On Grace and Perhaps Better Perspective

So I now, officially, have a "favorite parable".
I was reading through Matthew when i was in new york a week and a half ago, and i settled on this one for a while.
And then a few days ago i couldn't stop thinking about practical uses of it for witnessing or teaching, or telling teenagers that they're morons.

It's the beginning of Matthew 20, and it reads as such, in the NIV; Jesus is talking:

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius (a typical day's wages) for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went.
He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them,
'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'
The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to drumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
'But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Ir are you envious because I am generous?'
So the last will be first, and the first will be last."


The key part here is when the owner tells the worker, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you."

There is a line from a Relient K song that reads, "The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair".
The vineyard owner had grace towards the workers that he hired later in the day; he didn't have to pay them a full day's wages, as the only people he had a contract with were those who would work for 12 hours.
But rather than pay them what might have been fair, he opted to pay them more. Perhaps he figured that, them being unemployed, they could use some spare change. He was generous.

Now, the people who he hired fairly weren't happy with that.
The figured that they were getting jipped out of money since they had done 11 more hours of work than some of the others, and gotten payed the same way.

Jesus' message here calls for a change in perspective.
The workers were upset because they were only thinking about what they should have gotten, instead of what the others could have gotten.
If they had paused for a moment and realized that the owner was being generous to the other men, rather than skimping on themselves, the situation would have made more sense.

The parable ends with the line that, "the last will be first and the first will be last."
The last being the one-hour workers vs. the 12-hour workers- but in the end, we're all equals anyway.

Think about that though.
One little shift in perspective, and it goes from, "you skimped out on us!" to, "you blessed someone else".
One little change in perspective and the perceived attitude goes from disdain to grace.
That's a big difference.

From now on, i'm going to use this parable when someone asks me about my opinion on abortion or the death penalty.
to me, abortion isn't a question of whether or not you're killing a human being; rather, it's a question of our right to choose who lives or dies.
A mother who says, "the baby is more important than I am" and who is willing to take on all the problems that might come her way, be it financial or health, is showing that she isn't interested in her own problems; isn't like the first workers. Rather, she is showing that she needs grace in order to get by- the attitude that Jesus wants us to have, and perhaps the attitude of the one-hour workers.

Likewise, for the death penalty.
It isn't a question of whether or not someone deserves death- i believe that there are absolutely cases where someone deserves to die.
But who are we, fellow and equal human beings, to decided the fate of another?
We are all equals. The vineyard owner showd us that. Some of us just need more grace than others.