Grace

I have stopped believing in the word ‘deserve’ | Rob Perry

A landowner heads into the city early in the morning to hire some labourers to work in his vineyard. He finds some men in the marketplace doing nothing. They agree to the wage he offers and head off for a day’s work. Three hours later, the landowner goes back out to the street and brings in more labourers. “I will pay you whatever is right,” he says. Three hours after that, and again three hours after that, the landowner repeats the same process. Finally, eleven hours after the original labourers were hired, the landowner returns to the corner where the men are still standing around, and he hires a final group of workers. These men will have worked only one hour at the end of the day.

After the workday is done, the foreman hands out the pay to all of the labourers, beginning with those hired last and finishing with those who had been toiling in the hot sun for all twelve hours. Much to their surprise, all of the workers receive the same wage. Naturally, the men who had been working all day are shocked and angered by the injustice. There is no mention of the other workers complaining.

Jesus uses this story to describe his kingdom. At face value this seems odd and extremely arbitrary. Is his kingdom really this unfair? Grace is commonly defined as undeserved favour, God’s gifts given to people who have not earned them. But why then is his favour given to one person and withheld from another?

There is nothing in Jesus’ parable to suggest that the men the landowner chose at the first hour of the day were superior to those he hired later. They didn’t necessarily show more initiative or have more experience or possess more strength. Yet, for some reason, they were chosen. When Jesus walked through crowds of people, why did he settle on one particular beggar or leper and offer them healing, and not the blind man on the next block? Why does one woman sitting in church rejoice at her miraculous healing from cancer, while sitting next to a young widow who has just lost her husband to the same disease? Does one woman have greater faith? Did she pray more earnestly? Does God simply like her better?

In the past few years I have stopped believing in the word “deserve.” I have disavowed the concept. A single mother in my community struggled with severe depression throughout her life, and finally committed suicide leaving her ten-year-old daughter. Another little girl has spent her whole childhood caring for her mother who is slowly dying of AIDS. The idea that people somehow earn their lot in life, or that we have a right to that which we have attained, seems ludicrous to me. I do not believe that the rich somehow deserve their wealth, any more than the poor deserve their lack of prosperity.

I was born with white skin, in the wealthy western world, with full mental and physical capacities, and I am a man. I have a family and a support system that has built my confidence and self-worth, as well as nurtured in me certain aptitudes and skills. I have been given a start in life that relatively few can boast of. It is not because I work so hard, or because I have a great attitude that I have a job I love and am given opportunity after opportunity. I do not deserve my wealth and luxury any more than the child labourer deserves to work seven days a week in order to provide the cocoa for my chocolate bars. Children born today in Iraq have done nothing to deserve the challenge of trying to grow up in a war zone any more than Paris Hilton deserved to be born heiress to a vast hotel fortune. As the writer of Ecclesiastes would probably put it, “It is all meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

So what is the end of the matter?

When the landowner in Jesus’ story hired his workers, he said, “I will pay you whatever is right.” At the end of the day, this is exactly what he did. It did not seem fair, but it was right. When I hear statements like, “How he deserved that promotion!” or “They deserve to have a child after trying for so long,” or “They have been so mean, I hope they finally get what they deserve!” it gives me pause.

People work all over the world for exploitative wages and never receive a promotion; people lose children everyday, and deserve the loss no more than someone else deserves to have a child of their own; mean-spirited and evil people get away with wrongdoing every day, but still, even they receive God’s generosity.

It is not fair, and it is impossible to live with, as long as you believe in the word deserve. However, once you remove deserve from the equation, what is left, is favour. God is a God of justice. But he is also a God of grace. I hope I never get what I deserve. I hope none of us do. God gives us good gifts out of his generosity - all of us, good and bad, rich and poor, every last undeserving one of us.

Grace.

Writer: Rob Perry works with children and youth at 614 Regent Park, Toronto, Canada. He is also a full-time student.

This article originally appeared in Insights, a publication of Insight for Living Canada.
Used with permission.

1 Comment to Grace

1. Hi Rob,

   I believe one of the main problems with the concept of ‘deserve’ is we try to superimpose Spiritual reality onto our physical reality.

   The parable you mentioned, as I understand it, simply refers to the fact that all those who belong to God, receive the same final reward. The reward is heaven - perfection. The reason we all receive the same reward is that you can not have ‘degrees of perfection’. We either enter heaven, or not enter heaven. Simple as that.

   This does not mean that we can not be angered by injustice in the physical realm. The examples you give illustrate that our God seldom intervenes in human affairs. There is a great theological discussion on that point, but I won’t go into it here.

   So, why bother ‘toilling all day if we get the same reward as someone who has just been hired’ (to use the metaphor)? Because it is our job to intervene for God here on earth. I suppose in some way, we reveal our true colours in the way we represent God. This means, on the day of judgement, God won’t have to judge any of us - we will all have judged ourselves. The question becomes, did we work for God, or only believed we worked for God? As has often been said - there will be many ‘great men of God’ in hell on the day of judgement, and many will be surprised at who they find in heaven.

   We live in a physical world. So bad things happen to people all the time. Evil people manipulate their reality and have great fortune. There is no other reason for this but that we live in a physical world. I don’t even believe in the argument of a ‘fallen world’ - that makes no sense to me. Physical reality means that there is injustice, that ‘fortune’ and ‘misfortune’ often allight on random targets. That’s just life in a physical reality. It has no bearing on how good we are or how evil we are or how much we love God or not love God. It just is.

   So in that sense, many do not ‘deserve’ what happens to them in this world. However, I think we often use the words ‘deserve’ and ‘judgement’ interchangably. It is not ‘just’ that that person got promoted and someone else didn’t etc. etc. etc. (interject all your examples and others). And that’s right. And in a perfect, spiritual reality, Justice would always prevail. But we don’t live in a perfect, spiritual reality. So justice will always be imperfect etc. etc. etc.

   We find it difficult to reconcile a Just and Loving God with physical reality. But our God is not a physical God, He/She/It is a spiritual God, and we worship in Spirit, so there is nothing to reconcile.

   Rather than the doctrine of ‘Grace’ - which to me makes no sense, I prefer the doctrine of ‘Adoption’ that John outlines in his prologue.

   Just a thought.

   Yours in Christ,
   Graeme.
Graeme Randall on June 7th, 2009

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