An Anti-Capitalist Take on the Parable of the Talents

THE CONCEPT OF talent as innate skill comes from an interpretation of one of Jesus’ parables (Matthew 25:14–30). In the parable, a man entrusted his slaves to grow his wealth by investing his money for him. A talent was a unit of currency and roughly represented 20 years of wages for an average worker. 

The story goes: The rich man gave one slave five talents, another two talents, and another one talent. When he returned, the first slave had doubled his investment to 10 talents. The master said, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” The second slave also doubled his investment and received the same reward.

The third slave returned the one talent he was given. “Master,” he explained, “I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”

The master was furious:

“You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the 10 talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This parable is commonly interpreted as a metaphor for God giving us spiritual gifts, and our duty to use the gifts God gives us instead of being like the wicked slave, who took it for granted and didn’t use what the master gave him. From this interpretation we get the modern concept of “talent,” which originally only referred to ancient currency, and now refers to innate skills that God gives a person. But not everyone has interpreted the story this way.

Jesus’ followers were also under the rule of rich elites who violently suppressed dissent.

“That’s a lousy parable,” a peasant named William said after hearing the story for the first time in a Bible study in Solentiname, Nicaragua. [Catholic priest] Ernesto Cardenal recorded the conversation in his book The Gospel in Solentiname, based on group reflections between Cardenal and a group of peasants during the Somoza dictatorship. This commentary is unlike any other, because the peasants were able to understand the perspective of the poor people written about in the Bible better than biblical scholars. When the peasants of Solentiname heard the parable of the talents, they had a hard time connecting God with a rich elite who violently suppresses dissent, since they were under the rule of rich elites who violently suppressed their dissent.

Cardenal asked William why he thought the parable was lousy, and William replied, “Because it’s about speculating with money: something we all condemn, like putting money out at interest; giving the money to others so they can work and work with it and hand over the profits to the owner of the money.”

They also sympathized with the so-called wicked slave and didn’t see anything wrong with him defying his master’s order, since his master was asking him to do something immoral. A man named Oscar pointed out how most everyone in the story was an exploiter, so when the third slave defied his master’s orders, he was refusing to exploit people. “But the guy that didn’t get much, one talent, he didn’t cooperate with them,” Oscar explained. “He was conscientious, because he didn’t have the strength to exploit his brothers and sisters.” Then a man named Laureano thought Oscar was taking the parable too literally and said, “But it’s a parable, man, it’s got a different meaning.” But Oscar’s intuition was actually spot on.

In his book Parables as Subversive Speech, biblical scholar William R. Herzog II expanded on Oscar’s insight by looking at the historical context of the type of economic situation described in the parable. Like the Nicaraguans, Jesus’ followers were also under the rule of rich elites who violently suppressed dissent. And the situation of exploitation described in the parable was very familiar to his audience.

Based on the unique responsibility they were given, the three slaves weren’t typical slaves, but more like estate managers who had more power and influence than average workers. In first-century Galilee, the estate managers of rich elites increased their masters’ investments through mechanisms of exploitation. The most common mechanism was giving peasant farmers predatory loans with high interest that could be 60% or all the way up to 200%. Another mechanism was to seize a farmer’s land as collateral when they couldn’t pay back the loan and then turn the farmer into a day laborer. Or they’d buy up the land from a farmer who couldn’t pay, kick them out, and hire workers to export the crops to sell in other regions for a higher profit, leaving the local population hungry.

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Refusing to exploit others

THIS IS UNDOUBTEDLY what the master expected his servants to do when he entrusted them with his talents. He was using them to do his dirty work, making them go out to exploit people while also letting them face the risk of potential retaliatory violence. The first two servants successfully doubled the investment through predatory loans, foreclosures, and dispossession. But the third servant decided to finally disassociate himself from his exploitative job. He buried the talent so that it couldn’t be used to exploit people.

When the third servant accused the master of being a harsh man who reaps where he doesn’t sow, he was accusing him of being an exploiter who profits from the arduous work of others. He wasn’t making an excuse. He was protesting, exposing the master for profiting from brutal exploitation.

And the master didn’t deny it. He punished the servant for defying his orders. Herzog calls the master’s speech an attack on a whistleblower—someone who exposes the wrongdoing of an organization from inside the organization.

Jesus’ audience was filled with poor people who were victims of these kinds of exploiters. They would have been astonished at the twist ending when one of the servants sacrifices his life by protesting the master and refusing to be complicit in the system any longer. The courageous servant’s defying speech was probably the kind of thing that Jesus’ audience wished they could say to a rich elite if they ever faced one.

Parables are meant to be continuously reinterpreted to spur discussion in communities learning and growing together. I’m not saying this interpretation that praises the third servant is the only correct one while the popular interpretation that villainizes him is the wrong one. That’s not how parables work. But when we consider the historical context of this parable, we can imagine that Jesus’ intention of the parable may not have been to teach his followers to avoid disobedience, but to act courageously and expose exploitation, even when faced with potentially violent consequences. After all, this is the example Jesus followed, which led to his execution by Roman soldiers on a cross—a form of execution explicitly designed to show the observers what happens to people who defy Rome.

