The drama critic Terry Teachout recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal a piece entitled “Denying Shakespeare.” It talks about James Shapiro’s book “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?” which discusses the obsession in some circles throughout history with the contestation of the authorship of the literary genius’s canon. Teachout writes: “It doesn’t surprise me that such lunacy has grown so popular in recent years. To deny that Shakespeare’s plays could have been written by a man of relatively humble background is, after all, to deny the very possibility of genius itself – a sentiment increasingly attractive in a democratic culture where few harsh realities are so unpalatable as that of human inequality. The mere existence of a Shakespeare is a mortal blow to the pride of those who prefer to suppose that everybody is just as good as everybody else.”
This idea of the dilution of inequality has parallels in contemporary Christian thought as well. After all, everyone knows that “God’s sun shines on the just and the unjust.” What is the point, then, of diligence? The problem lies in the confusion of reception and responsibility. The parable of the talents clears it up: all receive in differing amounts and all are responsible according to what was received (and, it should be noted for those who have an inclination to anxiety stemming from performance expectation, what is given is strictly according to the abilities of the receiver – we are not responsible for what we have not received. Remembering this, the mandate to not judge another becomes easier).
When Jesus invited the Samaritan woman to seek his “life giving water,” she responded enthusiastically – “Please give it!” He then invited her to return to the well with her husband, knowing that she had none currently and the man she was living with was not her husband. One of many messages here is this: deeper union with the divine, and ultimately eternal salvation, implies responsibility and repentance on our part. When the ten lepers who asked for healing in Luke 17 received it, they went off rejoicing. Only one returned to give praise to God – a foreigner. Jesus rewards the man with a spiritual healing of faith exceeding the physical miracle. There are temporal graces and eternal graces, and some of them presuppose action on our part.
We could stop here if we believed divine munificence lasted straight through death and into eternity. And stop we will if we have constructed an idea of god in our mind, contrasted with that given in revelation history (thus relieving mankind of the burden of the subjective ideas of billions of well meaning souls) . But for those who are interested in the external reality of what will face them after this prologue of life on earth, a continued reading is in order. The giver of the talents seeks a reckoning. Why do we Christians tend to skip over these less savory parts of revelation? Perhaps it is just too hard to reconcile our inner idea of an infinitely loving God with the God who said he would kick out of his banquet those who did not come prepared, that is, all those who came because they assumed the King rewarded all, regardless of personal behavior. On this point, if God is to be believed, some will be terribly, dreadfully, wrong.
We can look to revelation itself for an explanation of this mystery of why we expect all good to come to us now and after death, regardless of personal comportment. For one thing, we are commanded to take an entire day each week for the express purpose of remembering who we are, where we came from, and our ultimate destiny. (Deuteronomy 5.15) This precept to rest and recollect is essential to the Christian, who, like the Israelites being settled in the promised land, are continually warned by God that the customs and ideas of the indigenous people will rub off on them. Without frequent recollection we won’t have a chance to hear in our hearts God’s constant warning: “The pleasures, riches and worries of life drown out my word” (Luke 8.14) and “What I say to you I say to all – Stay awake!” (Mark 13) In large part we have not stayed alert and we have let pleasures and temporal distractions displace our faith. We have transformed the fourth commandment into a mandate to seek amusements, pleasures and entertainment before returning once again to our workaday world. To be frank, we simply don’t like being told what to do. This hardness of heart extends back to our earliest ancestors in the faith.
Once we hear this word of warning, however, we are responsible for it. On the last day, it will be this word which rises up to condemn the one who heard but refused to act. (John 12.48) Some will get to stay at the banquet, others will be kicked out. Who those will be depends entirely upon our faith and obedience. (John 3.36)