He Buried It Because He Was Scared of the Man Who Gave It

Three men got money to work with and one of them went and got a shovel.

He did not lose it gambling. He did not spend it. He did not get robbed. He took what was handed to him, walked out to a piece of ground, dug a hole, and put it in the dirt where nothing could happen to it. Then he went about his life for a long stretch of time and, as far as anybody could tell, he was fine.

When the man came back, the other two had gone out and traded and worked and doubled what they had. And the third one dug his up, brushed the dirt off it, and handed it over exactly the way he got it. Not one thing missing.

And then he explained himself. That is the part that has stayed with me for years.

He said: I knew you. I knew what kind of man you were. Hard. Reaping where you did not sow. And I was afraid. So I went and hid your money in the ground, and here it is, take what belongs to you.

He did not bury it because he was lazy. He buried it because of what he believed about the man who gave it to him.

The reason he gives is the whole story

Here is what he actually said, and the fear is right there in the middle of the sentence.

And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. (Matthew 25:25, King James Version)

I was afraid.

That is not the confession of a man who did not care. That is a man who cared so much about getting it wrong that he removed himself from the possibility. If it is in the ground it cannot be lost, and if it cannot be lost, he cannot be blamed.

I have met that man. I have been that man. That is a person protecting themselves from a verdict they already believe is coming.

You have not been careless with what God gave you, and the thing under the ground is not proof of anything wrong with you. That is not me excusing anybody. It is what the text itself puts in his mouth, and it is the Holy Spirit who lets a person hear their own reason said back to them without flinching from it.

Now watch what the fear was actually about. It was not about the money. It was about the master's face.

What he believed about the one who gave it

He said, I knew you. Hard man. Takes what he did not earn. Expects a return where he put nothing in.

That is not a description of the master. Read the story again. That master handed out real money to servants with no collateral and no contract, and then he left the country and did not check in once. That is the most trusting employer in the whole New Testament.

The third man had a picture in his head, and the picture was wrong, and he made every one of his decisions out of the picture instead of out of the man.

That is what a wrong idea about God will do in somebody. It does not usually make you rebel. It makes you careful. It makes you small. It puts good things in the ground because you have decided in advance that He is standing there with His arms crossed, waiting for you to fail so He can say something about it.

You are not standing in front of a hard man, and He has never once been waiting for you to slip. Go read what Scripture actually says about the God who gives, because James 1 says He gives to all men liberally and upbraids not, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a sentence like that and rewrites the face a person has been picturing.

The pride excuse, and where it comes from

Somebody reading this has a version of that fear that sounds holier than fear.

It sounds like this: if I use this thing in front of people, I am going to get proud. If I let anybody hear it, or see it, or pay me for it, my heart will go bad. So the safest thing to do with a real gift is to keep it small and keep it quiet.

I lived that. I could rap before I could do anything else well, and for two solid years I did it only in a truck with the windows up, because I had been taught that a man who wants to be heard is a man with a problem in his heart.

And here is what I have learned since. Humility is not the same thing as hiding. The third servant was not humble. He was terrified, and terrified looks a lot like humble from the outside, and only one of them puts anything in anybody's hands.

You are not going to be ruined by being good at something, and God is not nervous about what He put in you. The word says the Spirit gives gifts to profit withal, in 1 Corinthians 12, and it is that same Holy Spirit who keeps a person steady in public and not the dirt they buried it under.

I have to say this next part honestly. The people who taught me to stay small were not cynics. My grandmother is one of them and she is the most genuinely holy person I have ever been in a room with, and she taught me to be careful about showing off because she had watched showing off ruin men she loved. She was not wrong about what she saw.

She is right that the danger exists. I just found out it is not answered with a shovel.

You are safer using it in the open than you ever were hiding it, and God is not gambling by trusting you with it. Matthew 25 puts real money in a servant's hands with no contract on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who guards a heart out where people can see it.