Separating Sheep from GTOs
When Pontiac released its awe-inspiring GTO in 1964, the marquis was in the middle of an ad campaign that compared its cars to tigers. One print ad in 1965 read, “How to tell a real tiger from a pussycat: Drive it.” In case that self-referential ad copy wasn’t obvious enough, the accompanying image showed an actual tiger in the front seat of a Pontiac Catalina drop-top (subtlety was never a Pontiac strong suit). The implication here was of Pontiacs exuding the ferocity of a tiger, while its competition was tame like a housecat.
Separation is an effective advertising tactic. It’s also a useful technique for explaining the complex interplay of grace, faith, and salvation. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus wraps up a series of parables with one that uses the separation of sheep and goats to describe ultimate, eternal judgment. To paraphrase the 15 verses of Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus describes a scene where the faithful sheep will be saved and brought into heaven while the unfaithful goats “will go away to eternal punishment.” This has left countless people with beads of sweat on their brows and a nagging thought on their minds: which one am I?
This parable is best understood by an earlier parable, found in Matthew 7:15-23. Again, describing the separation of the heaven-bound and the hell-bound, Jesus describes a good tree and a bad tree: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” (verse 18) He then shares these words: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
Taken together, the common theme here is grace. Yes, grace. In a way that only he could, Jesus used parables of eternal judgment to describe God’s awe-inspiring grace. Just as a tree can’t make itself become better by producing good fruit, so a person cannot earn more love or forgiveness from God by doing better. The tree is already either good or bad before it produces fruit. So the goats in Matthew 25 would not have known the good works that God called them to do, and thusly ask, “When did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick in prison, and did not help you?”
It’s not about good works. Perhaps this is the separation that Jesus is speaking to: people who accept or reject God’s grace. A person rejects God’s grace by a) thinking they don’t need it, or b) thinking they’ve earned it. Earned grace isn’t grace. A person who boasts of their goodness doesn’t leave room for God’s goodness. Listen, again, to the boasting in the Matthew 7 parable. It’s a list of good things the person did, to which Jesus replied: “I never knew you.” He doesn’t say “I used to know you, but then you stopped going to church/didn’t donate enough to that Christian non-profit/only prayed in public one time last week.” Because that’s the opposite of what Jesus is saying. Instead, Jesus is describing the free gift of grace. If you believe that you need salvation and that God freely gives it to you, the separation has already happened. You are a sheep. A good tree. This is God’s gift; we only have to receive it. Out of response, we get to “bear good fruit” and do the social good described in Matthew 25 – without boasting.
Pontiac, under the direction of then-division general manager John Z. DeLorean, spent a lot of ad space boasting. Copy in a 1966 ad described its design language as having an “arrogant split grille.” Another said, “Can anything this beautiful really be a tiger? It’s a Pontiac, isn’t it?” Clearly, they were trying to make some kind of separation. Yes, the GTO is a Pontiac. And yes, it’s a great muscle car. Why? Because it was built that way – separated from the pussycats by means of its 360 cubic-inch heart given to it by the manufacturer. Out of response, it bears the “good fruit” of a smoky burnout – something a pussycat just can’t do.
