean!