Taking Care of Business

Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, Engage in business until I come.  -- Luke 19:13

The traditional KJV says, Occupy till I come.  Word Pictures in the New Testament indicates to us that a better sense might be “trade here while I’m coming”.  Maybe it’s just me, but “engaging in business” carries a connotation of high finance and equity markets.  I don’t think that’s what these servants were being called to do.  They were not sitting in an office.  The successful and commended servants were going on and plying the trade routes.  I would imagine they had to make trips out to other places, buying and bringing back goods desired in the local marketplace.  There was risk involved and potential loss.  They probably suffered some losses and setbacks and had to work harder to make up for it. 

They tell us, from this parable, that we ought to use our gifts as God intended, and I agree with that.  Notice that in this version of the story, there are ten minas or talents, each given out to ten different servants.  We do not have the inequitable distribution seen elsewhere.   Every human being is given something precious and treasured by God.  I am not very talented.  About the only thing I ever excelled at in my youth was bucking hay bales.  But I have this life, this soul -- the divine spark that Bob was talking about a couple of days ago. 

When I pass from this life and stand before the judgment seat of Christ, I do not think He will ask me much about my hay hauling or my singing, whether I coded for the kingdom or how much money I spent on Girl Scout cookies or gave to missions.  I think He will look at the life He gave me and see if I multiplied and enriched it.  He will want to know if I risked myself by loving other people, including those on whom I had a chance to lose it all.  He will want to know if I hid out in the basement, or if I went out through the war zones and the no-man’s lands.  Did I ever defy the devil to add to gain more for the Lord?  Or did I prefer to keep a low spiritual profile, to bury that spark and keep it out of sight to avoid being attacked?

It may be tough for me to answer.  I do tend to avoid the critics, the skeptics, and some of the heretics.  I am more comfortable being some distance from the edge of the precipice.  I don’t know that I want to see how close I can get or if there is some narrow, knife-edged way to bridge the gap and get over where there are treasures I might bring back.  Yet, isn't this, in a much greater way than I can imagine, what the Lord Himself did in the Incarnation? 

Obviously we don’t want to gamble with our souls, but I do think we are called to invest and “trade” some in this world.  I think missionaries and visionaries, spiritual and intellectual pioneers, artists and poets and prophets and creators of all kinds bring back treasures that enrich the lives of others and bring growth to their own souls.  I am not going to be one of the heroes of the faith or a notable saint of any kind, but I am going to do what I can with the spark that I have.   

I’m going love people who may reject me.  I’m going to study and read and pray.  I’m going to challenge the assumptions that the world system offers to me and expects me to accept.  While I am at it, I may challenge some of the traditional interpretations of the Bible that my religion holds.  Maybe I’ll look at the questions and objections of the skeptics to see if I can venture out to bring back answers for that market. 

Now, there will be those who are concerned, frightened, perhaps even offended by us as spiritual traders.  I understand.  There is the potential to go off the tracks, to get lost or waylaid out there in the bush.  I think, though, if we will listen carefully to our Guide, who will never leave nor forsake us, regardless of the dangers and tribulations of the trail, we’ll find our way safely back home.

Just Add Wonder

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth — Matthew 5:5

A sentiment of superiority keeps us cool and practical; the mere facts would make our knees knock under as with religious fear. — G.K. Chesterton from Heretics

I wonder, in reading through Heretics, about whom a Chesterton would write today. Mark Steyn, he of the sons of the prophets, speaks most often on politicians and popular culture figures — as if there is now any difference between politics and pop culture, which may be a good part of our problem. Chesterton safaried on an intellectual savannah trod by Shaws, Wells, and Orwells, to name but a few. I'm afraid he would hardly waste a round on the lock-step lemmings, swarming rodents, and shambling opossums that have inherited the plain today. Perhaps there are no Chestertons because there is no quarry worthy of such hunters. Did Nimrod stop to weep for himself when he saw the end of Smilodon?

Truly the old, bold socialists, eugenicists, and strong men who stalked under the noon sun are gone, replaced by careful and cowardly creatures of the night that scurry from shadow to shadow lest we see their true form. Apart from the insulated and the tenured like Peter Singer, few of the "pro-choice" advocates in our day admit that they long for a better race of men through more selective breeding, and, by the way, far fewer men for the most part. They have learned the chameleon trick of taking on the surrounding colors, especially the color of freedom, as they lurk and wait to strike. It's just me probably, but I'd rather take my chances face to face with the grinning tiger of the day than be struck by an ambushing death adder.

