Those who sell their souls to free enterprise and believe untrammelled private ownership is the ultimate solution to all our woes must feel vindicated when they read St Matthew's account of how Jesus commended those who and take a gamble with their money and make more. In the same vein Jesus condemned the person who buried the money and, when his master came back, gave him exactly what he was given. Jesus is so harsh on him that he says: "But his master answered him, `You wicked and lazy servant! So you knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered? Well then, you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have recovered my capital with interest. So now take the talent from him and give it to the man who has five talents.' " (Matthew 25: 26-28)
Harsh words for the careful man who goes off and does the bare minimum. Maybe in the not too distant past we did put our savings under the bed. Not a wise thing to do. But even more importantly, it is not a wise idea to let our minds stagnate and to live in the past. It is an intrinsic part of our lives that we are all the time making new discoveries, developing and refining ideas. Nothing stands still. Standing still leads to death. In this mortal coil of ours it is either a question of moving forward or dying.
No philosophy or theology is exempt from that harsh reality. The flat-earthers are to be pitied. Those who blame the steam engine for our woes are totally out of touch with life as we know it. Our understanding of God has to change and develop. The faith of an adult has to be different from that of a child. God is the constant in the equation, but that does not mean that our understanding of God is going to be the same.
Once we use the word God we are talking in terms of analogy. We can never behold or understand God, but we can at least make an attempt to get some glimpse or understanding of God. We have the long tradition of the Church, revelation, the life of Jesus himself to point us in the direction of God. But the exercise in discovering God is always in process. We can never say we have it all, we can never say we have grasped God. If we do, then we have created our own god. That is what idolatry is.
No matter how close we get to God, our ideas and words break down And nobody has direct access to God. It is our privilege and responsibility to develop and learn about God, but it is a permanent pilgrimage. Just as we move from the faith of childhood to adulthood, so too every generation throws a new light and development on our understanding of the Creator. The man who did nothing with the talent except bury it is like people who stand still with their faith. They might live by the rule book, but the rule book is there as a crutch, a help. Rule books can never tell the whole story. In our faith-journey we might make mistakes, but that is all part of the pilgrimage. Faith involves taking risks. Theology, like all the other sciences, develops and refines. God cannot improve; God is perfection; but our comprehension, our knowledge of God is developing all the time. It would indeed be sad to start off with one talent and at the end still just to have that one and only talent. M.C.