The expectation of a reward in heaven for your deficiencies in this world on earth is a truly troublesome, in fact, frightening consequence of this crude, and I daresay perverted, interpretation of Jesus’s words, almost on a par with the expectation of salvation by being whitewashed in the blood of the Lamb. I used to know a very nice American Christian Evangelical family where the boy, age five, was very smart, very clean, very quiet and well-behaved, and could recite Biblical verses by heart, but pretty much couldn’t do anything else, as his parents were only interested in saving his soul for the better life in the afterworld. He started attending kindergarten in a private Christian school, but he was a failing student, and after three months the principal asked his parents to take him out of the school. The boy didn’t mind at all, and, tragically, his parents did not mind either. As the boy explained to us, matter-of-factly, “those who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” It was obvious that this must have been exactly what his parents had taught him, and had been repeating to him by way of consolation.
The case that I am describing was by no means unique. A similar cavalier attitude toward academic underachievement, resulting in a lax attitude toward education as such, coupled with a chronic erosion of healthy ambition, was characteristic of other Evangelical families I knew, and, together with other observable evidence, derived from national TV and local news stories, a rather grim inference could be made of a steady dumbing-down trend in America among the core white stock of the nation’s population. “The Bible is the only book I need to read, the only science that I need to know, the only subject that I need to study at my Sunday School classes,” this attitude has been the chronic disease of Evangelical Christianity ever since its inception in the Reformation, and has not improved a bit in the twenty-first century either, with the unfortunate Matthew 19:30 (“But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first”) serving as the ever-reusable carte blanche for ignorance.
…Having discussed some highly detrimental consequences of various improper interpretations of the first-last catchphrase of Matthew 19:30, we might start figuring out clues for some other interpretations, which would act as antidotes of sorts, to the poisons of the problem ones. What could be more natural, then, than to look at the larger context of this phrase, which we have done already earlier, in the preceding it passage of Matthew 19:23. Now is the time to look at what immediately follows, which is Matthew 20:1-16, especially since the problematic catchphrase is repeated by Jesus near the end of this passage. So, here it is.---
“For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.” (Matthew 20:1-16.)
Whatever anybody may say, and whatever any standard Biblical Commentary may offer, I find this passage fascinating and baffling at the same time. Receiving equal pay for drastically unequal work (that is, equal in quality, but extremely unequal in quantity) -- is this a Zeno-paradoxical case of twisted “equality,” or an in-your-face case of grotesque inequality at the hands of a self-amusing despot?
Let us keep in mind, lest we forget, that we are discussing a parable of Jesus! On the strength of it, Thomas Jefferson was very wrong and John Calvin was perfectly right: all men are not created equal, and there is no egalitarian fairness in God’s Creation. God does have his favorites, yes, his “elect”! Indeed, the utterly undemocratic principle of preordained inequality has been ingrained in the body and soul of humanity, and in this case, man’s “freedom of choice” has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Why are some babies born healthy and others deformed; why are some born for a long life, while others never even reach the age of choice? Paraphrasing the words of Jesus, many are “called” into life, but few are “chosen” to live it to the fullest extent of the human potential. And I somehow cannot comprehend the concept of the wretched and handicapped in this world turning out on top, in the hereafter. “The last,” in this sense, becoming “the first.” It just does not make any logical sense…
Having said that, we have not reached the end of our discussion yet. There is more to this parable of Jesus-- less conspicuous than the frivolity of the master of people’s fates, yet far more profound and moralistic... It is to this aspect of it that we are presently turning our attention…
(This is the end of Part II. Part III will be posted tomorrow.)
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