25:14
For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and
entrusted his property to them;
25:15 to one he gave five
talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his
ability. Then he went away.
The
parable of the talents, as a member of a parable cluster, is about
the preparedness for
the day of the visitation of the Lord who is the righteous
judge of men and of the world.
The talent itself was
a part of an ancient Mesopotamian
weight
measuring system. So old that it was invented by the Sumerians, or if
not then
it might have been invented
in Atlantis as
a measurement from before the Great Deluge. One talent equals 60
minas, one mina
equals 60 shekels. In Sumer the talent
was
called kakkaru,
in Hebrew it is called kikkar, talanton is the Greek name, talentum
is the Roman. The Babylonian talent was approximately 30 kg of gold
or
silver, thus even a single talent was considered as a huge amount of
wealth.
As a unit of value is mentioned in the New Testament
exactly in Jesus' parable of the talents in the Gospel of Matthew.
The use of the word "talent" to mean "gift or skill"
in English and other languages originated from an interpretation of
this parable sometime late in the 13th century. The parable became
very popular in the age of the Reformation.
However there are a
couple if issues in it that are to be discussed. For example there is
the obvious inequality of the people in the parable.
In a
democracy, however and actually there is not a single real democracy
on the surface of the whole Earth, but let's say in a theoretical
one, we try to champion the idea of the equality of all.
Whenever
you can see mind blowing inequalities in society, you can be sure
that that state is not based on real democracy but on something
else.
Having a Parliament or having even representatives in the
national legislation does not mean in itself that that state is a
real democracy, because it is only a system based on representation,
which is practically the handing over of the power of the people into
the hand of the
representatives.
Most representatives belong to the pockets of the big fat cats,
including multinational corporations and lobby circles like banker
dynasties and the so called military-industrial complex, thus not
even the pretension of any kind of democracy should occupy the mind
of the people, but in fact it does.
However, democracy means
literally the rule of the people, which may mean that the people
self-govern themselves, and the legislative decisions are based on
broad consensus of the population.
The only real democracy
is the so called participatory democracy,
which means that even after any kind of elections, the population is
still able to have a voice in the decision making process, mostly via
perpetual referendums.
There
is no participatory democracy in the world except the very limited
Swiss version.
Thus the people should
not be only governed, but also should be governing.
However when
the
few governs the many through their
representatives, that is called literally oligarchy as a system, and
it guarantees the maintaining of the inequality for ever, because the
rulers want to keep their privileges by
any means and
their control over the peasants and the deplorable.
The
minimum level of any kind of democracy which might be implemented
into a representative system is that the representatives
should
vote in the legislative body according to the majority opinion of his
or her constituents. There must be perpetual surveys established in
the ridings to have the voice of the people heard.
If the
representatives vote according to their party lines, that is a party
system but not a democracy, when the parties accommodate the rich and
the wealthy,
then it is an oligarchical system, but not a democracy. In the early
Christianity they had every possession held in common, so
the inequalities in wealth and poverty as such were abolished. People
in
the Jerusalem congregation were
equals but were not uniform and especially they were not enforced to
become uniformed.
There
is no need to be all the same because each of us is unique as an
individual, and everyone has a major role in the community, which is
to be a unique member of the community, adding a color to the united
fabric.
The
Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian congregation that everyone can
have a very important gift. It might be a cliché, but it is true
that the hospitals need skilled surgeons and knowledgeable scientists
to heal people, but hospitals can not operate without the cleaning
people or the undergraduate nurses. That is why all should have to
have the same salary, like in a kibbutz in Israel, if, as a society
we would like to really do the right thing.
The parable
intentionally takes
examples
from
real life
like investing, trading, banking in order to make people to
understand the core of the message, but occasionally we are really
surprised when we see in nature the inequality, which is not human
made but which comes usually already at birth.
Some
people were born blind, lame or
with inherited
genetic disorders. Some others were born with great physical
features, strong and athletic body type, high IQ, or even obvious
beauty in their stature or having a harmonious face, or having strong
psychological structure to persevere in hard
times, or having good natured attitude, all
inherited.
It is almost impossible to answer the question why God made
the world like this, so
unequal, that is why the
Greek invented the term fate, when even their Greek gods were
subjected to it, and the Indian sub-continent invented the term
karma, and most of the religions hold that reincarnation is real, and
that the cause of all inequalities are the sins or the merits of the
former lives .
Whether
reincarnation
is real or not, the Bible talks about the bad
consequences
of sin through three and four generations, and the good
consequences
of obeying God’s laws through thousands of generations.
Science
says the we simply
inherit biological facts
from the deep past, like even from our Neanderthal ancestors, but
recently they also
started
to talk about specific genetic memories that are encoded into our
cells.
They
really contain life experiences of our parents, grandparents or even
far more further back in time. Thus science acknowledges recently
that our ancestors live with us not only by inherited biological
material like our genes, but also as spiritual memorial present
right in our cells.
And that is huge, if we
could
perceive and receive the importance of this.
The parable however
not only acknowledging the different levels, qualities, even amounts
we received at birth, but it also tries to call our attention to the
possibility of
radically
changing
the situation on the field, by growing in the qualities whatever we
were initially
granted
or gifted. The emphasis on the
growing.
Stagnating or being stuck is not an option. Even if we had been given
only
a
little, growing a little more means the effort to get into Heaven. If
we had had ten thousand of talents, but at the end we did not even
grow by a single one, it would
mean the lack of effort, the disobeying and disrespecting God,
ultimately the rejection from the Kingdom.
As
the people of Jesus we must grow every day. There is no alternative.
A single step day by day closer to our beloved God, the
King of Heaven,
Amen.
