Inhuman Swill

I just listened to the new episode, and the story about the gift your wife received reminded me of a story my father told me.

My parents never got married, and whenever our family went to visit my mother's parents (who were devout Catholics) they were given separate rooms to sleep in, even after they had been together fifteen years and had two kids together.

My father is a likable guy, though, and he got along pretty well with my mother's parents. One day my grandfather said to him, "Have you ever heard the parable of the workers in the field?" Well, no, my father (who I think would describe himself as a lifelong agnostic) never had.

Here's more or less how it went, if I remember my father's retelling of it correctly: A landowner went out one morning and hired a bunch of men to till his fields, offering each of them some money. Then, at midday, he went out and hired some more men, offering them each the same amount of money, and then later out he went and hired even more, offering them (again) the same amount of money.

The workday ended and the landowner paid everyone, and the people who had been working since the morning complained that since they had been working longer than anyone else they should be paid more. The landowner replied, "This is my money to do with as I wish, and when you started working you agreed that what I was paying you was fair, so what business is it of yours if I'm more generous to someone else?"

Now, if you haven't heard this story before, you may wonder what the hell this has to do with anything, and you might wonder why my grandfather told it to my dad. My father certainly wondered this, and so did I when my father told it to me. My grandfather went on to explain that this parable reflects an actual problem in the early Christian church, which was that for a long time Christians were a persecuted minority, and then one day Christianity was legalized and suddenly lots of people were becoming Christians without having to worry about being fed to lions or anything. And the old-school Christians, some of whom had been jailed and tortured, said, well, this is great and everything, but these people aren't going to the same heaven I am, are they? I'm going to get something better, aren't I? And the answer that was decided on (as illustrated in the parable) was: No, everybody gets the same heaven.

So it was a story with a very pointed point: it's not too late. In these situations there are two conflicting impulses. On one level, you are being invited to become, in some sense, part of the family, which is an honor in a way; but on another, you have absolutely no interest in taking the step that you are being asked to take, and expressing any interest seems likely to have unfortunate consequences. I'm not sure what my dad did -- probably changed the subject -- but I liked your wife's approach to this issue.

Fortunately, nobody in my mother's family has ever tried to convert me -- or they haven't yet, anyway. (Well, I did accidentally partake of the host at a wedding once, but that's another story.)