Twenty-Five

'But there is something else about what he says that concerns me more than this," broke in Andrew. The others looked at him.

"What is that?" asked Mary.

"Some of the things he tells us we should do make no sense. True, we should forgive our enemies, if we wish to be forgiven ourselves. It also makes sense to love one's neighbor as oneself. Fine. But why give your tunic to a person who steals your cloak? If your cloak is gone, you need it more than he. And he stole it, after all. Why reward him? Why go two stadia with a person who has forced you against your will to go one? I can see forgiving my enemies, but why do them favors?"

"Does he say that?" asked Mary of Matthew.

"Oh, yes," he answered. "He said it in so many words, in fact, even before he started telling stories."

"No wonder, then, that he put things into stories. It does not sound fair."

"That is the point," said Andrew. "If I am no better than anyone else, I do not see why I should consider that I am worse. Remember that story he told the other day, Matthew, about the people the landowner hired to work in the vineyard? I do not see that at all."

"What story was that?" asked Mary.

"It was about a man going to hire harvest workers by the day," said Matthew. "He went out in the morning into the marketplace where the day-workers were waiting to be hired, and hired all the people theree for a denarius apiece. And--"

"Wait. What was wrong with that? That is a fair wage."

"That is not the problem!" said Andrew, growing heated. "He went out in the middle of the morning, and at noon, and in the middle of the afternoon--and even an hour before day's end--and hired more workers he found and told them he would pay them. And then when he did pay them, he gave each of them a denarius!"

"Even the people who worked only one hour?"

"He even paid them first! So that the others could see it! Now you can say, as Philip did, that they were all treated equally, because they all got the same wage, but that is not my idea of equality! All I can say is that if I were one of the ones who had slaved the whole day long and received no more than someone who spent only an hour at it, I would resent it, and rightly so! You cannot convince me that I had no right to resent it!"

"Well, now," said Matthew, "he did ask those people what their problem was, because they had, after all, agreed to work for a day for a normal day's wage."

"Yes," said Thomas, "but Andrew has a point. What difference does that make? It is still the case that one person worked twelve hours for the same wages that another worked only one hour for,"

"Yes, but supposing he had hired no one else. Would they have complained about their wages when he paid them?"

"Of course not," said Andrew, "but--"

""Well, then."

"Well then what? He did hire others! And he paid them the same!"

"But how are the ones he hired first harmed because he gave them a fair wage?"

"Because they were not treated fairly! They did more work and yet received no more for it!"

"But all that says, Andrew, is that he treated others with special generosity. It does not say that he treated anyone badly. They received a just day's pay for a day's work."

"You honestly do not see the problem?"

"I see it," said Thomas. "And I am inclined to agree. There must be a different meaning hidden here somehow. Perhaps he is saying that we all will receive the same reward for our labors after we die, but it will be so much greater than anything we could have desired that it will make no difference."

"I do not see it. I do not see how it could make no difference."

"In my case," said Matthew, "I can see that you see a problem, and I see what it is. And perhaps Thomas's solution is correct. But it seems to me that the point is that there is no injustice unless one compares oneself with others--and that is evidently what the story says. Do you have a problem, Thomas, with the fact that you are not as strong as Andrew?"

"What has that to do with it?" said Thomas.

"Thomas, it has everything to do with it. The Master in heaven--the Father, to use his terms--has not made us equal; but if we have what we need, how are we harmed if others are more gifted?"

"But," said Andrew, "this is not gifts; he was speaking of what one earns from working! I care not if Nathanael here, or even Judas, is more intelligent than I; I care nothing that Zacchaeus, or Lazarus of Bethany, or--or you when you had it--have more money than I. What use have I for money? It is the principle of the thing!"

"Well, if you care nothing that others have more than you, why do you resent it if they receive more?"

"I tell you, it makes no difference to me what they have! What I resent is the fact that people are not being treated equally."

"And what I am asking is why, if in practice it means that they get something that you apparently do not want anyway?"

"Because they are no better than I!"

"Ah, I think we are coming to the point, Andrew. Who says that having things makes one person better than another?"

Andrew looked at him with disgust. "Of course, how could anyone who would stoop to tax-collecting be expected to understand what I am saying?"

Matthew's face flushed. "Oh, I understand very well, my young friend. Very well. In fact, somewhat better than you, if I may venture an opinion. But what you say simply proves my point--and, I suspect very strongly, the point the Master was trying to make. I had all the 'wages' any man could ask for, and with precious little effort; and you obviously think it did not make me any better than you. It is quite clear, in fact, that you consider yourself better than I. And you may well be; it makes not the slightest difference to me. But your real problem does not lie in the fact that you consider everyone to be equal; it is that you really consider yourself better than others. You will condescend to be treated equally; but it is intolerable if you think someone else is preferred to yourself."

Without a word, Andrew rose and strode away from them.

He walked around for a while through the woods by himself, fuming at first, and then gradually calming down. He was not someone who felt superior to others. Of course, he was a better fisherman than Simon--that was a simple fact--but not than his father or Zebedee. And he did not consider himself better than Matthew--

Did he?

