‘If you want to be involved as a volunteer in this youth group, you must reach such and such average mark at school’ was the message conveyed to a group of teenagers in one of my previous parishes. The bar was set at the beginning of each term. Once after such an announcement, a young man approached me to talk to me privately. He was in despair. He explained that in his school, in a class full of lazy and idle students, reaching the required level was out of reach. In other words, his educational environment was dragging him down. In response, I told him that he was in charge of his ambition and that he should focus on his own efforts to fulfil it. He did as he’d been told – he was a good lad – and eventually rose well above his peers’ mediocrity. He passed his final exams with flying colours and was subsequently accepted to a prestigious Higher Education institution. I believe he’s made quite a successful career for himself.
‘I had heard you were a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered; so I was afraid, and I went off and hid your talent in the ground.’ The lazy servant from today’s parable used these words to justify his idleness. Effectively he shifted the blame from himself to his master. Such a shift seems to be an increasingly prevalent attitude in our society. Individualism is preached and promoted as the ‘right’ modern attitude, with an individual’s needs and importance at the centre, while personal responsibility seems to be taken over by environmental forces beyond the individual’s control. Consequently, we see the gradual rise in individualistic disregard for others’ rights and needs, fractious and ready to take offence. At the same time, the ability to deal with the stress and challenges that life throws seems to be diminishing, leaving people mentally fragile. As someone who’s been involved in counselling, I’m the last to ignore or underestimate the impact made on the individual by various environmental factors, like cultural, societal, economical, domestic, educational and so on. But when those factors are overrated, the unintentional consequence might be an inadequate sense of hopelessness that unless the surroundings change, the individual can do little or nothing.
‘So you knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered? Well then, you should have deposited…’ The master in the parable didn’t accept the servant’s explanation; his attempt at shifting the blame backfired badly. Having known the environment, he should have adapted his behaviour and attitude to make the most of a chance given to him. Since time immemorial our ancestors initially adapted to certain environmental conditions in order to survive. As a result of their adaptability, they were consequently able to change those conditions in their favour or adapt even more efficiently. Humankind colonised the hottest and the coldest regions of the planet (and everywhere between) not because they moaned about the weather and waited for it to change, but because they changed themselves. We have been such a successful species because we have grabbed reality by the neck.
The master in the parable ‘entrusted his property’ to each servant ‘in proportion to his ability.’ Inequality is part of society, whether we like it or not. Of course, we should do whatever possible to achieve fairness, but let’s be brutally honest, it’s not gonna happen anytime soon. Experiments in politically enforced equality have so far been such in name only, always achieving their goal by dragging people downwards. Instead of waiting for the world around to change and to provide more favourable conditions, we have to take charge of our own lives and of those entrusted to us. You might have less than others, but it shouldn’t stop you from developing it because that forms a basis for more development. ‘To everyone who has will be given more’ are the words of encouragement in today’s gospel, accompanied by a stark warning for those who neglect their lives: ‘there will be weeping and grinding of teeth’ – particularly problematic now when it’s so hard to get a dental appointment.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay