Grace and Judgment

According to a recent poll, about eight out of 10 Americans say they have no doubt that God exists, and that prayer is an important part of their life. Eight out of 10 also agree that “we will all be called before God at the judgment day to answer for our sins.”

The notion that a future judgment defines what happens to us eternally is commonly held. After all, it makes sense. In this life, things are not fair. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people; but in the judgment, bad things will happen to bad people and good things will happen to good people. We will get what we deserve, we will reap what we have sown. Everything will be made right.

We envision a book in heaven with all the deeds of mankind recorded, by individual. That is the basis for our outcome. Scripture says:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive compensation for his deeds done through the body, in accordance with what he has done, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10)

And:

For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY PERSON ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. (Matthew 16:27; emphasis in NASB translation)

What does it mean that you’ll be recompensed according to what you have done? Where does that leave grace? And how should we understand the relationship between grace and judgment? Is it possible that “according to what we have done” is about what we’ve done with grace, not what we’ve done with our deeds? Do we have the correct view of judgment? What are we judged by?

We we’ve been talking about grace, obedience, and law. Today we will examine the relationship between grace and judgment. Grace is unmerited favor. It is not getting what we deserve. Judgment is getting what we deserve. Judgment is cause and effect. It is the day of reckoning. Here is a well-know parable about it:

“For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey. The one who had received the five talents immediately went and did business with them, and earned five more talents. In the same way the one who had received the two talents earned two more. But he who received the one talent went away and dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money. “Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have earned five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter the joy of your master.’ “Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, ‘Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have earned two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter the joy of your master.’ “Now the one who had received the one talent also came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed. And I was afraid, so I went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you still have what is yours.’ “But his master answered and said to him, ‘You worthless, lazy slave! Did you know that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter seed? Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore: take the talent away from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’ “For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. And throw the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 25:14-29)

Note the sequence: Grace is given before judgment. Everybody gets some, the five-talent chap, the two-talent chap, and the one-talent man each gets what he needs, or, as the Bible says, to each according to his ability, according to what they can handle. This is equity (see last week’s discussion). Grace is the condition of our existence. It establishes a bond between the master and the servant. It puts the servant to work for the master.

There’s no illusion here that the judgment which comes is based on anything other than one thing. The question is, what did the servants do with the grace that was given to them?

Scripture says:

And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. (John 3:19-21)

A few weeks ago, we compared grace and light, seeing them as synonyms for God’s attributes, deciding that grace, like light, is a foundational aspect of God. We might then paraphrase the passage as follows: “This is the judgment, that grace came into the world, and men preferred their own independent effort, rather than God’s grace.”

What then do we learn about grace and judgment from this parable? We learn that our judgment depends on what we do with the grace and that we are not all equal but we all have an equal opportunity to put grace to work.

The worth of a talent is considerable. By some estimates, a talent weighed about 33 kilograms or 72 pounds. In gold, it would be worth about $1.5 million today. So don’t feel sorry for the one talent guy who seems like he gets short shrift. Even to him, the grace is extreme. It’s lavish, its extravagant, and profitable.

But the key is what you do with the grace you’ve been given. Do you put it to work, to expand, to grow? Or do you hoard it? Presumably, it takes about the same amount of effort to double two talents of grace as it does to double five talents. The Master’s judgment is not based on the end product amount, but the master’s joy comes from seeing the talents put to use. There is no interrogation of the servants about what other work was being done by them. There’s no accounting of all the other efforts to maintain the household. There was one question only: “What did you do with the grace that I gave you?”

We see that grace will grow, given the chance. The natural effect of grace is to expand. Only by burying it can you suffocate grace. Grace in use is expansive, hoarded grace is toxic. So what you do with the grace is the judgment. The work by which we’re judged is what we do with our grace.

Notice the response of the one-talent servant. His first error was to make and pass judgment on his master. “I know,” he says, “that you are a hard man.” Any claim to know God, to be able to pass judgment on God, is dangerous ground. “You’re a hard man,” he says—passing judgment. This willingness to pass judgment even on God is a result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—what we’ve called in other places the tree of judgment. “I was afraid,” he goes on to say.