The reason I tell you about this alternative interpretation of the parable of the talents is because I think it gives us an even better lesson about how we use our gifts than the common interpretation.

When you’re given the opportunity, be like the whistleblower, not the exploiters. Use your gifts to make a difference, not conform. The courageous servant is punished for not using his gifts to make a profit, as expected of him. Instead, he uses his gifts to join in solidarity with the exploited and protest their exploitation. When the situation calls for it, have courage to make yourself a threat to the system instead of an asset to it. Making a difference will threaten your security, but that’s how exploitative systems disincentivize people from changing things. Change is made through people choosing to challenge the status quo even when there’s no incentive to.

In a society where capitalists have power and control over workers, we’re expected to use our gifts to conform to who capitalists expect us to be. Acts of refusal and resistance are how we reclaim the parts of ourselves that have been suppressed.

Parables are meant to be continuously reinterpreted to spur discussion in communities learning and growing together.

Gifts as a process

I NO LONGER believe God gives us individual gifts of specific skills that we’re supposed to discover and use. Now I believe God gives all of us one big gift that we all share together. And that gift is the life that we all connect with together.

Now I believe individual gifts are a process instead of fixed traits that we’re given. We use this life to connect, and from those connections we receive energy. We channel that energy into action, and the more we practice specific actions the more skilled at them we become, until our practice becomes a gift. And from there the process recycles. We use our personal gifts to make more connections with ourselves, our environment, and other people. And those connections make more energy, and that energy inspires more action, and repeated actions make more gifts.

At first it may sound like redefining gifts as a process is just overcomplicating it. But let me explain how this understanding of gifts can be more helpful for all of us. Redefining gifts as a process widens our potential in at least three ways:

First, it widens the potential for what gifts we can discover.

The personal skills that seem like innate talent or God-given gifts are usually born out of a situation where someone became passionate about a particular skill from an early age and had the support and resources to devote their time and energy to it until they got good at it.

The next time you feel like it’s impossible for you to learn how to get better at a certain skill, ask yourself if it’s really an impossibility, or is it possible to make more time, build more energy, and find resources and support?

We also struggle to learn new skills because it can be embarrassing to be bad at things, especially in front of other people. But if we live by avoiding embarrassment, we never get the opportunity to learn new things. You have to go through a season of being terrible at an activity before getting good at it. And it’s better to give up later because you figured out you didn’t enjoy it that much, instead of giving up or never trying to avoid embarrassment.

It may seem too late to learn new skills. But most often what we really mean is that it’s too late to become successful from the skill. That’s based on factors you can’t control. But you can make it your passion and find joy from doing it, regardless if other people like it or pay you for it.

Your gifts aren’t the things you’re naturally good at. They’re the things you love to keep showing up for. Gifts emerge from doing an activity over and over again. You get better at communicating by communicating more. You get better at playing guitar by playing the guitar more. You get better at basketball by playing basketball more.

Then when you get really good at something it may feel like you found the activity that you were always meant to do. But what you were meant to do is connect with the world. And in that process, you’ll find activities that you enjoy connecting with so much that it’ll feel like the only way you can connect. Even when other people tell you that you were clearly always meant to do the thing you’re doing, they’re just responding to your joy in it. But don’t let that joy hold you back from seeing that you’re capable of even more than you realize.

The second reason redefining gifts as a process is helpful is that it widens the potential for how we use our gifts.

Gifts are a means of connection, not achievement. When we stop measuring our gifts by achievement, then the use of our gifts becomes about the action instead of the outcome. This allows us to see our gifts at play all the time, instead of just when we’re successful.

Gifts are a means of connection, not achievement.

Instead of looking for what can be achieved, we can look for what can be connected and contribute to its connection. You add a cowbell to a song to make it better. You make someone food when people need it. You find purpose for your gifts by making connections wherever something’s disconnected.

The third reason redefining gifts as a process is helpful is because it’s a process that we can start right now.

Your gifts inspire you to see life as a gift itself. Ask yourself some questions. If you knew you could only live a little bit longer, how would you spend your time? What activities would you give up? What activities would you pick back up? How would you treat yourself? How would you treat people?

Think back to all the gifts within that have been shrunk and silenced growing up. You gave up on certain gifts because you knew they wouldn’t make you money. Other people shamed you into shrinking certain gifts because they said you weren’t good enough. What gifts have been beaten out of you that you would enjoy recovering?

What activities give you energy? What activities drain too much of your energy? Who or what do you need to connect with to have more energy? Who or what do you need to disconnect from to get more energy?

What are ways you can take back your energy to give it to things that matter most? Where can you say no in life? Where can you slow down?

Sometimes the strongest purpose comes from paying attention to what makes you angry. What you push back against is just as significant to your development as what you embrace. What makes you angry about the world? How can it be made better? How can you contribute to changing it?

These questions can lead us to discovering the gifts that are available to you here and now.

This article is adapted from You Don’t Need a Calling: An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto for a Life of Purpose (Broadleaf Books, 2026). Used with permission.