We named this magazine after a parable where the master hands out the money before anyone has earned it
Someone has told you that you are good for nothing. I have been told it. It lands somewhere under the ribs and stays there, and the reason it stays is usually that a part of you was already half convinced.
This magazine takes its name from Matthew 25. That parable is normally preached as a warning. Use it or lose it. Do something with your life before the master comes back. The preaching gets the urgency right and the story wrong, because the story does not begin with anybody working.
And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.
Read the first six words again. Nobody in that story earned anything. The master owned all of it, handed it out before a single servant had traded one coin, and measured what he gave to what each man could already carry. The capital came first. The trading came second. There is no other order in the text.
The third servant was not lazy
He is the one we point at, and we usually call him idle. He gives a different account of himself.
Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth.
He was afraid. He was afraid because of what he believed about the man who had given him the money. He had decided the master was harsh, so burying the coin looked safer than trading it. His ability was never the problem.
His ability was never the problem. His picture of the giver was.
On the third servant
Sit with that one, because the same fear keeps people in the back row of a church for thirty years. If you think God is watching to catch you out, you will not risk anything in front of him. You will bury it and call the burying humility.
A talent is not a genius
The word in the parable is a weight of silver, not a gift for singing. Whatever is in your hands is in your hands because somebody put it there.
For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?
That question cuts in both directions. It removes any grounds for showing off. It also removes any grounds for hiding, because a gift you did not produce is not yours to be embarrassed about.
What we are going to print
So here is the plan for this magazine. We will find people who worked out what was already in their hands and did something with it, and we will print what they did. Some of them run sound desks in churches. One of them makes puppets for Sunday school. None of them are famous and that is the point.
You are not being asked to manufacture something out of nothing. You are being asked to stop believing the master is hard. The trading starts by itself once that goes, because you are no longer protecting yourself from him.
Dig it up. It was never yours to lose.
Premasis Satman
Founder and Executive Director of 5Talents Magazine, writing from Hyderabad. He has written the magazine's editorial column since the first issue in July 2012.
Talents · Grace · Editorial · Point of view