Note the contrast of response and judgment from the five- and two-talented servants compared to the one-talent servant. The five- and two-talent servants have a result of joy (their judgment is joy). “Enter,” the Master says, “into the joy of your Lord.” Joy versus fear. Properly understood and generously applied, grace brings joy in judgment. Grace hoarded, which is suffocated grace, results in fear.

We see a similar teaching back in the garden. After they’ve eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves waist coverings.  Now they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me some of the fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all the livestock, And more than any animal of the field; On your belly you shall go, And dust you shall eat All the days of your life;  And I will make enemies Of you and the woman, And of your offspring and her Descendant; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise Him on the heel.”  To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you shall deliver children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”  Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; With hard labor you shall eat from it All the days of your life.  Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; Yet you shall eat the plants of the field;  By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”  Now the man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. (Genesis 3:8-21)

We see the story here of sin, judgment, grace, and Man hiding from God. Man’s first fall is characterized by fear (“I heard you in the garden and I was afraid.” Separation from God brings fear and the desire to clean things up ourselves. Being naked is a result of the loss of the robe of light, the robe of grace. Our natural condition as we were created was to be clothed with grace, to be clothed with righteousness and with light. But separation from God brings fear and nakedness and the desire to clean things up ourselves.

Notice man’s attempt to fix himself: Fig leaves sewn together. Think about that. Think about how quickly a fig leaf perishes, how utterly lifeless it is. How long will a fig leaf garment really survive? Hours, I would say, not even days. Man-made religion is fruitless. It is useless covering. The fruitless fig leaf is likened to the barren fig tree in Luke 13, which is cursed by Jesus. In the garden, God curses the ground. He curses the serpent and subjects Adam and Eve to the curse as well.

Here we see the fig leaf is man’s effort to fix himself and to cover himself with his own robe. It is as fruitless and barren as the fig tree that Jesus curses in Luke 13. This is the condition then a fallen man like Zacchaeus of Luke 19 who seeks a sycamore tree to increase his spiritual stature because his shortness is not just physical shortness but he is spiritually short as well. He takes things into his own hands and climbs the sycamore tree. Like Adam and Eve, he seeks to lengthen his spiritual stature in the tree but Jesus sees through all of that and tells him: “You come down. I’m coming to your house to restore you.”

So too with Adam and Eve: God provides a way of restoration. Fig leaves are useless. They wither and die. God will provide a coat of grace, and his coat is useful. It is permanent, it is lasting. Adam is fearful because he’s naked and afraid. The real judgment is when God says: “Who told you that you’re naked?” You’re not naked with the robe of grace on you.

Doing something bad has always been an issue with Man. But doing something bad is not an issue with God. God has always been in the business of seeking Man out. Man is hiding, God is looking. He has a robe of grace to cover you. He’ll cover your ridiculous transient garment of fig leaves.

As Abraham says, at the binding of Isaac, as you get older God will provide. God will always provide. God is always seeking Man, not for judgment but for grace God curses the sin but not the sinner. For the sinner, God provides a robe of grace. Think of Adam and Eve turning aside the robe of grace, saying that they would prefer fig leaves rather than their skins, burying the grace like the one-talent chap, turning aside the robe of righteousness like the man at the wedding feast. Outer darkness and utter separation from God is the result of turning away the grace. It is the eternal separation from God. It is the place for those who shun grace.

Job’s friends talk in very elaborate terms about how God will judge Job. Just like the one-talent man, they seek to explain to Job what God is like. But God rebukes them:

“My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is trustworthy, as My servant Job has. (Job 42:7)

This is how God describes himself:

“The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth;… (Exodus 34:6)

So if this is the judgment then what do you do with grace? What does it mean to hoard grace? What does it mean to pass on grace? The grace is a free gift of God. Do you look better in fig leaves, or do you look better in fur? What does it mean to be judged by what you’ve done?

Jay: What does it mean to not bury your talent—to do something with it? It’s clear that everybody is given a different amount, as I think we determined in the equity conversation we had last week. Is a specific return expected? Do you have to double it? Does it have to produce a multiple of what you started with? And even scarier: What if there is no return on your investment, nothing to bring back to the master?

