We do not like God. We do not like
God because, ultimately, we are not like God. We are not like God because God
is not fair. God is not fair but rather God is kind. God has no need for
balanced scales—no need for equality. We espouse that all men are created
equal, yet equality is merely an illusion, a human construct. God does not deal
with all people equally. What God does is see all people as being of equal
value. This is something we cannot accept. This is why we don’t like God.
We can accept all people being
equal, but we are not capable of seeing all people as being of equal value. We may
be able to accept two individuals of similar upbringing and equal educational
achievements with similar vocations as being of similar value but ultimately we
would not conclude that the homosexual, pacifist, atheist has the same worth as
the heterosexual, evangelical, veteran. We assign value based on criteria such
as: theological beliefs; moral standards; patriotic loyalty; ritualistic,
religious, observances; sexual preferences; wardrobe choices; vernacular; and
so on.
But what if
God told you that you were of no more or less value than anyone else. What if God
said, “I don’t care who you are or what you accomplish, it will never alter
your value”? Would you immediately respond with, “but that’s not fair”? Would
you then begin to tell God what your value is? Would you begin to list all of
the qualities that you believe contribute to your value? What would be on your
list? Would you tell God who you vote for, where and how often you attend
church, what version of the bible you read, what religious practices you
observe and the MPAA rating of the movies you watch? This is exactly how the
older brother thinks in a story that Jesus told to his followers.
There was a man who had two
sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share
of the estate.” So he divided his property between them. Not long after that,
the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and
there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything,
there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So
he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his
fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs
were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said,
“How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am
starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him:
Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to
be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.”
So he got up
and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw
him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms
around him and kissed him. The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against
heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the
father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put
a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill
it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is
alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate.
Meanwhile, the
older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and
dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. “Your
brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fattened calf
because he has him back safe and sound.” The older brother became angry and
refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered
his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never
disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could
celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your
property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”
“My son,” the
father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we
had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is
alive again; he was lost and is found.”
So which is of more value: the
one who obeys the law or the one who doesn’t even accept that there is a law?
Which son has more value to the father: the one who says, “I wish you were dead
so that I could have what I deserve of your wealth now” or the one who says, “I
will do all that you ask and never question your authority”? Which son has more
value?
We that love equality have to
wait until the sons are both in a certain state of being before we will assign
them equal value. Because of this, some say it is the act of returning home
that gives the rebellious younger son back his value. But is that the case? Is
the son devalued the moment he leaves the father’s house and re-valued the
moment he returns or does the son’s worth as ascribed by the father never
change? Does not the father exude so much unsurpassable worth to all his
children that their most horrific actions could never even begin to diminish
their true value.
The older brother immediately
devalued the younger as soon as he wished the father dead. The father did not
do this. The rebellious son’s value did not increase in the slightest upon his
return. What did increase was the father’s demonstration of the son’s value.
The father did not seek to prove to the son how wrong his actions were, but
rather the father sought to increase the son’s perceived self worth.
Both sons wanted equality. Both
sons wanted fairness. But God is not fair nor does he care about equality. The
rebellious son determined his value as being half of all that the father had
and that he deserved to have it immediately. The older son thought that he was
entitled to half of all that the father had because of what he did—his
righteous actions. Both sons were wrong. The younger son was not entitled to
half of all the father had before the father died or after the father died. He
was entitled to all that the father had—100% of the father’s wealth—at any time
and forever. The older son was not entitled to half of everything because he
obeyed the father and served in his house and made no mistakes. No. He was
entitled to 100% of the father’s wealth and resources at any time and forever.
This is not human math. How can
this be possible? How can the father give everything to everyone? God’s math is
very different than ours because it is not based on the finite: it is based on
the infinite. Consider Hilbert’s paradox of the Grand Hotel. It goes something
like this:
Suppose there is a hotel and
this particular hotel happens to have an infinite number of rooms. Now let us
suppose that somehow every room in this unlimited space became occupied. Now
suppose that some time later the lobby door opened and an infinite number of
guests arrived and requested rooms in the hotel. The question is, how do you
accommodate this infinite number of guests if the infinite number of rooms are
already occupied? The answer to this is the key to understanding God’s math and
every attribute of God: love, grace, forgiveness, mercy, creativity, all of it.
The solution is for the hotel manager to ask all of the guests occupying rooms
to move out of their current room and into the room that has a room number that
is double the room number of their current room. For example: the guest in room
#1 would move to room #2, because 2 is double 1. The guest in room #2 would
move into room #4 because 4 is double 2. The guest in #3 would move to #6 and
the guest in #6 would move to #12 and so on and so on. If every current guest
does this (inconvenient as it may be) then every odd numbered room would become
vacant making room for the infinite number of guests waiting in the very large
lobby.
How can the father divide his
wealth between both sons and still give each son everything? He can because the
father’s wealth is infinite. This is God’s
math. Because the value of both sons is infinite and incomprehensible and has
nothing to do with what they’ve earned; both sons are entitled to all that the
father has, and all that the father has is good. So what then of our eternal
existence? Is your concept of an afterlife based on a value system? Is it based
on a system of earned rewards and justified punishment?
No matter how wonderful you
think that someone is, you are infinitely undervaluing her or him. What did the
righteous son believe was the younger son’s value—probably not much at
all—certainly less than half. If the younger son had turned around and come home
and worked for decades in the father’s house he may have earned back some value
in the elder brother’s eyes but he would never have been valued any more than deserving
of half. The older brother had no concept of his own infinite value (if he had
he would have at least claimed a goat) much less that of his sinful brother; yet
the father sees them both as being equally invaluable.
It is important to notice that
the father did not send the older son out to tell the younger son what he had
done wrong. He was not deployed to preach to the younger or scare him with
damnation, both of which he probably believed and would have readily
proclaimed. Instead, the father just waited and watched. The father knew that
the only reason the son left at all was because he didn’t know his own value
and that the futility of the young son’s actions would inevitably lead him home.
He did not charge the older son with being the arbitrator of morality. The
father did not tell the younger son what to do with the money and did not make
the faithful older son the trustee of the younger’s money. The father gave it
because it already belonged to the younger son: he was entitled to it.
The mistake that the younger son
made was not the act of demanding his inheritance but that he desired so little
and settled for so much less: this is sin. Sin is the insistence on so much
less than what we already have. The only reason that the city was not offered
was because it was so far beneath what the father wanted for his son. The
father wanted the younger son to have more than what the son even wanted—more
than the half that the son thought he was so wise to demand. Sin is not an increment
of imposed limitation. It is not a measure at all. It is a lack of perfection.
So what then of morality? How do
we judge it? We do not. We must not. We were never asked to. But the younger
sons and daughters are ignoring the law, getting away with murder, they hate
the father, wishing the father dead, they’re saying the father is dead, they’re
saying there never was a father. They hate, they defame, they cheat, they rape,
they steal, they devalue righteousness, they…
They are entitled to more than
you even realize that you are
entitled to. And they don’t have to do anything. Their value is unlimited. We
can never love anyone as much as God loves the person that you hate the most.
No, you’re right. This is not fair. No, not at all.
