The Economics of the Parables

Robert Sirico

• Publisher: Regnery Gateway
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781684512911
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Timeless and moral economic wisdom for life's choices and changes derived from the parables of the New Testament by famed free market advocate and Catholic priest Robert Sirico. Libraries are filled with books on the parables of Christ, and rightly so. In the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, "While civilizations have come and gone, these stories continue to teach us anew with their freshness and their humanity." Two millennia later, the New Testament parables remain ubiquitous, and yet, few have stopped to glean from one of Christ's most prevalent analogies: money. In The Economics of the Parables, Rev. Robert Sirico pulls back the veil of modernity to reveal the timeless economic wisdom of the parables. Thirteen central stories—including "The Laborers in the Vineyard, " "The Rich Fool, " "The Five Talents, " and "The Faithful Steward"—serve as his guide, revealing practical lessons in caring for the poor, stewarding wealth, distributing inheritances, navigating income disparities, and resolving family tensions. As contemporary as any business manual and sure to outlast them, The Economics of the Parables equips any economically informed reader to uncover the enduring financial truths of the parables in a reasonable, sensible, and life-empowering manner.

CHAPTER 1 The Hidden Treasure

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.” (Matthew 13:44)

Before us is a lesson in values.

Over time, Jesus’ parables have been given various titles, and this one, which is communicated privately to the disciples and not before the multitudes, as was often the case, is often called the Parable of the Hidden Treasure.

The heart of the lesson is clearly the priority of the kingdom of God and urgency of attaining it, no matter how great the sacrifice. Having been discovered, the treasure seizes readers’ attention and draws them in, so that they are willing to surrender their present path and seek out a new path instead. The discovery of the treasure is life-altering. There is something in this treasure that captivates the heart and demands relinquishment of all other loves, rendering its discoverer willing to make himself vulnerable so as to obtain something of greater value. What we value and the extent to which we make choices based on those values is the key challenge of the parable. And speculating or looking about us very often enables us to see things that might be obscure or indistinct.

What is the treasure in the parable? It is often imagined to be a chest of gold or purse of precious stones. And why is it hidden? Did the original owner, perhaps generations ago, hide it for fear of war, or famine, or some other disaster?¹ Such a thing would not have been unusual in a society accustomed to invasion and flight. Did the owner forget where he left it? Did he die before telling anyone of its location? Of course this is all surmise, yet it aids our imagination to the extent that it enhances our appreciation of the parable’s application. The economic point (which points to a deeper moral truth), is that the treasure was stored there for safekeeping because of uncertainty about the future, possibly because of a reliable calculation or else a mere rumor that the treasure was not safe. Burying treasure in the ground is a very good way of hiding it, with much precedent.

The treasure remains buried until someone finds it. It is easy to imagine people’s having walked directly on top of the ground where it lay for decades, leaving it undiscovered. Our discoverer, however, sees its value and gladly parts with everything else he owns in order to buy the land from the current owner and take possession of his treasure. In this one of a series of short parables in Matthew’s Gospel we are never told how specifically he happened to find it. He may have discovered it while tilling the ground as an employee or a tenant of the owner, or while he was just out exploring. He may literally have fallen over it. Again, this is just speculation.

Treasure is often a metaphor for wisdom, especially in Scripture. “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold,” says Proverbs 8:10–11. “For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.” One way to secure wealth or resources in the ancient world was to hide them for fear of theft or confiscation. In a similar way, some might think to preserve the treasure of wisdom and of the potential of redemption from a world not safe for truth, or from a culture that might contaminate it. Such a culture, or such people, might not be considered worthy of having a treasure shared with them, thus the admonition: “neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you” (Matthew 7:6), explaining why the parables might be hidden from some but entrusted to others. The treasure has to be sought through discovery and effort.

The case of a valuable commodity’s being left fallow in a field, not claimed by anyone, presents a buying opportunity. The question then presents itself as to whether the buyer of the field in question has the moral obligation to reveal to its owner that there is a treasure hidden in the field. The parable does not address this particular point (as interesting as it is). Surely the potential buyer is entitled to tell all he knows. But the primary obligation rests with the owner of the property to know the real value of his own property. The one who discovered the treasure is to be congratulated for seeing the opportunity to profit because he sees value where others do not.