C-J: Yesterday, I watched a documentary on healing, not by traditional medicine but through good eating, spiritual awareness, mindfulness, community, and addressing issues that we stop as we become adults. We go, “Well, I’m not a kid anymore, that happened a long time ago.” So in terms of the garden experience, when we’re young, inexperienced, untaught, we see sin as very clearly right or wrong, and injustice. As we get older, we feel that if I work hard, I should get something for that work. And whether I’m educated or not, whether I’m privileged or not, I should have something to show for my life. And I should be mindful of others in their process in terms of service.

One of the statements of a practitioner in this video was that we think of ourselves as not the higher of all the species but understanding that we are connected in every way, every atom, every molecule, we are connected. When we have the ability, when we understand this gift of grace, this interconnectedness, the ability to heal ourselves—because that’s what our body was made to do—Heal ourselves—and to understand that our body is constantly evolving, changing, not just in terms of how our brain perceives it but even when we’re asleep and unaware. It’s fighting off viruses, infections, stress, etc. and the impacts those things have on our bodies.

To me, when I hear what we’re talking about, that is grace, that is the gift; not the talent, not that you became this or that, that you should go out and make a difference in the world, but the awareness that we are all healers, even as we have been healed in right relationship with the awareness of a spiritual component to what we are as human beings.

When I think about that, it isn’t a measurement. “Did you use the thimble of grace I gave you today? Or the cup of grace that I gave you today?” It’s working in concert. Understand that grace isn’t something you can measure. It never has a beginning, it never has an end. It is a key. It is an opportunity. And if I think of it that way, I don’t feel limited, because it’s not me doing it—it is God using me as an instrument to do extraordinary things like showing up, being kind, and being faithful.

So it doesn’t come down to who wins and who loses their judgment, because it’s all about grace, the gift of grace,. We can receive grace and be healed, restored in relationship to God and therefore with everything else—with humanity, the planet, and things we cannot even perceive with our finite minds.

My goddaughter is so sick right now. She keeps going to traditional doctors. I’ve known this little girl since she was eight years old and the trauma that she has endured and just pushed aside. What she’s really looking for from me is something she doesn’t have, and that is: (Her perception of) my relationship with God. And that’s the key there. Her perception. She doesn’t realize that that same grace is hers.

So when I think about grace, I see it very large, and yet also very personal.

Bryan: It seems incongruous to me to have a God whose character is love, passing out judgment. It conjures up pictures of a disciplinarian. It’s human nature to feel good that the bad guys are going to get what they deserve, but that’s only comforting if you’re not a bad guy, or at least you don’t think you’re a bad guy. The concept of judgment based on what we’ve done has always been a little disquieting to me. I prefer to think of it more as: Things that we do create consequences. The consequences of our actions in life result in self-judgment, self-discipline.

Adam and Eve are the perfect example of judgment being the consequence of actions. That is not to say that the consequences of their judgement were not severe—they were, they are. But it was God allowing the consequences of our actions instead of God disciplining them for what they had done. Their discipline, to my mind, came from what they chose to do versus God disciplining them for what they had done. And to me that allows me to reconcile God as love rather than a God who punishes us.

C-J: What I’m hearing you say is that sin or karma or whatever term you want to use is the separation from God. And that in itself is the portion. When I know I have made a bad choice, it’s not that I’m afraid God’s going to strike me with lightning or make me do 50 pushups. It’s that the relationship is wounded. While God gives me grace, I have to understand what that wound is, so that I don’t repeat it or justify it. It’s really about maturing and understanding what sin is, and that’s separation from God.

So as you were saying, in the in the garden, because they’d always been with God, there had never been a separation. But once there was a separation, it was like, “Oops, I must cover myself, I must pretend. I don’t want them to see my shame.” And I think God says, “I knew you before you were in the womb, I knew this day would come and I have prepared for you a healing, an alternative, a restoration. But I want you to understand through this tree of knowledge of good and evil, what has been done.”

We only grow when we take risks. And part of that risk is to fail, and in that failure, hopefully, we learn wisdom. We have an understanding. If I never have to do anything with my body, why would I learn to walk? But God is always calling us to become the fullness of what he has ordained for each of us in this lifetime in this dimension. There is a purpose, there is an intention, there is a time, place, and a circumstance for us to be here now.

