Playing God

I teach behaviorally disordered children.  They all have their differences.  To reward them, I give them a token for being good.  You can get up to 100 tokens a day.  At the end of the week, they spend the tokens on a little store that I set up.  When I have a severely problematic child, I may give them a token for doing things that the other children do automatically.  One child would not sit in his seat.  I gave him a token for sitting in his seat.  The other children received a token for getting their work done, but not for being in their seat.  On another day, I gave this troublesome child a token for staying in the room and not having to be put out.  I gave the other children tokens for getting their work done.  As time progressed, I had to reward my troubled child earlier in the day for him to make it through the day.  I rewarded him for the small gains he was taking but I only rewarded the students who did what they were supposed to do, their regular tokens.  One day, I looked at my chalkboard and behold, the kid who acted like an "nut" had more money than the kids who did not.  Now, I played God.  I took that chalk and I gave bonus after bonus to the children who did what they were supposed to do without reward.  I stood back, and if it did not look the way I wanted it to, I added more.  I usually did this on a Thursday because shopping day was Friday.  I made it so that the ones who were obedient had a lot of money, then I went to set up shop.  I priced things according to how much money they had.  My troubled child could only afford a bag of chips, but the others could get groceries.  If I had a special activity planned, I prepared the staff.  We took off our earrings, took off our shoes and rolled up our pants.  We did this because tokens don't buy special activity, behavior does.  The troublesome kid got the chips but he don't get the kit and caboodle.  Now, I have to just tell him that he did not earn the activity.  He will not get to go outside and play with the water guns when all he did was sit in his seat.  He will not get to make cookies when all he did was stay in the room.  Those rewards are for those children who did their work..  If he got mad, well, then we did what we had to do to stay safe.  God is like that in a way.  Heaven belongs to everyone, but that does not mean that all will get the same reward.  In the end, God will equalize things.  Heaven is the reward for repentance, but your crown is your reward for righteousness.  Some will get the crown and some will get wood, hay and stubble.