Two Kinds of People in the World

Someone has noted that there are 2 kinds of people in this world: those who think there are 2 kinds of people in the world, and those who don't. At times this does seem to be a very time-worn set-up for a comparing and contrasting of two alternatives. There are spenders versus savers; conservatives and liberals; Chevy guys and Ford guys. I didn't grow up on a farm, but I laughed out loud at a restaurant in the Midwest when I saw a green John Deere hat that said 'Friends don't let friends drive red tractors', so there apparently are also Deere guys and Farmall guys. The Chevy/Ford/Deere/Farmall thing has suffered of late, though, due to Toyota, Nissan, Kubota, and others so the next generation may not relate to that as well. Being of a certain age, though, I do still laugh at the line in Christmas Story about 'my dad was an Oldsmobile man!'

Yet the '2 kinds of people' comparison does have some validity, which is no doubt why it gets used so often. I just finished reading The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller and, lest there be any confusion from my last blog, I liked it very much. It is a fresh look at a very familiar passage of Scripture, the parable of the Prodigal Son. Most sermons on this passage that I have heard in the past focused on the licentiousness of the younger son; recently, I have heard more about either the hard-heartedness of the elder son or the sacrificial love of the father, but I think this book gives all 3 the most even treatment that I have come across for even a very oft-cited passage. He does, of course, use the 2 kinds of people paradigm; the younger brothers of the world, whom Kierkegaard calls the 'aesthetic', and the elder brothers, the 'ethical' in Kierkegaard's terms. I have heard them also called the 'party-ers' and the 'do good-ers'. I never related quite as well to this dumbed-down version of the comparison, I think in part because in college the 'party-ers' were clearly the Greeks, but the non-Greeks did not fit any neat category as far as I could tell. Keller comes up with slightly different terms: moral conformity versus self-discovery. I like this because I think it captures the spirit of the age rather well.

The younger brother, of course, was the self-discovery agent, out there to 'grab all the gusto he could get' and experience life! Meanwhile, the elder brother is demonstrating his moral superiority and self-mastery through his diligence. The book spends some time pointing out the cultural context, though, and how the actions of both sons would have been unthinkable in that culture: the younger because demanding his part of the inheritance while his father remained in good health was basically saying that he considered his father more valuable dead than alive, and the elder by his confrontation of the father's acceptance of the returning prodigal in telling the father what he should/should not do with his wealth. The elder brother knew that the younger one had squandered his fair share, and if he were accepted back he would start consuming the inheritance that would have come to him, so he challenges the father's right to control his own resources. Both sons were fundamentally self-centered, but they demonstrated it in very different ways. Both were seeking to be in control and escape the control of the father. Yet both were loved and pleaded with by the father, though the elder brother, as with the Pharisees in Jesus' day, had a much harder time being reconciled to the father. They, like the elder brother, were convinced that they needed no reconciliation. They had done all the right things. Only those profligate party-ers needed that. How hard it is for those who do all the right things to see their sinfulness!

I commented about Velvet Elvis a couple of weeks ago regarding why so many church-going kids abandon the faith when they go to college, and that topic comes up in this book as well. He mentions how he moved to New York city from the Midwest to start a church and how he met 'many young adults who had come from more conservative parts of the U.S. to take their undergraduate degrees at a New York school. Here they met the kind of person thay had been warned about for years, those with liberal views on sex, politics, and culture. Despite what they had been led to believe, those people were kind, reasonable, and open-hearted. When the students began to change their views, they found many people back home, especially in the churches, responded in a hostile and bigoted way. Soon they had rejected their former views along with their faith.' I would not limit this to just those that go to New York, and I think this does often happen. Keller points out the 'elder brother-ish' reaction of those back home, but there is more to consider here.

It also raises another, more fundamental question on those who lose their faith: were they simply 'elder brothers' as well, doing what is right because of what was viewed as right at home? When they went to a place where a different approach is considered 'right', they struggle briefly, but then fall into line. The hostile reaction from home pushes them along, of course, but it seems to me that if we lose our faith when it is challenged, then it must have been insecure all along. To say it another way, were they simply 'Church-ians' back home instead of Christians? Had their lives actually been changed by the invasion of Christ into their lives, or were they just following the rules like the elder brother? I tend to think the latter.

This all goes to say that I fundamentally believe that there really are just 2 kinds of people in this world: those whose lives have been invaded by the living Christ, and those that haven't.