Kiran: We have no part to play in God’s grace other than to accept it. Jesus repeatedly said, “If you stay in me, you’ll be fruitful.” If the vine does not produce fruit, the father comes to prune it so that it produces next season. It’s not about me the producing the fruit—that is is something that God does. So that takes the fear away.

Martin Luther noted that a rod of iron doesn’t have a light inside. You’d never think that a rod of iron could produce light. But if you put a rod of iron into an oven, where it will be close to—but not in—the fire, eventually it will turn red hot, producing light. Within itself, it doesn’t have the ability to produce light, but because it stayed close to the fire, it produced light. So I think the fruits we produce, because we accept grace, come from having this closeness with Christ—the source of the light.

I think the one-talent man just abandoned it. John 3 said that the light came into the world but people decided to be independent. I think that’s the problem. As long as we are dependent, we have absolutely to trust God, not ourselves. When we do that, the product comes automatically. I think that’s where we all struggle: Having accepted grace, do we have to produce fruit? God knew that we can’t produce anything on our own. So he made a plan for us so that we can produce as long as we stay inside him. And if we don’t produce, he knows how to prune us.

Dewan: Grace is a free gift, so we are saved. But we are not free. We are prisoners of Jesus Christ. We are the slaves of Jesus Christ. Slaves do not manage their own lives. So we have to follow the spiritual law, the Ten Commandments, only then will we be saved.

Robin: I see God’s judgment perhaps being twofold. First of all, he has the ability to judge obedience or disobedience. And we were created with the ability to choose. God’s judgment in the garden was that Adam and Eve had been disobedient, and there are natural consequences to that. Spiritually speaking, they could no longer walk with him in his very presence anymore because sin cannot exist with holiness, which was why Lucifer was banished with those who chose to follow him.

Another part of his judgment, I think, was that he already was the creator. And he already is the judge. But now we needed a savior. We needed a way to reconcile. And I see that as being part of God’s judgment, as well. And so our behavior is judged. We do the same with our children. As parents, we have to judge their behavior, and sometimes their behavior is such that there needs to be—or there naturally is—a consequence to the choice of their behavior.

Jay: It’s really interesting to me that in the parable the one talent servant thinks he knows what the master wants, thinks he knows who the master is. He’s a “you reap where you don’t sow” guy. “I was afraid and therefore I did this so that you could get what you deserve, that you could get back what you gave.” He thinks he understands what God wants him to do, which I think is a pretty interesting part of the parable.

We often default our judgment thought process as the scales of the bad things we’ve done and the good things that we’ve done, and that hopefully, in the end, the good things that we’ve done outweigh the bad things that we’ve done and God will say, “It looks like you were more good than bad, so come on in.” I think that that is ingrained in our thought process a little bit.

It’s interesting that in the parable what’s really being “judged” (if you want to call it that) is the good things that you’ve done. It’s really not about the bad stuff. It’s really about your opportunity to do good, or as we’re calling it: Your opportunity to utilize grace. That is what the master (God) seems to be looking at, evaluating, making a judgment call on. It is what you do with goodness and the opportunities to do goodness. It’s really not about any of the bad things that these people did.

Reinhard: Fundamentally this is all about salvation. Grace is our helper, our defender, in the court of law. The law requires us to walk in certain way, without breaking it. We feel grace whenever we fail. To me, the parable is about something different. In terms of salvation, we’re not talking about violation, we’re not talking about breaking the law. This is something like an extra that we have to put to good use, we have to gain something from it. Nobody broke the law in the parable, but if we have a talent, we have to put it to use. The third man did nothing with his talent, so judgment went against him.

This is all, of course, in the realm of spiritual life. So to me, we have to do something about the Word of God. Is it part of the Great Commission, as sons of God, to do something to the world, to other people? We not only keep the law, but we also have to do something to deserve to come into his wedding feast. So this, is I think, a different element, concerning how to gain eternal life.

