And if evil circumstances overtake you, and you are not sure whether your life has been good enough or not, you may swing miserably back and forth between the poles of "I hate Thee!" and "I hate me."
The elder brother assumes that because he's been good and held fast to all the rules he was supposed to adhere to, God owes him. He was good, therefore his life should be good in consequence. And when it's not good, he blames God for not holding up his part of the bargain. Or, as in the case of the quote above, if the brother feels he wasn't good enough, falls into self-loathing when the bad occurs.
I've never hated God for the bad things that happened. But what I failed to realize was I was doing the opposite. Instead of my sufferings just being sufferings and just being stuff that happens in this brutal world, I did attribute it to my lack of goodness, or more accurately, my worthlessness.
Even though I would say, "Life's just not fair," in my heart, I felt, "Life's just not fair but that makes sense because I'm not good enough to deserve anything good."
My failures are only mine. The injustice that occurs against me is my fault. The wrongdoings and betrayals I've brought upon myself simply because I am not worth more than that. Friends will leave, potential jobs won't call, and I will fall asleep on migraine meds and fill my house with the smoke of potatoes overcooking on the stove not because life is hard sometimes but because I fail as a person.
But life is hard. Our lives fall apart. Yes, we play a substantial role, but even if we were to devote ourselves to being perfect, we'd still fail, fall, and break. That's life. Life really is not fair. But in being unfair, not only does it not reward for good, it doesn't punish for bad either. It doesn't withhold happiness because you are less talented than the next person. It doesn't withhold laughter because you aren't as ambitious as your brother. And most of all, it doesn't withhold love simply because you aren't perfect.
So just as we can't hate God for giving us a life we feel we don't deserve, we probably shouldn't loathe ourselves into believing this is the life we do.
2 comments:
You are probably right about that. ;)
An interesting take on the older brother. I suspect that the Pharisees and the like were pretty sure they were the older brother in the story. But, at the same time, when the brother complains the father says, in essence, "Why didn't you ask? We could have had a party any time!" The fairness of God, in the parable, is in being good to everyone.
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