This situation may appear as a great moral dilemma, yet it occurs every day in the exchange of goods and services. For example, retailers observe open lots of land that no one seems to place much value on. They see them as places of great potential, where they can bring goods and services and offer them to others. In effect, they see treasure. Does this mean that the owner of the land does not see the future treasure? Perhaps, but not necessarily. The first thing that comes to the mind of the owner is that selling his land to the retailer is an economic advantage. Both parties come out ahead in the exchange, at least from their individual perspectives, which are, of course, the only perspectives they can have.

Another analogy here would be a seller with an old car—a “junker”—with a price tag of $500. Let’s say a connoisseur of automobiles comes along and notices that it is potentially a rare antique worth $50,000. The car is still sold for $500—1 percent of its future market value. The buyer with the knowledge of cars is very much like an entrepreneur in a market, willing to take a risk that the market will bear him out. There is no fraud here, and both benefit from the exchange. If you think about it, in every economic exchange where people are free to accept or reject an offer, both parties are convinced that they got the best deal at the time of the deal.

The Hidden Treasure, print, after John Everett Millais, engraved and printed by the Dalziel Brothers. Metropolitan Museum of Art

As to the common assumption that the vendor is taking advantage of the seller, that logic would apply to everyone who runs an ice cream stand and takes advantage of the heat of a summer afternoon; or a restaurateur who takes advantage of people’s hunger; or a nurse who takes advantage of someone’s illness. But in reality, are these all relationships of exploitation—or of service?

The question to ask is whether there is anything shady going on in these situations. That is a moral question, but it is also a question of valuation. Another way to look at it is to ask whether goods such as old cars, or food, or health care, or land have intrinsic economic value in themselves, or if people bring or create value—a phenomenon that is sometimes seen in economics. What, after all, do we even mean by “economic value”? Oughtn’t we to at least consider that the economic value of the thing depends on the one doing the valuation—that is, the one calculating the worth of the thing at the time it is purchased, which is in turn based on perceptions, opportunities, and availability? In reality, the price of anything is established by the valuation of the item in the mind of the purchaser when goods are exchanged, that is in markets. All of this presupposes complete honesty and a total avoidance of deception in the exchange.

One might argue that it would have been a commendable act of courtesy or even charity to reveal to the owner the existence of treasure. Yet the very framing of such an action as etiquette or charity already concedes that it is not a requirement of either justice or morality. To argue otherwise would be to throw suspicion on a wide assortment of exchanges and arrangements we take for granted, and to hinder human progress and betterment. It would impede the overall creation of wealth in every exchange in which the buyer values the thing for sale at a higher value than the one selling it, and necessitate a kind of educational process prior to every sale in order to convince the seller of the higher value of the object.

Obviously, there is nothing inherently unique about the scenarios described above. In all market exchanges, both parties perceive themselves to be getting the better deal, from their own point of view. Both parties believe that they are made better off as a result of the exchange, and, indeed, we can only trust that their perceptions are correct. When you buy milk from the grocery store, you value the milk more than the $2 it took to purchase it, while the store values the $2 more than the milk. And thus the exchange takes place. Were the milk watered down, or if some other act of deception were employed, it would morally and legally invalidate the deal.

To be sure, buyers and sellers bring different assumptions and different values to the bargaining table. Apart from the theological message of this parable, it also shows that commerce can be mutually beneficial even when there exist different assumptions about the value of the item, that is, when buyer and seller approach an exchange with different objectives in mind. Both parties can still benefit. In the real world, asymmetries in information and values are unavoidable and ubiquitous. A decent and moral economic system is one that creates opportunities for mutual advantage. How could it be otherwise? And would we want it to be?

This parable also tells us something about what it means to discover and to create value in a marketplace. As long as the treasure remained uncovered, unused, and unappreciated in the field, it had no social benefit. It might as well not have existed at all, as far as human well-being was concerned. It didn’t bring value to the original owner because he either didn’t know it was there or had no appreciation for it.

The treasure does not find us; we have to search it out and develop within ourselves the capacity for recognizing it once it has been found. We also have to be willing to sacrifice to gain possession of it and to relinquish other things that hinder our discovery and capture of the treasure.

The one who has found something no longer pursues it. As the saying goes, “How is it that I always find what I am looking for in the last place I search?” It is the one who has yet to make the discovery who searches, the merchant in search of fine pearls.

The parable of the hidden treasure invites us to ponder a number of things. First, there is what we might learn from what I will call the virtue of attentiveness or alertness on the part of the man who discovers the treasure. The habit of vigilance is commended to us in other parables less subtly, but we should not lose sight of it here as well. Then there is the value our discoverer places on his discovery, a value that causes him to reorder all his other values. A third issue arises here, if not directly from the parable itself, still unavoidably flowing from it. We might ask what the man who discovered the treasure intended to do with it. It’s clear that he was not going to leave it in the ground, or he would not have bought the property in the first place. He sees the treasure as enriching.

