Feeling sorry for the slothful servant. (Can you lose your salvation?)

This is an interesting coincidence: I heard the Parable of Talents mentioned on the same Sunday by three preachers who I'm pretty sure don't know each other:

* Pastor Nicholas Mullen, St Matthew Lutheran Church, Ada, MI (where I was in the pew)
* Pastor Doug Bergsma at Res Life Rockford, MI (where I was in the foyer)
* Pastor Jim Storey at Bethel Baptist Church, Erie, PA (in a podcast)

Perhaps the parable is in a liturgical calendar? I have limited understanding of this but I know many churches observe some parts of it. (All Christians observe Christmas and Easter, but there are daily observations that go back many hundreds of years).

c0

I recently had a conversation with a friend about losing our salvation.

 

Since coming to the conclusion that we can, I’ve become tuned to hear things a bit differently, like the conclusion of the parable of the slothful servant[1]:

 

“But his lord answered him, "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I didn't sow, and gather where I didn't scatter. You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn't have, even that which he has will be taken away. Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

- Matthew 25:24-30, World English Bible

 

If this is a metaphor for how one gains or loses eternal life, my Baptist friends will say the slothful servant wasn't really saved in the first place (Baptists believe in eternal security - once saved, always saved). But the parable doesn't support that reading. All the servants start out the same, and one is singled out for special punishment.

 

Click to enlarge: The Last Judgment, by Stefan Lochner. Learn more about “Doom paintings” and see examples here >

In what sort of place might there be “weeping and gnashing of teeth”? Hell, or Purgatory, possibly. It’s not heaven, is it?

Since childhood, I’ve felt this parable is a bit harsh.

 

The servant was scared of the master and did his best to guard what had been entrusted to him. We are so far removed from ancient sensibilities, I’m sure I’m not responding to it the way the original audience did. I know this will sound disrespectful to some, but if Jesus were with us in human form today, I suspect he’d present it a bit differently.

One of the wonderful things about parables, of course, is that they are open to a wide variety of interpretations since they are delivered as invented stories with moral lessons. Debate is often pointless since there’s no agreed-upon place you can draw a line and say “we won’t dissect this any more finely to find a modern application.”

[2013-09-04]

 

c0

 

[1]

How this might be described in an internally coherent manner is beyond my interest or ability. I believe it has scriptural, traditional, and practical support.

BTW, this “tuning” phenomena is familiar to all of us in a different way. We will sometimes go through a day and suddenly become aware that we’ve heard a unique phrase three or four times and wonder at the coincidence. We likely hear multiples like this often but are not tuned to detect them.

 

c0