C-J: As an educator, I know that if a child learns very quickly, I don’t have to question if they’re going to be able to make inferences. But if I have a child who struggles with learning, I’m always looking for the opportunity of a teachable moment, because for me with that individual child (and I see God this way with me) it’s not about the correction—it’s about the relationship. And I think that through those opportunities of a teachable moment, when we blow it, God is trying to establish, “I know what you think I am. But let me reveal to you who I really am.”

God is grace. It’s not a default. It’s like I can always go back and touch the stone of grace if I mess up as a Christian. My father was a disciplinarian. It wasn’t until just before he died that I really was able to purse string how he got that way. He did love me; he just didn’t love me the way I needed him to, because of my perception of him from when I was very young. I think we make that mistake as Christians when we just want to keep it in the box, follow the guide rails, do everything you’re supposed to do, use your talents well that God has given you, and you’re good.

I think God is always looking for us to have relationship that is deep and abiding, so when somebody says, “How do you know your God is real? Do you really believe God is sitting on a throne up in a cloud in the third heaven? You’re an educated woman, you really believe that?” That is a really tough thing to say to someone who doesn’t have relationship. That’s where I have to say, grace must abound in the way I behave and my kindness, and that I can go back and say, “In ancient times, this was their perception of truth.”

When somebody says to you, “Why do you love your wife? Why do you love your children?” “Well, I love my wife because she’s a good person. I love my children because they are my children. It’s mandated!” But really, there are qualities, even if there are bumps on the wall. It is looking for how did that person become who he or she is? How does that person function authentically? And do I give them grace to be authentic, while still guarding them and being authentic and truthful with what my needs are? I believe that’s what God has placed in us. And we call that grace.

God knows what I’m thinking in my heart when I’m sinning, when I’m angry, when I dwell on things that aren’t right. But God’s grace is teaching us relationship to come before this incredible thing in faith and say, “Lord, forgive me,” or “Help me to understand why this is like this in me. I don’t want it. How can I restore me to the way you see me, Lord, not the way I think I should be, to truly be yielded and malleable, and that heat to be turned up, to burn that out of me, but with love, not with punishment and fear of being discarded. I used to love you. But now I don’t.”

God is faithful in that covenant relationship. “What I began, I will finish. I want you to be free to walk to walk with me in the garden. Ask me anything, for I know you before you were in the womb of your mother. And I created you.” Each of us in this room is learning to love one another. Even though I don’t break bread with you, even though I walk down the sidewalk with you. I am learning to love you in a spiritual realm. I can smell when you say something because I go “Yeah, I get that. I’m beginning to understand the language you use, when and why.” This is a relationship that we are establishing by the grace of God.

Kiran: Is this parable about the law or not? I think it is about the law because the fundamental purpose of law, even though we think it is all about us, is about loving God and loving other people. It’s about other people. But the way we use law is for our own selves. “I am making a mistake here, I made a mistake there, that guy’s making a mistake there, that guy’s made a mistake there.” We turn it into something of a selfishness exercise.

Then here comes grace. If you accept it, it’s not about you anymore. It’s about other people, Jesus didn’t think about himself. He gave his life for us. We are going to do the same thing once we accept Christ. So if the talent is, as Jason said, an opportunity to do good for other people—as Jesus said, “Overcome evil in this world with goodness—this one-talent person missed those chances. He had an opportunity to use this goodness to overcome evil in the world for other people. But he missed it. By missing it, he squandered the grace that God had given him. He didn’t value the sacrifice of Christ. So that’s why he was pushed into outer darkness.

If you break the law, you will go into outer darkness, and if you squander the grace, you will also go into the outer darkness. So pretty much it’s the same either way. Whether it is law or grace, we are supposed to be about the business of other people, because God has got our backs. We don’t need to worry about ourselves anymore. But in case of the law, we can’t keep it. That’s where grace comes in, so that we can accomplish what God originally intended to accomplish.

Reinhard: There is no question that our relationship with God determines the security of our salvation. But in this story, the relationship is strictly master–servant. A deeper relationship might have led the one-talent servant to put his talent to work. But there is still the responsibility to produce results for the master.

Grace will back us up when we violate the law, but it comes with a responsibility to use it, like the wedding guests who had a responsibility to wear the wedding garment. We have a relationship with God, of course. God loves us. But we have to put our talent to work, perhaps via the Great Commission.

