I recently heard a sermon on the parable of the talents. (If you’re not familiar, here it is.)
“Talent” seems to be an unfortunate word here because in the parable it refers to money, while we think of a talent as an ability to do something.
The point of the parable is that people should “use their talents” in the service of God.
In the context of “using talents,” it’s almost always a question of a trade of one thing against another. For example, let’s say a person is a very good singer, but decides it’s more important to get an engineering degree in college, so he doesn’t pursue his singing. His friends say, “you’re burying your talents” (i.e., his singing).
Who’s to say which one he should pursue? Perhaps he’ll be a great singer. Or perhaps he’ll be a great engineer. Or perhaps he’ll be a middling engineer and provide for a family — which is a good thing. Nobody knows, but people are perfectly happy to lay a guilt trip on him on the basis of his “not using his talents.”
People can be wracked with guilt about such things. They agonize over it. They lose sleep.
Someone might say, “yeah, and all that struggling is evidence that God is pushing them to do the thing they’re not doing. If they ‘had peace’ about the decision, that would be fine.”
I strongly dislike that view of God and that view of moral obligation.
What if the person in question just gets obsessed about things from time to time? Or what if the people who are pressuring him are very persuasive? Is his subjective feeling supposed to be “the voice of God” to him?
I have always leaned towards the idea that we can only be held to account morally for things that are clear and objective. A commandment, for example.
However, I have to admit that there’s a strong tradition that makes conscience something like the voice of God, and I recall St. Martin Luther’s comment that it is neither right nor safe to go against conscience.
People pray about things and find some sort of peace about which way they ought to go. That’s not a commandment. It’s very subjective. And I’m a little uncomfortable with subjectivity — knowing how unhinged it can be, and how often it can lead people astray.
What do you think of this notion of personal moral obligations based on how people feel about things?
LOL…
My ex used to say God spoke to her. She’d go to church Sunday morning, Wed night, and usually Sunday night. Once a month maybe she’d go work in the food pantry. She read the bible most days and prayed most days.
She did not work outside of the house and she really did not work inside the house either. Said she wanted to be a stay at home mom…but, mostly, just wanted to be a stay at home…
I cooked 3 days of the week (which usually fed us for 4 or 5). One year I tracked when she was out of bed when I took the kids to school…and this was very generous…it didn’t include actually helping get the kids ready…it was just…out of bed, literally.
The year I tracked, the first semester it was 40% of the time (2 out of every 5 school days she was still in bed). I said something about it and it improved to 20% of the time for an average of 30% during that school year.
Like I said, she would say God spoke to her…which I highly, highly doubted. I think he was saying: get out of bed, help get your kids ready for school, cook breakfast for your kids, use the vacuum, etc.
So when I hear someone listening for the voice of God, I think they are just listening for their Id and permission to do what they want.
The whole “God told me” thing is very off-putting to me. But I have some level of respect for the idea that God does speak to us — in some way — through our conscience. It could be analogous to the argument in Romans 1 where men are left “without excuse” — as if on judgement day God can just re-roll the accusations of our conscience. Of course it also fits with the idea of the law being written on our heart.
I suspect it’s both…objective obligations generally provide guidance for how to govern and interpret subjective obligations.