Unknown Endings
Automakers were hit hard during the Great Recession of 2008. In an effort to cut costs and streamline operations, General Motors culled Pontiac, which had recently introduced the wonderful G8. The G8 lived a short life, from December 2007 to June 2009, and enthusiasts debated on the car forums: was its time really up, or would its platform get a second chance as, maybe, a Chevy product? And did this Corvette-powered, rear-drive sedan really deserve to die?
The first question was answered in 2014, once General Motors got back on its financial feet and introduced the 415-horsepower, LS3-powered Chevrolet SS. In a way, the second question was answered, too, after the SS was discontinued after a short four-year production run with fewer than 13,000 sales.
Death, especially an “untimely” or “undeserved” one, makes us worried. Our own date with death gets closer and closer, and we worry that our cumulative goodness isn’t enough to make us a “good person” in the eyes of the public, or perhaps God. We’ve been given second chances, but have we made the most of them? Have we done enough?
Jesus responds to this worry when he addresses two bizarre instances of death: when some Galileans were slaughtered by Pilate while they were in the middle of a sacrifice to God, and when 18 people died because a tower fell on them (Luke 13:1-5). Those events had people worried: does God deliver a karmic judgment on us, wherein a specific sin results in a specific punishment? More generally, can a person’s merit be determined by whether good or bad things happen to them?
Anyone following God should really hope that God doesn’t operate like this.
Sure, sometimes we suffer the earthly penalty of our sin, just like sometimes rotten cars get a short life because they were rotten and didn’t sell. When your parents take your keys after a speeding ticket, you have fulfilled the prophecy of Proverbs 5:22: “The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast.” That could be rewritten as “The triple-digit speeds of a hoon ensnare him; irresponsibility with boost and V8 power will find him grounded and relying on public transit.”
Yet sometimes bad things happen outside of our control. Sometimes a car’s run ends due to market forces. We don’t know how this fits into our merit-oriented view of things. Eventually, we will all die, and that nagging worry about making the best use of our time on earth makes the thought of our death worrisome.
Jesus responded to this worry with a parable (Luke 13:6-9). A man planted a fig tree, which failed to produce figs for three straight years. He wanted to cut it down but his gardener intervenes and says, “Just wait.”
The gardener is Jesus himself, interceding for us when God, in his righteousness, rightly determines that all of us have been failures in some way. Our cumulative goodness isn’t nearly enough to offset all our failure, so we worry.
But listen: Jesus is there, saying to the Heavenly Judge, “Just wait, just wait.” God, in his mercy, waits. Our worry stops. We think we’re getting another second chance, to do the good we’re supposed to do. Our worry resumes. We better get this one right. This time better be different than those other times, because apparently those weren’t good enough. We worry some more. How much time do we have before God’s done waiting?
Clearly, we don’t understand the gift Jesus offers in this parable. He urges God to wait so we can do nothing more than repent (verse 5), to admit that all the chances in the world aren’t enough, that our worry itself is sinful if it leads us to rely on ourselves. As long as we have breath in our lungs, we have the chance to give up. Giving up gives us hope that our death, or Judgment Day, isn’t something to worry about. We will get to be with our loving Father who is in Heaven, waiting for us.
We don’t know what would have happened to Pontiac without the Recession, the Mercedes-Benz 190e 2.3 without the BMW E30 M3, or the Corvair without Nader, or the hundreds of family-owned horseless carriage manufacturers that were good, but didn’t stand a chance against the market tumult during World War I. They seemed to meet untimely deaths. Yet your time is in God’s hands. As long as you have breath in your lungs, God hasn’t given up on you.
