I started writing this post. I was going to retell a story that Jesus told about a man with two sons. The man asked one son to do something. The son said “No”, and later changed his mind and did what his dad requested. The man asked the other son to do the same thing. The son said, “Yes.” But the second son didn’t follow through.

Jesus asks, “Which son did the will of his dad?”

I was going to tell that story with names and contemporary contexts (The second son got caught up in the book he was reading/the game he was playing/the project he was working on.) I was planning the post to talk about the difference between good intentions and good actions, between making promises and keeping them.

But then I remembered the other story Jesus tells about two sons. One cashes in his inheritance before his father dies, spends it in riotous living, and returns to his dad, looking for a job on the family farm. The other son spends nothing, preferring righteous living and ignores his dad’s request to accept the returning brother.

Four sons. Two reject their dad’s words and then turn around. Two assent, but make no change in their lives.

Jesus uses the stories to explain why tax collectors and prostitutes seek out his company. Jesus wasn’t using the stories as motivational speeches. He wasn’t saying, “Get off your sofa and do something.” While that may be true, it’s not the point of these stories.

In these stories, Jesus is talking about people who knew better than God how to live life, watched everything go out of control, took the simple and hard step of saying, “I was wrong, God was right,” and discovered that God is a better god then I am.