Firstly, I'm the grandpa. Secondly, I'm a business owner. From the passage you quoted, Matthew 20:1-16, if I did that I would have disgruntled laborers too. You don't reward slackers. It gives no incentive for the productive workers in your employ and as a direct result, this landowner you cite would surely loose his crop.
I'm sure that there is more to this passage that you have cropped out. I am a jack Mormon. I haven't been inside ANY church in over 30 years. I would like to offer you this one thing. Tearing down anothers religion does not raise yours. I just walked away. Let them be them. They do no harm to others, not like Islam, which is not a religion, but a political ideology bent on destroying all other religions. Yours included. God Bless you and may you have a happy & prosperous New Year.
First of all, Jesus said why at least some of them weren't working -- it wasn't "slack" -- it was lack of a hiring agent: Why stand ye here all the day idle? 7They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. (vv. 6-7)
Think of where all the employees would be if there weren't enough business owners like yourself employing them? It's not always the employee's fault that they are jobless. It's owners like you who have taken the risks, stepped forward, & employed those men. Less of successful men like you = less employed.
When you give gifts to your grandchildren @ Christmas, does the 4 yo complain that he's only rec'd four Christmas gifts through the years while the 14 yo has rec'd 14 such gifts?
You know as well as I do that every business owner already does what you claim leads to "disgruntled workers" -- they agree to give an admin or office worker less than a "professional" in their office.
Some of those admins or other office workers may be among your hardest-working employees -- yet get paid less. Do you automatically assign a "disgruntled" nature to them just because the owner has agreed to pay certain employees a higher wage with HIS $???
No sense of consistency of application there, I perceive.
The bottom line is that it's YOUR $ as the Business Owner. As long as you stick to your agreement, anybody envious about how you spend YOUR $ is sticking their neck into a place it doesn't belong.
If you've given one of your grandchildren 14 Christmas gifts vs. 4 for another -- so what? If you do that every year for the rest of your life, your older children/grandchildren are ALWAYS to be greater beneficiaries of your generosity than the younger ones.
You're not facilitating begrudgement and disgruntledness.
Now if all of this is true in family relationships & office environments, how much more is it true involving a kingdom NO ONE can work his way to...heaven...a place which 100% depends upon the Lord's generosity...a place which is 100% HIS to dispense with as He pleases...without telling the LORD that He's either instilling envy -- or that He must only allow married temple Mormons into His presence for eternity.
Now that is an elitism that NO, nobody should leave alone! That does plenty of harm because it literally defines heaven as a place where God isn't! (It confines Heavenly Father to only the "celestial" part of heaven -- where 99.9%+ of the world won't reside!)
Everest, you have presumed here that the lone or primary harm is of a physical nature -- as if there's not things spiritually worse than the Pentagon & Twin Towers being hit.
I take my cue from Jesus:
"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." (Luke 12:4-5)
So does Jesus say, "fear the Muslims?" (No)
Does Jesus say "fear the political ideologists of destruction?" (No)
Does Jesus say "fear those who are out to cause you bodily harm?" (No)
Instead, does He say to exercise fear of the One who has authority to cast somebody into hell? (Yes)
So, indeed, our "fear" is on behalf of those who are placing their eternal spiritual lives at risk.
As for "leaving them be" I could probably guess that the folks who the apostle Paul warned the church @ Ephesus about had the bulk in common with the sheep there. Both groups were "religious." So, did Paul ignore them? (No)
As Paul was leaving the church of Ephesus, he warned them with this high-priority alert:
"I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears." (Acts 20:29-31)
Paul's cultural priority? (Defend against the false disciples who will proselytize the flock and draw away men unto themselves!)
Tearing down anothers religion does not raise yours.
You know and I know that Mormons tend toward religious legalism. Now you and I know that's not 100% bad externally speaking.
In fact, Jesus did give a great compliment to to the outward "assets" of legalistic Pharisees when he said that unless your righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees & the teachers of the law, "you will certainly NOT enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:20).
Now had Jesus stopped there in his public ministry re: how he addressed the legalistic Pharisees, we would have none of the "tearing down" types of statements you actually are inadvertently referencing.
Let me provide several examples of Jesus addressing the religious of His day:
* 25"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Jesus, Matthew 23:25-28)
* But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Jesus, Matthew 15:9)
* ...guard against the yeast...against the TEACHING of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Jesus, Matthew 16:12)
* ... you have taken away the key to knowledge. (Jesus, Luke 11:52)
* The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God. (Jesus, John 8:47...in fact, Jesus went on in this chapter to reference them as children of the devil!)
And:
* He [Jesus] replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” 9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!... 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” (Jesus, Mark 10: 6-9, 13)
He even "tore down" the Sadducees on this occasion: Jesus replied, “You are IN ERROR because you DO NOT KNOW THE SCRIPTURES OR THE POWER OF GOD. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you... (Matthew 22:29-31)
Of course, why would something need to be "torn down?"
Everest, if you absolutely knew that a shack that a family was trusting in to withstand a hurricane about to arrive in two days, would you go around public advocating that the shack be left intact as a sense of false security?
We all know human error involved in condom usage. If you knew that condoms was the only thing standing in the way of your teen-age grandchild having sex with someone with AIDs, would you tout that condom as "doing no harm?"
I mean, c'mon, Everest. Many teens can't even make their bed or clean their room properly, and they, 100% of the time are going to "consistently and correctly" store & utilize a condom? [not to mention any inherent leakages -- some brands worse than others?]