You could almost miss this little statement at the end of Matt 25:15 "dividing it in proportion to their abilities." What does this mean? Firstly it smashes the Socialist belief of equally dividing wealth so everyone has the same. Remember, the Master here in this made-up story, a business owner, probably a farmer, that made enough profit that he had bags of silver worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's measure. By any definition, this is pure Capitalism. Jesus is saying, in His Kingdom, here on earth right now, there will be business owners who make large sums of money, employ others, etc. I'll get to what makes Capitalism biblical soon.
Let's take a quick look at the word "abilities". The word abilities in the original text is dynamis, it basically means power. What this means is everyone has some abilities, they differ from person to person, some have more some have less. Socialism tries to make everyone the same. Same house, same car, same paying job.
This does not really sound fair. But when you understand how things improve and grow over time you see the genius of how God designed the Kingdom to function. In some ways, you can view the three employees are in a competition. Here's some money, go do something with it. Competition is at the foundation of Capitalism. The reason Capitalism works largely has to do with competing forces, that's because competition makes things better. Products, services, sports are all made better.
Could the growing leaning towards Socialistic policies be linked to the "everyone gets a trophy" syndrome that has plagued youth sports the last twenty years? I think so.
The story goes on and describes the business owner and calls to account the three employees for their actions. The first two "trade" or "invest" the money. They grew the investment and are called "good and faithful" the third who because of fear hid the money and returned the same amount he was given. He's called "wicked and lazy" Harsh words indeed.
No need to go too much deeper than this, At some point, you have to take the parable at face value and hear I see the value of investing and trading aka taking risks, with what God has entrusted you to steward. That behavior is celebrated and rewarded.
Entrepreneurship is both encouraged and celebrated in God's kingdom. Capitalism fosters business creation because of risk, reward tension. Socialism penalizes risk because there is no incentive for hard work and business creation. It's as simple as that.
If you haven't seen my previous posts and are wondering why I'm all of a sudden talking about Capitalism and Socialism, it's because I see young people in the church doubting their God-given rights to liberty, self-reliance, and free markets. I'll be doing this for a while I think
As usual respectful comments are welcome.