That’s not fair!

“That’s not fair!” Have you ever said that? I’m guessing that you probably have. Maybe you said it when you went to an ice cream store, and your brother got a cone with two scoops of ice cream, and your cone only had one scoop.

Another word for fairness is justice. We usually think it means being treated the same as someone else. If someone doesn’t treat us fairly, we want justice, and if we don’t get it, then we think the person who treated us unjustly or unfairly should be punished.

Let me tell you a story that Jesus once told his disciples. After you hear the story, I want you to talk with your parents about whether the man in the story was fair or not.

Not enough workers

Once upon a time, there was a man named Mr. Jones, who owned a huge vineyard. A vineyard is a kind of farm where grapes are grown on vines. When the vines are ripe with bunches of red or green grapes, they need to be picked as soon as possible so that they don’t spoil.

Mr. Jones went out early one morning on a sunny August day and noticed that his grapes were ripe. He couldn’t pick them all by himself, so he quickly went into the town near his vineyard and found some people who were looking for work.

He said, “If you come with me right away and start picking my grapes, I will give you $100 at the end of the day.”

“That’s fair,” said the workers. They followed Mr. Jones back to his vineyard and started picking grapes at nine o’clock in the morning.

By 12 o’clock noon, Mr. Jones realized that he would need even more grape pickers. So, he went back into town and found some more people. He told them that, if they worked hard, he would pay them a fair wage. The workers agreed to this and went to work in his vineyard.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Jones saw that he needed just a few more workers. So, he quickly went back to town to get more.

An unfair farmer

Finally, at six o’clock, all the grapes had been picked and were stored in baskets in a cool barn. Mr. Jones called all the workers together to thank them. He got them to line up, starting with the workers who had only worked for an hour and ending with the ones who had worked all day.
Mr. Jones took out his wallet and gave each of the workers who had picked grapes for an hour a $100 bill. They were really happy and thanked Mr. Jones for being so generous.

When the other workers who had been picking grapes for much longer saw that the one-hour workers received $100, they were eager to see how much money they would receive. But when Mr. Jones reached them in the line-up, he thanked them and gave each of them the $100 he had promised them.

“That’s not fair,” shouted the workers who had been there since morning. “We have worked faithfully all day long in the hot sun picking your grapes, and now you are only giving us as much as these other people who only worked one measly hour? That’s just not fair!”

Well, what do you think? Was Mr. Jones fair and just, or was he unfair and unjust? Ask your moms and dads to tell you what Jesus said about this. Was Mr. Jones acting like Jesus? You can read about it in the Bible in Mathew 20:1-6.