I can't say as I blame the skulkers, at least here in America. Coming out and saying that you are for de-populating the earth, turning North America into a theme park, and breeding slave races on the old government plantation probably isn't going to get you a whole lot of votes or funding for the U.S. Department of Indoctrination. Camouflage and stealth: it's not just for tanks and planes any more.

In Chesterton's day he could still talk about the "humility of the man of science", a phrase many of us find quaintly amusing. Even Chesterton was amused by it for he saw their day passing as surely and swiftly as those hunters with the Clovis point saw the passing of the giant ground sloth or the mastodon. Projecting forward, he could see the inevitably of rising pride and the creation of the lordly scientific priesthood who shake their big, rattling gourds at us in the Twenty-First Century of what is now called — so appropriately — the Common Era.

The path of devolution is always the same. First comes wonder with its beloved foster child, humility. Humility gives birth to discovery. Discovery always rebels against his parent, sows his wild oats, and reaps his bastard offspring, power. Power and pride form their unholy union from which comes their first-born, unintended consequences, then his twin brothers, death and destruction. A rebirth of discovery is always denied to power and pride. If we doubt God, He answers us thus. Still, the reign of power and pride may be long, counter-balanced as it is by God's grace in raising up children to humility from the very stones of the earth.

That's Chesterton's point in the opening quote: that merely looking at things as they are tends to make us more humble, to set ablaze our sophisticated cool. We humans are very good at thinking that a name for something is the same as an explanation. It's not the facts that poison humility; it is someone's interpretation of the facts. We could walk well on the stones in our path. It's the bumperstickers that trip us up.

I even miss the good old days when we thought science was impressively objective, isolated, and concerned only with discovery for discovery's sake. You know how it used to be in science fiction when the lone, eccentric genius created some grand new thing in his basement la-BORE-atory. The emotional humanist hero would come along to ejaculate, "But think what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands!" Yep, those days are long gone. Too many of our current heroes are Boromirs who see the power of darkness as a "gift" that they may conquer, only to become that which they vanquish.

Reading through the New Testament, everyone has come to the Beatitudes. To this day, every time I read through the Sermon on the Mount, I fight the same thought: He's got to be kidding. Jesus, I find myself saying, You can't be serious about this stuff. Anybody who tries to follow Christ's teaching here will be eaten alive in this world. If you are going to try this, your best bet is to go ahead and die young because otherwise you'll wind up living in a cardboard box and getting mugged on a daily basis. Shoot, they'll probably even take your cardboard box.

The better part of me says, though, that cynical-me is wrong. He meant what He said, and He meant for us to live it. He did not promise that it would be easy. There are snakes in the brush, and, while old Smiley is gone, there are still lions and tigers and bears, not to mention jackals aplenty. All that's missing are the meek — or as more modern translations sometimes say, the gentle.

The meek are ones strong enough to be gentle, brave enough to fear, and bold enough to be humble. They inherit the earth because those who reject meekness reject man and his abode along with it. We'll inherit what we appreciate — that is, what gains value for us, or that to which we give or add value. We wonder at ourselves, at the cosmos, at the Creator. The legitimate explanations of science only serve to deepen our wonder, to add even more value to that which we have been given.

The world will always prefer the giants who look from a distance with disdain down upon the meek and — don't miss it — the lowly. They are impressed by his man-made armor of snark, his heavy weapons of vulgarity and mockery. They see no vulnerability and gather fearlessly in his wake.

Across the way comes one of those hillbillies, some kid just in from herding sheep and goats. Perhaps the crowd behind the giant smells the intruder before they see him, for indeed he must smell like sheep. They see him pause and stoop at the brook to pick up five stones cut out from the mountain and polished smooth without hands.

The humble shepherd looks up at the giant. He doesn't seem to see the armor or the shield or the spear. He looks the giant in the eye and sees the bare seat of his opponent's thoughts. The hillbilly says, "He's so big! How can I miss?"