Carolyn: This is confusing something I’ve held to be rather simple. One of the thieves on the cross gave enough response to Christ that he received acceptance in paradise. The other one didn’t have it on his heart the same way. But they both had grace. One saw Jesus for who he was and he realized the love, and therefore there came the grace that we are all looking for because we hope to be in paradise with him.

David: Is free will a gift of grace? (I see some nods.) If it is, then what did Adam and Eve do wrong? They simply did what the guy with one talent did—they just exercised their free will.

C-J: For me that goes back to that teachable moment to learn relationship. They knew God walked with them in the garden. But maybe God wasn’t fully revealed to them. For me, I grow the most in God when I know I got off the sidewalk, because I have to go back. I have to go back to God and learn something more about God. It isn’t just “I told you not to do that.” I mean, it hurts. It’s hard. But I understand every time that happens, this covenant relationship is better. Words are just too limiting to talk about the covenant relationship. It’s just astounding. It’s restorative, it’s healing, it’s abiding. It’s like a mother’s love for a child.

Bryan: I would say that free will is something given to us by God. It is part of how we were created. He gave Adam and Eve the ability to choose and they exercised their right to choose. But when it comes to judgment, I think of God’s judgment as more subjective than anything else. By our actions, we either adhere to or deviate from the laws that God has set in place. There was a rule in the Garden of Eden, there was a law that was broken. And so by choosing to either adhere to or deviate from those laws that God has set up, it places us in a sphere of either disapproval or approval. And if it places you in the sphere of disapproval, obviously, then, there are consequences to those actions.

John says Christ came to save, not to judge. So I have to reconcile the fact that I’m not waiting for God to hit me with a bolt of lightning. God is love. And if we break his rules, it places us outside of that sphere of his influence. So yes, they had the ability to choose and they did; but unfortunately, it put them on a path away from God instead of toward him.

David: For the guy with the one talent it wasn’t a matter of law. There was no law that said he had to invest it. Suppose the two guys who did invest their talents lost their shirts and the entire investment? The parable troubles me, perhaps because we are not talking about real grace. To me, grace is something much more than a gift from God or a feeling that you have a relationship with God. To me, grace is something much, much more significant and deep than that. We’re only talking about gifts from God. It is a gift from God to feel that he is close, and so on.

The beginning of the Dao De Jing—the Daoist “bible”—states that the Way that can be trodden is not the eternal way (not God’s way, in Christian terminology). Any way that you think you can follow is not God’s way. It continues: Any name that you give a thing is not its real name, it’s not what God calls it.

I think you can logically add that any judgment you make is not the judgment God would make. Any way you follow is not the way God follows. Any God you think you know, is not God. Hence, as a Daoist, this whole discussion is to me deeply problematical.

Robin: I think in the parable of the talents, it is God’s grace that gives the talent in the first place. But he gives instructions as well, to invest. So two of them did invest it, and they were successful. And the one refused even to try. He just refused. That’s why his behavior was judged. He was given it, he didn’t have to earn it, all he had to do was be obedient and invest it

Had the other two lost theirs, well, at least they tried. So then grace again would have provided probably another chance to have another talent. Because God did not create automatons, we can choose to refuse, but there are natural spiritual consequences to refusing not only what God says we should do, but why does he say that? Because he wants to be the headmaster, waiting for an opportunity to strike us? No. It is because he knows that in the spiritual realm, spiritual obedience is required for there to be love and mercy and goodness and kindness, and to choose to disobey leads to the chaos and cruelty and the antithesis of what the character of God is.

David: The fundamental precept of Daoism is Doing Nothing with a capital D and a capital N. So what the guy with the one talent did was exactly the right thing to do! He did nothing. Because how was he to know the mind of God?

Don: But part of the intrigue of the story is, as Jason pointed out, that maybe his fatal flaw was thinking he did know the mind of God. He said, “I know you’re a man of who is hard and who reaps where he doesn’t sow” and so forth. That goes along with your Daoist principle of “whatever you think God is, God is not that.”

Robin: I think the Sermon on the Mount explains who and what God is.

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