In a way, now that one thought on it, Matthew was an admirable person, to turn his life around thus. As was Thomas, he supposed--and then realized that he had been secretly despising him because he was a drunk, not admiring him because he drank no more.

And what difference did it make anyway? Who was to say whether he was better than Thomas, since he did not have the--demons--to fight that Thomas had. Or Mary, when it came to real demons.

"And now we are coming to the heart of the difficulty," said Jesus, who had been walking beside him without his noticing.

"Master!" he said, full of chagrin.

"You have come far, Andrew. Very far. I am proud of you."

"If you could have heard what I was thinking just now, you would be anything but proud."

"As it happens, I could, and that is precisely why I am proud. It is the solution--or part of it--to your difficulty with my story."

"It is?"

"If you can continue getting over your resentment over what Matthew said to you, you might even be able to discover it for yourself. But I am here to help, if you wish."

Andrew looked at the ground. "What is the solution? But first, what is the difficulty? I cannot see it."

"Well, you consider it unjust that all should be paid the same amount, even if they worked vastly different hours."

"It seems to me that what they received should depend on how they worked. What is wrong with that?"

"You do admit what Matthew said, that if only the first group worked, their being paid a normal day's wage for their labor would be just."

"Well, yes, but . . ."

"Let us stay there for a moment. Then Matthew pointed out that if they did not compare themselves with the other workers, the problem they had would vanish."

"Well of course, but the other workers were there."

"But let us just consider this first group. Some in it really enjoyed working in the vineyard, while for others it was an unpleasant task. Some were strong, and could do the work easily, and others were weaker."

"What difference does that make?"

"Do you consider it unjust that those who found the work toilsome were paid the same as those who enjoyed what they were doing? The first group was working much harder than the ones who were almost having fun."

"Well, that may be true, but they were doing the same task."

"So justice comes only in looking at what the task is and the number of hours one spends at it. But then what of tasks that are in themselves much harder than harvesting grapes? Fishing, for instance, or building roads for the Romans. Are all tasks equal, so that working at any task deserves the same pay as working at any other one?"

"When you put it that way, I would agree that some tasks should receive more pay than others."

"But then even if the task is the same, if the effort one has to expend in it is greater--let us say even far greater--than the effort one's neighbor expends, it would follow from what you just said that one should be paid more. By this logic, one who rows the boat should be paid more than one who casts the net." He smiled.

Andrew was caught in a dilemma. He saw that rowing was much more effort than casting the net, but casting the net was considered to be more valuable.

"I do not understand," he said.

"What I was trying to show you," answered Jesus, is that there is no objective way anyone can say how valuable any task really is. It depends not only on how much the potential worker regards it as giving up his energy and time, but on how much the person who hires him wants the work done--how much it benefits him to have it done, if you will. And one vintner, who already is rich, may simply find pleasure in having his vines harvested, while another might need the harvest in order to stay alive."

"I can see that, I suppose."

"And so a compromise is reached between the one who hires and the one who is hired. And once that compromise is reached, supposing no one is being harmed by it, the result is just."

"But this means that it can be just for people to be treated unequally."

"Precisely because there is no real meaning to 'being treated equally.' If the same task receives the same pay, then those who are weak or less competent--and must therefore work harder to accomplish the same result--are underpaid if the compensation is 'equal.'"

"I suppose I must admit that."

"And so what the point of the story was was that the feeling of being treated unjustly came from comparing oneself and what one was doing with others. Supposing the ideal situation, that each person was paid based on the effort that he expended and how many people--his wife and children--he had to feed with the fruits of his labor, we would find different salaries for each person, and sometimes the difference would be very great. It cannot be just, for instance, to give a person who must support twelve people the same amount as one would give a person who had no one else but himself to feed and who enjoyed doing the work in any case."

"What you say does, I suppose, make sense."

"And so there is no point to be comparing yourself with others. You are what you are, and who you are. You compare who you are with how you are treated, and if you find no harm done to yourself, how are you treated unjustly?"

"In other words, the people who worked all day should not resent those who worked only an hour for the same pay."

"Who are they to say that those who only worked one hour did less work? It seems so, superficially, but one cannot know, unless he is my Father."

"But it seems so obvious."

"And what I was saying--and you were agreeing to--is that the obvious way of looking at it is not really accurate. And so we should not resent it if someone else seems to be preferred to us. The Father is looking at each of us, and arranging things so that what happens to us is for the best. Why should we care if he arranges things differently for someone else? You yourself admitted that it mattered nothing to you if you were less brilliant than someone else, or less rich. It is the same thing."

"I think I can see what you are saying, but I also think that I will have to ponder it."

"The point is that you should put yourself in the Father's hands--where you really are--and let him control your life. That is part of the story. The other part, not to consider that you matter to yourself, is perhaps something we should defer for now."

"What does that mean? Not to matter to myself?"

"As I say, you have enough to ponder for now. But to hint at what I mean, just consider my own case. If I mattered to myself, would I have come to live among you and serve you, as I have been doing? Would I die for you? Why? There is no answer, if I matter to myself."

"Now I am completely bewildered."

"Think on it. Who is to say, as you concluded just before we met, that you are better than Thomas, or worse than Thomas? And what difference does it make, even if that question could be answered?"

And he left, with Andrew completely befuddled.

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