Famous parables re-considered: Bonus culture and the parable of the talents

Symon Hill, author of The Upside-down Bible, is encouraged by first-time readers to re-evaluate a series of widely cited Bible stories …

I have spent a lot of the last year asking non-Christians for their reactions to Jesus' teachings. Often, they produce insights that tend to be missed by Christians who are used to being told traditional interpretations in church.

I have found only one text in which all first-time readers immediately give a very different reaction to the standard Christian interpretation. It is the “parable of the talents”.

This parable appears in Matthew (25,14-30) and Luke (19,12-27). The gist of the story is that a nobleman entrusts sums of money to his employees or servants as he goes off on a  journey. On his return, he rewards those who have made more money out of the money but condemns one of them for hiding the money and not multiplying it. This third servant calls him a “hard man” and is thrown out. In Luke's version of the story, the nobleman then has his enemies killed.

What do first-time readers make of the rich man? 'He's a bastard,' said one respondent in a workshop. ‘Taking everything from someone scared and less able to think about problems is really nasty,' said Jennifer. Samantha said: ‘Clearly Jesus is condemning the ruler, but is he condemning the bystanders for letting things get to this point?’

One of the most amusing comments was made by an anonymous person posting on my blog site who wrote, ‘I think in this parable the rich man is Alan Sugar and one apprentice refuses to take part in the challenge because it’s so awful’.

If you hear a sermon on this parable, however, you are likely to be told that the nobleman represents God.

Some say this is because God is all-powerful; they insist that the most powerful character in the parable must represent God. This is a curious argument. Christians also believe God is all-loving, so by the same logic we could look for the most loving character as a metaphor for God. Does power trump love in God's list of characteristics?

We do not have to assume that any character at all represents God. It is true that some ancient parables used an employer or landowner as a stand-in for God, but many did not.

If first-time readers see nothing positive in this brutal tyrant, I suspect that Jesus' original listeners would have taken a poor view of him too. Why would anyone wish to worship a God who is represented by a murderous bully?

Furthermore, Jesus was Jewish. This is one of the most certain – and overlooked – facts about him. Whereas the nobleman in the parable encourages his servants to invest money at interest, it is highly unlikely that a first-century Jewish teacher would have promoted usury.

Perhaps the third servant is not the villain but the hero of the story. He stands up to the powerful man, telling him, 'you reap what you did not sow'. He speaks truth to power.

If read this way, the parable becomes a comment on sinful economic systems. This is summed up in one of the final lines: 'To everyone who has will be given more; but anyone who has not will be deprived even of what he has'. One first-time reader, Chaminda, an economic journalist, told me,  ‘That's as succinct a description of targets/bonus culture as you'll ever see!’

Symon Hill is the author of The Upside-down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence, which was published on November 26 in paperback and eBook, priced £9.99.