God’s Not Fair!

Kiran: From our study of the stories of the Rich Young Ruler, Zaccheus, and others, we have concluded that eternal life is not something we can earn: It is the gift of God. In return, he asks our obedience. What exactly is that?

At the conclusion of the story of the RYR Jesus made his famous remark about rich people being as unable to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as camels to go through the eye of a needle. Peter then said words to the effect that the disciples had given so much for Jesus and asked what was in it for them. Jesus answered in part with the story of the Laborers in the Vineyard:

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; and to those he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ So the last shall be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:1-16)

In India still today, at the time of the rice harvest farmers drive into the nearby towns to look for labor to help with the harvesting. Strong, able-bodied young people are the farmers’ first picks. Some of the people looking for work are elderly women, others are small children, who may be hired for menial tasks or even for harvesting if strong young men are in short supply. They are usually paid less than the men. Sometimes, whole families or groups of acquaintances offer themselves as a team and refuse to be hired individually.

For the best chance to be hired, the first thing is to show up. Nobody will come looking for you if you are not there when the farmers ride into town. Second, you need to have a good reputation. And third, you need to be strong and able-bodied. These are much like the first group of vineyard laborers hired in the story. Those who were slower to get out of bed that day, or had taken a leisurely breakfast, or for some other reason were not around when the vineyard owner went looking for more labor, were lucky that he continued hiring right up the the “eleventh hour” when the day was about done and the harvest was about all in. It seems this master was more concerned to give people work than to harvest with maximum cost-efficiency. That makes him pretty unique!

After the harvest he paid every laborer, no matter how much they had actually labored, one denarius. In this story, labor seems to be a metaphor for piety and righteousness, and the laborers looking for a master seem to represent people seeking God. Those who labored longest and hardest (i.e., those who were most pious in their behavior toward God) were affronted that those who worked less (who were less pious) received the same reward. The reward itself—a denarius (God’s grace)—was not the issue with them; the issue was the master’s (God’s) failure to acknowledge that the hard workers (pious people) deserved (they thought) to get more money (Grace) than the slack workers (not-so-pious people) got.

How might this day have ended? I imagine that the hard workers went home disgruntled and disappointed in this master, while the slack workers went home in astonished delight at finding a master of such magnanimity. I bet they all shared their thoughts with their families and friends. I bet that the slack workers would have been glad to go back the next day to serve such a good master, and would have encouraged all their friends and relative to come too.

How does this labor relate to the RYR’s question about how to achieve eternal life, if eternal life requires no pious effort but is simply God’s gift? What does it have to do with obedience toward God?

Don: The concept of fairness is deeply rooted in human nature. It emerges very early in childhood. It seems that one of the things Jesus is trying to say is that God’s concept of fairness is not the same as ours. Fairness seems to be a normative value in an earthly world of cause and effect. Doing work is a cause that should generate an effect that adds value to the worker, and the greater the cause, the greater the effect—that’s only fair!

To me, the fundamental takeaway from this story is that the effect—the equal reward—is not in fact related to the labor at all. The work is utterly irrelevant and inconsequential. It is not a cause. The master deliberately, knowingly, purposefully set out to undermine the mortal concepts of fairness and cause/effect.

Robin: What does it tell us about gratitude?

Michael: The master also paid the people who came last first! Perhaps he was trying to irritate the hard workers; perhaps he wanted them to emphasize the message that “the last shall be first.”

Kiran: God gives us all a gift that no amount of work can make us deserve. It is a cause for joy and gratitude that God gives this to each one of us, regardless. Once we think we deserve something, then we start to make judgments about what others deserve. It’s up to God how to give his grace; it’s up to us to be thankful for it not only for ourselves but for everyone else. If I become so focused on my religiosity and my piety and how things should be done we enter the world of normative judgment—and in the Kingdom of Heaven that’s God’s prerogative, not ours. It seems that the pious cannot be happy campers in the Kingdom of Heaven as they watch their undeserving brethren dance and sing around the campfire.

Robin: The people who were hired at the last hour grew up in a culture that recognized the value of labor, therefore their gratitude at receiving the same pay as those hired at the first hour must have been immense. And they must have felt a sense of humility from the realization that they did not deserve the same pay. The people who were hired at the start of the day must have felt upset (rather as the brother of the prodigal son was upset when their father threw a party for the prodigal) and not at all grateful for their pay.

Don: The laborers hired in the first hour knew what their pay would be: One denarius. But the ones hired later were not told how much they would be paid, only “whatever is right.” From that they would surely have assumed that the pay, whatever it turned out to be, would be fair—which to them would have meant proportional to the time worked. But the crux of the story is that fairness and proportionality are not the same.

Is this a story about the workers, or the master, or is there some other point to it? What does the work represent? The master did not hand out denarii to people just for being available, just for standing around in the town square; they had to work, first. It seems that work is an important aspect of the story—it might give us an insight into the question of the law and why following it is important.

Michael: So it seems work is important but the amount of it is inconsequential!

Don: On the one hand there is nothing to do and on the other there is much to do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The work has meaning but seems unrelated to the reward (the pay). What is that meaning?

Kiran: The workers would have brought their own tools for tending the grapevines. In another parable, the vine branches are God’s children, so could it be that the work is to tend to our brothers and sisters?

Don: The indictment against the master, as it is against God, is that he is unfair in treating everyone with equal generosity; that he ignores and in so doing undermines the conventional wisdom of cause and effect. We tend to feel that fairness is necessary for people to succeed in life and that unfairness is an impediment. But fairness is evidently not necessary to succeed in eternal life.

Robin: So why should we work? God wants us to work—but why?

Donald: It’s part of God’s plan that humans work. Adam and Eve had the job of tending to the Garden. Work is a part of our DNA, not merely a means of mortal sustenance. We are destined to work forever!

Michael: The simple conclusion from this story is that God is unfair by our standards.

Robin: Is our definition of fairness correct?

Kiran: The master was fair in paying the early workers the one denarius they had agreed to, and he was fair in paying the latecomers an amount he felt was right, which also happened to be one denarius. The perceived unfairness was not in respect to the labor agreement but in the absence of differential in the rate.

Robin: Is our definition of work correct? If we view it as drudgery and toil, then the external reward is important. But if we view work as service—as something for the common good—then it has inherent reward.

Donald: It seems to me the fundamental problem is jealousy, not fairness.

Robin: There is a wage we have earned: The wages of sin.

Kiran: The discussion will continue next week.

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