Phil On ...

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but it can’t be a coincidence that something you read or hear from the bible on one day suddenly connects with something you come across a few days later. It must be God trying to grab your attention, surely?
Whilst I was preparing a bible study on Ephesians Chapter 4, I was struck by the concept of “Strongholds in the mind”. What this means is that all of us have opinions, shaped over years, that we hold on to strongly and come to regard as the indisputable truth. We play them over in our mind, reinforcing the message, rather like the wheels of a vehicle driving over the same muddy ground until grooves are worn in place. Let me give you a personal example: I can recall doing very badly in my first secondary school exams. Quite frankly I hadn’t ever had to revise for exams before and didn’t really know how to. I can recall being ashamed, especially as my parents had tried to instil in me the importance of working hard at school and passing exams as a passport to a good job and happy life! From that point on I resolved to do better and, as I ultimately did get my ‘O’ levels (showing my age there!) and ‘A’ levels at school, went to University and got what I considered to be a good job, I felt vindicated. The downside of this is that you can start to develop a tendency to look down on those who haven’t been so fortunate in employment, believing that they would have done better if only they had applied themselves. I’m sure each of us can think up other examples of strongholds surrounding contentious issues such as migrants trying to reach the UK, Brexit, people’s sexuality and (to bring us right up to date) the behaviour of politicians or perhaps neighbours during the Covid-19 epidemic.
What Ephesians tells us is that we should use prayer and reading the bible to continually examine our strongholds. Oftentimes we will ultimately discover that the beliefs we hold are actually counter to what God wants us to think. Regarding my example above, what I have learnt (and unfortunately need to keep reminding myself) is that doing well in school is only one factor that dictates how life turns out for you. I’ve also learnt that, if I’m honest with myself, I became too fixated on working hard and so spent insufficient time connecting with/helping others. Contemplating our strongholds can be a challenging and unpleasant experience.
Fast forward a few days and a Zoom church service sermon offered a very interesting interpretation of the parable of the talents. This is the one where a rich man left three of his servants with differing amounts of money (five, two and one talents) according to how he perceived their ability. As an aside, a talent was actually a unit of weight and a talent of gold was said to represent the weight of a person in gold. I’ve read that the value for this could be $1.4 billion in today’s money! Of course, the servants with five and two talents did well and used the money to earn double the original amount for their master who was thus pleased with them when he returned. In contrast the servant with one talent hid the money until his master came back. He then dug it up and gave it back to him, incurring his wrath. I’ve always interpreted this as a warning that we must do our best with the abilities God has given us – both in terms of our work and in following God. You can see how my stronghold from above has shaped my thinking! However, at the zoom meeting we were challenged to think about possible parallels to God that appear at first to be disturbing. The master in the story was rich and wanted to make money by any means (the passage says he even looked to reap where he hadn’t sown).  Does God wish us to become like the master and the first two servants in the story, that is fixated on making money and doing well for themselves? This seems highly unlikely.
Looking at things the way God might, could we say that the person with one talent was the best because he took a stand and refused to make his master any richer? In other words, he acted in a way to encourage greater equality? If so, why was he punished? Because the master was not a man of God and so acted in an ungodly manner?
The use of the word talent makes me smile because as well as being a unit of currency, we can think of the talents (i.e. skills) that God gives to each of us, for use in his service. He blesses some with the ability to become, for example, eminent preachers. Others have talents for what we might consider more humble service: making tea and coffee/washing up after fellowship. Having greater or lesser skills doesn’t make you a better or worse person. The challenge is to support each other and, as individuals, respond as best as we can to use our skills in God’s service.
I should perhaps finish by saying that wanting to work hard and do well in life is not a sin. Indeed, the bible encourages us to work hard. If nothing else, earning good money positions us to financially support causes that aim to stop poverty and give others an opportunity to shine in life. But balance is important. This of course might be another interpretation of the parable of the talents. What is clear is that Jesus can use the same bible passage to speak to different people in different way. All we have to do is meditate on what we read and ask Jesus what he wants us to learn from it.