Ever work with a fellow flight attendant who you know has the natural gifts to do their job well but who seem to be too lazy to bother to put those gifts to their proper use at 35,000 feet? Sometimes (though not always) this shows the difference between one who follows Christ and one who doesn’t.
The sincere lover of God is not looking for excuses to shirk the responsibility to do what God would have them do. It is like the parable of the talents (translated as the “bags of gold” in the NIV Bible).
The problem with the wicked servant was not just that he did a lousy job with the gifts his master gave him; the problem was that he wrongly judged that master, calling him “a hard man.”
In fearfully burying the talent in the ground rather than at least putting it in the bank so it might, at minimum, earn interest this man showed that he held contempt for his master’s character. This was his sin, not necessarily the failure to greatly multiply his talent’s value.
Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. “Master,” he said, “I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground.” Matthew 25:24-25 (NIV)
