Why We All Need to Develop Our Talents

 Learning and memory are the mechanisms by which we grow in personal competence. The issue for all of us is our willingness to invest in our personal development. To what extent are we willing to let others take care of us? In political terms, there is the option of depending on a socialist or commuist government to do for us what we could be doing for ourselves.

Some socialists or Communists today argue that Jesus Christ would have also been Communist if that political option were available in his time. Yet Jesus gave a most powerful endorsement of capitalism in his famous parable of the talents expressed in the book of Matthew (25:14-30). Modern readers have typically extended this passage to refer to personal abilities. However, in the time of Jesus, the word "talents" actually referred to a lot of money, with a single talent worth about 20 years of a laborer's work. It can be more useful for us to think of the word as meaning resources, property, or personal assets, which of course includes money.

The parable describes an apparently wealthy man about to take a trip who needed to leave his money in the care of his workers. He gave different amounts to each worker with instructions to conserve and make the most of the resource while he was away. While away, the worker who got five talents invested it in commercial trade and made five extra talents, as did the worker receiving two talents, who earned two more talents. The worker who got one talent buried feared losing it, so he buried his talent for safekeeping. Upon his return, the owner praised those who increased the wealth, but to the worker who did not put the money to work, he said: "You wicked and slothful servant! ... you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest." The owner took the slothful worker's one talent and gave it to the worker who had earned more talents. Note: ancient Jews learned and adopted banking and capitalism during their capture by the Babylonian inventors.

As in much of scripture, the reason for moral edicts is not always explained. Maybe Jesus never gave an original explanation, and if so, it likely was to make us think about the parable's implications. Some people object that Jesus is portrayed in the parable as a greedy capitalist. Yet the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, puts things in complete perspective when he urges us to "make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can."

The main obvious generalization of the talents parable is the admonition to make the most of what we have got, whether it be resources, property, money, or personal abilities. Here, I would like to focus on why we need to develop our personal capabilities, which of course are a basic resource that affects our capacity to make, save, and give all you can.

An increasing number of people in today's world, Worldwide, and even now in the U.S., dismiss the need for developing the non-monetary sense of the word "talent." Why work to develop yourself, it you can get somebody else, like the government, to meet your needs and those of others? If fact, you can take a perverse sense of moral superiority in spurning the striving and stress of self-improvement that lesser beings seem compelled to pursue. You can look down on such people as greedy "supremacists" who gain their resources at the expense of the innocent.

In education circles, teachers need to explain in depth why young people need to increase their talents. However, the emphasis is on passing tests that educators think will help youngsters compete in a capitalist society. But you can avoid all that if you form a socialist society, which we are engaged in doing by ensuring welfare without a work requirement, doling out all sorts of government "freebies," and working to produce a guaranteed annual income. No wonder that academia is a home of socialism. The emerging political zeitgeist is to encourage people to depend on the government. That, of course, means they will vote for the politicians who ensure government support.

Without the need to grow your talents, you are not likely to do it. I remember vividly a middle-school classroom visit, where the teacher was chastised a Black student for not doing his homework, whereupon he replied, "I don't need to learn this stuff. Somebody will always take care of me." Is this what we really want to teach our children? It apparently is what a lot of them are learning.

Five Compelling Reasons 

Gain Self-reliance and Independence

If you have developed your talents, they can be used to help you become more self-reliant and less dependent on the good will and resources of others. The ability to take care of yourself is no small thing. Ask any child.

Feel Better about Ourselves

Losers in life have a hard time trying to feel good. That is why they so often seek out drugs and other kinds of pleasures. What they seek most is to feel good about themselves and to have the status of others respecting them. They may be tempted to cheat and steal to gain the resources that can bring such status or throw riotous tantrums to protest their failures. However, if you develop your talents, you not only have acquired capabilities that will help you gain more resources, you have the positive reinforcement of knowing that you are an achiever, one who can take some pride in who have become.

Provide Goods and Services that Can Help Others

Obviously, if you have abilities and resources, you are more valuable to others. You are more able to help others in their earthly struggles. In turn, you position yourself to merit exchange of goods and services from them that will benefit you.

Get Ahead in This World

When you have many talents, you have many ways to offer goods and services that are valued by others. They benefit from what you have to offer, and are willing to pay you in assorted ways. Trade and exchange are the lifeblood of the capitalism that circulates prosperity amongst those who are equipped with appropriate talent and resources. People of high socio-economic standing will open doors for you that you could never open on your own. Even in a Communist country like China, leaders have discovered the benefits of moving peasants out of the rice fields and into a factory where they are trained to make such things as computers and electric cars. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of destitution, and China is poised to dominate the world. China is more fascist than socialist.

Set the Stage for Still More Personal Growth

If you don't develop your "talents," you stifle personal growth and stagnate. As the master in the parable said, "For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." The master warns that personal sloth will cast one 'into the outer darkness," where there will be 'will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

 

The point is that without growth in personal resources, we can't keep up. The price can be a life of deprivation and despair. On the other hand, the more you develop personal and material resources, the more you can gain in the future. This kind of growth puts you on a higher platform to take the next step. I express this idea in my education efforts, where I always try to impress upon students, "The more you know, the more you CAN know." In blog posts on mental health, I try to make the point that the more you understand about how your brain works and how you think and behave will improve your ability for psychological peace and fulfillment.

The U.S. Army recruiting slogan is meant for us all:

BE ALL YOU CAN BE