Notes from the Wayside: Lenten Reflection: The Danger of Entitlement

The following is the fifth in a series of reflections on The Great Divorce.
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The Danger of Entitlement

A reflection on chapter 4 of C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce

But he answered his father, "Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!" Then the father said to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found."

Luke 15:29-32 (NRSV)

The world is heading for mutiny

When all we want is unity

We may rise and fall, but in the end

We'll meet our fate together

From "One" by Creed

I have a theory that many people try to cope with their insecurities with the help of what I call an "at-least" person. An "at-least" person is somebody that one can picture in one's darker moments and say, "Well, at least I'm not that person." If you don't already have an "at-least" person, you can easily find one by simply watching a seedy daytime tabloid talk show like The Jerry Springer Show or Maury.

I have a confession to make: I may or may not have had an "at-least" person or two.

I have another confession to make: I may or may not be afraid that I'm somebody else's "at-least" person.

The bright, solid people from Heaven head with determination toward the group of ghosts as if each has zeroed-in on his or her own target, like a basketball team executing a man-to-man defense. The spirits have come to meet the ghosts that have just disembarked the bus to plead with them to stay in Heaven. Frightened, the ghosts scatter, doing their best to walk on the sharp grass.

One ghost, described by the protagonist as a large, intimidating person, is met by a spirit named Len. In their earthly lives, Len had been an employee of the big man, and, in a moment of rage, Len had murdered a coworker named Jack. Len tells his former boss that he has come to apologize for all the hatred he once harbored toward him and offers to help him out in any way possible as he gets adjusted to this place. The big man is shocked and appalled that Len, a murderer, was allowed into Heaven while he, a reasonably decent, hard-working man, has been living for so long in the "pigsty" of a town below. The last thing he wants is charity, especially not from a "bloody murderer."

The big man feels as though a cruel joke has been played on him, for he believes that he deserves a much better existence than some murderer. He curses out his former employee and angrily makes his way back to the bus. At least he still has his dignity.

Put yourself in the big man's shoes for a moment. Imagine that you have gone to Heaven only to meet the person you hated the most in your earthly existence. Worse yet, imagine that your "at-least" person has somehow gotten into Heaven ahead of you. What would you do? Would you leave angrily? Or would you stay and learn to love that person? This is a very important question we all need to seriously ask ourselves.

St. Paul writes that, in Jesus Christ, God is working to reconcile all things to God's self.¹ If we are indeed in the process of being reconciled to God, then it could be said that we are, in some way, being brought closer and closer to God. If we are all moving toward a single point, namely God, then we are, by necessity, moving closer and closer to each other. In this way, one's relationship with God cannot be separated from one's relationships with other people. If we intentionally drive wedges between ourselves and other people, then we are, by extension, driving wedges between ourselves and God.

The two men in this encounter are like the two sons in Jesus' famous Parable of the Prodigal Son.² Len is like the younger son in the parable: he screwed up his life beyond repair and had no choice but to turn everything over to God. The big man, on the other hand, is like the older son: he always did what he was supposed to do. Like the older brother, he feels as though he hasn't gotten what he deserves, and he's totally hacked off that Len went home to a party. Maybe the big man hadn't screwed up his life to the extent that Len had, but Len had better understanding of God's grace because of his experiences. Len understands that ultimately everything we receive from God is a gift and that a gift, by nature, cannot be earned or deserved.

The big man believes that he is a better person than Len and thus deserves more than Len, and the last thing he wants is Len's help. He goes on and on about getting what is rightfully his: "I got to have my rights," he says. He claims that he always worked hard for a living, always paid his own way, always kept his nose clean, and never took any charity from anybody. Len tells him that he would be better off not to dwell on such things. Regarding the big man's entitled, self-sufficient attitude, Len says, "Your feet will never grow hard enough to walk on our grass that way."

As humans, we have built economic systems and even entire societies on entitlement, the concept that one has a right to what one has earned. What if entitlement is ultimately an illusion? What if, in the grand scheme of things, we are all on equal footing, regardless of what we have done and regardless of what we think we deserve?

Jesus once said that God "makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."³ Nowadays, sunshine represents happiness while rain represents sadness. In an agrarian society, both sunshine and rain are considered blessings. To some extent, Jesus' words can be understood in both ways. We are all invited to enjoy the blessings of God, and none of us are exempt from times of difficulty. We would do well to remember that, in the words of St. James, "Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above."⁴ When we get wrapped up in thinking about who deserves what, we forget that all good things are gifts from God. Even the hard work that supposedly entitles us to something is, in itself, a gift from God.

We live in a broken world, and the Bible teaches us that, from the dawn of human history, God has been hard at work putting it back together, reconciling all things. If we want to be reconciled to God, we must be willing to be reconciled to each other. Superiority and entitlement are things that separate ourselves from others and ultimately separate ourselves from God. If we want to be a part of what God is doing in the world, then we must put to death such things within us and learn to live in the reality of God's grace.

Notes:

Colossians 1:20
Luke 15:11-32
Matthew 5:45 (NRSV)
James 1:17 (CEB)

The photograph featured in this post is public domain.