The criterion of dissimilarity is particularly useful when looking at the parable in the Gospels usually known as the “parable of the talents” (although it is Matthew, writing for a wealthy urban audience, who changes the value of the money entrusted to the servants to this exorbitant amount). In an early Jewish-Christian Gospel not included in the New Testament, known as the Gospel of the Nazoreans, it is the one who buries that which was entrusted to him that is rewarded, and the one who invested it who is punished. This was in fact what would have been expected in that cultural context: the appropriate thing to do (as other sources confirm) was to bury that which was entrusted to you. This has been good news for archaeologists, who have found many such valuable items that were hidden in this way and never dug up again. It is because of our capitalist context that we assume that the one who seeks to take the money and make it grow is doing the right thing. In a context in which money lending and interest charging were regarded as dubious (and the latter in the Law of Moses was in fact illegal), the reverse was true.
It is far more likely that Jesus’ words were domesticated to the cultural norm than vice versa. What then is the point of the parable? At its root level, it teaches that “God’s ways are not our ways” and warns against identifying our cultural values as those of God. In this instance, it is difficult to know whether it is best to try to find an equally surprising equivalent in our own cultural context (a parable in which a servant institutes universal health care and is praised for it might have the appropriate effect in some conservative Christian contexts, for example), or to simply accept that the parable has accomplished its purpose and fulfilled its task, so that we now take for granted what was originally a new idea. “Use it or lose it” has become a commonplace.
This leads us to the topic of the infusion of Christian values in Western societies. It is easy to dismiss the relevance of Christianity (or of any religion, for that matter) when living in a society infused with its values, just as it is easy to talk about living in harmony with nature and denigrate science when living in a society in which science has eliminated many of nature’s worst aspects, like polio and subsistence farming. Rev. Indulis Paic (at a public lecture yesterday evening) compared it to having sugar dissolved in one’s coffee – it would be easy to persuade oneself that maybe coffee is sweet on its own and that sugar is unnecessary. But as one stops adding sugar but keeps refilling one’s cup, the coffee will get increasingly bitter.
Perhaps in our time, these values themselves are the things that we might bury and hide away, rather than appreciating and utilizing. Mainstream Protestantism, to cite Indulis Paic again, has become very good at being self-critical, but less adept at presenting what it actually has to offer and what is positive about itself. What is the pound/talent that our theological traditions and our society are in danger of squandering? What is the message of this parable for our time?
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