The Talents Parable

[Warning: This article contains Biblical references. If that offends you, don't read it.]

Here is another example of the omnipresence of politics in my mind. I was in bed last night trying to sleep when a parable from Matthew 25 popped into my head.

It's the one where the master leaves town for a long journey and entrusts each of his three servants with some talents (some kind of Greek currency). From verse 15: "unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability"

When the master returns, he finds that the first two servants have doubled their money – not bad! The master rewards each for being a "good and faithful servant" (verses 21 and 23).

On the other hand, the servant with just one talent buried his in the dirt because he was afraid. For that, the master called him a "wicked and slothful servant" (v. 26), gave his talent to the guy that had 10, and cast him into the "outer darkness," where "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (v. 30).

When I heard this story as a kid, I thought it was somewhat unfair. The talents were not distributed equally in the first place – they were given according to each servant's ability. Then the guy with the short straw ends up with nothing at all. Talk about a regressive tax structure!

In Sunday school, it was explained to me that the story meant we must make the most of our abilities and not let ourselves go to waste – that the 'talents' are just a metaphor for our time on Earth.

Still, I was already steeped in the culture of entitlement – in reading the story for the first time, I expected it to end with the master giving the third servant a little from the others, to make him feel better.

If you think about it though, that would be contrary to reason. The third servant has demonstrated that he couldn't manage his master's money – he just wasted his opportunity when the others capitalized on it. Why punish the two that did exactly what the master wanted for the benefit of the one who didn't?

I'm not advocating that we rob poor people and give it to rich people – merely that we cease to rob anyone.

I realize that it seems pretentious of me, being blessed with very good parents and never knowing real poverty, to make this argument repeatedly. It has been brought to my attention many times that maybe I would feel differently if I had been born in some ghetto or some third world country.

Maybe I would – but how I feel about something is irrelevant. I still feel bad for the servant who ended up with nothing. If I were one of the other servants, I probably would have shared some of what I had with him.

That is the difference between emotion and reason. It is not rational to force equality on inherently unequal circumstances. Firstly, it is unjust to punish the innocent. Secondly, taking resources from those who can use them well in order to give to those who can't is suboptimal for society.

It is perfectly fine to allow emotion to guide my personal decisions – like giving to the servant that didn't earn it – but I cannot impose my feelings on others and force them to share.

This is why I get annoyed when people invoke religion to support mass entitlement programs. They use plenty of lovely words like "take care of" and "stewardship" and "compassion" – and all the rhetoric serves as a smoke screen to steer us away from reason.

However, I've never seen anything in the Bible about forcing people to give unwillingly or to ignore reason in the name of emotion. If God wanted that kind of behavior from us, the parable above would have had the Hollywood ending I expected as a child.