Easy Pickings, Theological Response C.

Grace is not so much offered in this story as it is presented or forced. Grace comes out in the end of the story when Big Blade is arrested and comes to realize that he should never judge a book by its cover. As it is forced upon him, Grace shows Big Blade that he was wrong about his theory of this small, quiet town. He walked in thinking that it was going to be “Easy Pickings,” but was soon proved wrong. He was a wannabe thug, and was beaten by an elderly more than once. Big Blade doesn’t have the choice of accepting or rejecting the Grace that was presented to him, because he had no choice of being arrested or not. When Deputy Sid arrests him, it suggestively knocks sense into Big Blade and tells him to straighten up and fly right. Even though it was not a choice of his own, one could say that this conversion of Big Blade’s can be compared to Thomas Aquinas’s Cooperative Grace. This is the closest version that compares to this story, although cooperative does relate to one’s freedom and reason work with God, when in this story it is reasoning and the taking of freedom that work with God. This is a story that shows that God has everything happen for a reason and, in this case, he tries to give Marvin the necessary Grace he needs to get back on the right track—the track to forgiveness and salvation.