The Parable of the Talents: What If It Really Is About Money?

AUGUST 22, 2021 BY MICHAEL AUSTIN

This is not a post about the recent disclosures regarding the LDS Church’s investment in the City Creek Mall, but it is inspired by some of the discussions I have had about those disclosures. More than anything else, it is about the difference between managing (including investing) money and spending money, which, I think, is at the heart of the disagreement. If the Church has been spending tithing dollars on city malls, that is a big problem. If they have been investing savings — wherever the origin —in a in a city mall, then, it seems to me, that is no different than investing in oil companies, or tech stocks, or bitcoin. The management of resources, I think, follows a different set of moral rules than their expenditure.

In support of this seemingly capitalist assertion, I offer a reading of Jesus’s Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) that goes somewhat against the prevailing Christian orthodoxy. The standard Christian interpretation of this parable inheres in the English language, which uses the word “talent” to mean something like “natural ability,” usually involving music or athletics or some other easily demonstrable ability that can be improved by hard work. The gist of the standard interpretation is that God gives each of us certain gifts, and we dishonor the gift, and God, if we don’t do everything in our power to become great athletes, composers, writers, or whatever else we may have some native ability for.

Anciently, of course, a talent was a large amount of money—about 80 pounds of silver, or more money than most ancient servants would see in their entire lifetime. For a thousand years or so, Christians have gone to great lengths to interpret the Parable of the Talents in a way that makes it about something other than a large amount of money. It must be about something other than money because money is dirty and commerce is evil. So, the parable becomes about natural abilities, or about the love of God, or about anything other than the thing that it says it is about. Jesus, we know intuitively, doesn’t care about the return on investment.

But what if we are going to metaphor too quickly without considering the surface meaning of the text? Parables are metaphorical, of course, but the metaphors only work if the core narrative makes sense on its own terms. So, in some sense, Jesus really is talking about how we manage resources (assets to which we have access through no merit of our own) rather than abilities (aptitudes or natural propensities that come as part of our genetic makeup)? And the core narrative of this parable suggests that Jesus thinks it is a good thing—and maybe even a moral choice—to exercise wisdom in managing the resources that we have been blessed with?

One reason to think that this might be the case is that The Parable of the Talents in Matthew comes right after the Parable of the Ten Virgins—another story about managing resources. Oil is a limited resource that all ten virgins had the money to purchase, but five of them mismanaged their resources, and five of them did not—and those who managed well were rewarded, metaphorically, with the Kingdom of Heaven.

The servants in the Parable of the Talents are in a very similar situation. The master gives them wildly unequal amounts of money—five talents, two talents, and one talent—and asks them to manage the resources they have been given. Two of the servants manage wisely and double the amount. One of them simply buries a talent of silver in the ground and then digs it up when the master returns. The first two servants are praised and promoted for their wise management of the master’s stuff. The third is condemned as a “wicked and slothful servant” and cast into outer darkness.

Perhaps the most obvious, surface message of the parable is that hiding 8o pounds of silver in the ground is really stupid. Imagine somebody taking the same strategy with their retirement savings and hiding $500 a month in a sock for 50 years. Such a person would retire with about $300,000. Putting the same amount of money in a retirement account averaging 6% a year would yield a retirement of around $2,000,000. Simply not being stupid can, over time, dramatically increase our access to resources.

Wise money management can also increase the capacity of an institution, or an individual, to do good. Let’s say that I have a million dollars and want to help alleviate hunger in my community. And, because I know that hunger is a perpetual problem, I realize that buying a million dollars worth of Big Macs and distributing them to hungry people is not going to do much in the long term at all. So, I decide that I am going to spend $50,000 a year on inexpensive, nutritious meals and donate them to homeless shelters and food banks to distribute to hungry people. At this point, I can do one of two things:

1. I can go to the bank and withdraw the one million dollars in hundred dollar bills and place then in socks that I hide under my bed. Then, each year, I can take $50,000 out of my sock drawer and buy nutritious meals.

2. Or, I can put the one million dollars in a fund that averages 5% interest a year, spend $50,000 per year on nutritious meals, and always have the million dollars.

You don’t have to be that good at math to figure out that option #1 will last for 20 years and then be gone, while option #2 will last for 20 years, and then 20 more, and then 20 more after that, and the money will still be there. The total amount of good that I can do with a million dollars increases dramatically when I manage the money well. This is the principle (and also the principal) behind most university endowments and charitable foundations. They manage their money wisely in order to do more good for more people for more time than they would if they just handed out money until it was gone.

The same holds true for other resources too. Someone who spends two hours a day reading and learning stuff is going to be better educated than someone who spends the same two hours a day playing video games. Somebody who strictly organizes their time is going to have more time for other things than somebody who does not. Countries who keep their air and water clean are going to have more good air and water. Resources often come from the accidents of fortune, but we have the choice to be wise or foolish about how we use them.

Is this a good thing? The text asks us to assume that the money will ultimately be used for a good purpose. The master in the story represents God in the allegory, and the servants represent all of us. We can assume, for the sake of interpretation, that God will use the money wisely and well and that our job is to manage it wisely so that it can do as much good as possible. But this is not a parable about spending money. It is a parable about managing money. Whether the money is ultimately spent morally or immorally is–while not an unimportant question–one that cannot be answered from the text. Morality and immorality are not at issue in our interpretation; wisdom and foolish are very much at issue. And, as the master’s final dismissal of the foolish servant indicates, God expects us to be wise as well as good–which, it turns out, is also the point of the Parable of the Ten Virgins.

Is this too harsh? Maybe. I know that, in my own life, wisdom can often be more ellusive than goodness. But, as a broken person who has to live in a fallen world—one in which resources matter quite a lot for my ability to do anything—I take great comfort in the fact that nearly all of the parables in the New Testament that deal with financial and other resources come down on the side of not being stupid with money.