Consider what gives the treasure its value. Here it is important to distinguish the intrinsic or objective moral values given in the natural order from the values that human beings impart to such things such as commodities by subjectively determining the use we have for them by employing our minds, our intelligence, and the concrete circumstances of our own lives and those of our families and loved ones. In this the human mind reflects to some degree the very mind of the Creator, who created the heavens and the earth, all plants and animals, and then the human person, fashioned in his very image and likeness. Our capacity to discover and even create value is an extension of the power of reason that has been given to us in the imago Dei in our very nature. God has “put eternity in their hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).² In the human person, the will and the act are one and the same, bringing together the interior and exterior aspects of human nature. God has created us as free actors, responsible, self-determining agents.

We see all this on the temporal or external plane, as we witness people who are especially skilled at discovering and creating subjective value for themselves and others. And on this plane, we need to be cautious so as not to entertain feelings of jealousy or envy, which is the will to destroy. The alternative is the cultivation and appreciation of rare creative talent that can uncover benefits for others and society in general. The future is always uncertain, so people who are willing to take responsible and informed risks are precious—all the more so when they risk their own resources.

Yet the parable reveals something higher than the mundane lessons we can draw from commercial life. It points us to a transcendent wisdom beyond the mundane and inspires us to decode the invitation to grace and union with God hidden within our material world, which points us beyond itself. It is the Kingdom of Heaven that we are being pointed to here—that value above all values, the objective, eternal, intrinsic, and supreme good. While this parable is about the subjective and the temporal, it points us beyond those things. Our business dealings, in which we seek to find economic value by employing unused or under-used resources, are not entirely different from our discovery of something so precious and overlooked that pertains not merely to our time, to our transactions—but to eternity—indeed, to our destiny.

The central actor in our parable is described as selling all his possessions “for joy.” A sacrifice can enrich, not merely impoverish us. It is this joy, the joy of the Kingdom, that we ought to put the highest value on—to be willing to sell everything we own to obtain.

CHAPTER 2 The Pearl of Great Price

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45–46)

The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price shares some traits with the previous parable, of the Hidden Treasure. Both involve finding something of great value and deciding to give up all one’s possessions in order to obtain it. Both parables compel the reader to ask what it is that prompts a person to sell all in order to obtain something of higher value. Both parables, then, illuminate the course of human life, in which we are continually confronted with opportunities to surrender “a bird in the hand” for “two in the bush,” as the old saying goes.

The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price draws on the experience of a merchant. In the Vulgate, Jerome translates emporo, the Greek word for “merchant” with the Latin negotiator, which implies a person who negotiates something, or one who seeks to sell something to someone at a high price and buy something at a low price.¹ It is the person who wants to make the deal, the one who brings things to an agreed-upon conclusion. The parable is so short that we really do not know whether the central actor intends to turn around and sell the pearl or if he is a collector. But he is engaging in the kind of activity that we see taking place on the stock market every instant of every day. It is the ongoing process in every street bazaar around the world. Prices fluctuate based on human valuation, the subjective knowledge of the parties to the trade, and the availability of resources. A great negotiator seeks to find the price, the point of contact, at which exchange can occur, rendering each person who is party to the exchange pleased with its outcome.

The fact that Jesus employs a luxury good as the central image in this text is, of course, not a legitimization of luxury goods in themselves. Nor is it a condemnation of them. It merely reflects the fact that people value different things at different levels. When people with different values come together, they often exchange things they value less for things they value more—rather than remain static or disconnected from one another.

All too many thoughtful Christians see this fact of people coming together to share and exchange values for mutual benefit as morally suspicious. Some have the impression that charity and commerce, or the practice of faith and the practice of economic exchange, are always antithetical. It is curious that the necessary and ubiquitous experience of merchants and customers prompts such a negative view. Such believers are often prone to assume that the Christian should adopt a perspective that seeks to shun, or render spiritually irrelevant, the actions of a market economy because somehow, rather than being based on love and the common good, business is inevitably animated by selfishness and greed, despite our dependence on such activities. But this concern is not expressed in this parable.

While admittedly it is not the point of the parable to teach us about the importance of trade, it remains difficult for me to see, from the point of view of this and Jesus’ other parables, how the wholesale rejection of trade, negotiation, and business has gained such traction among Christians. The parables draw on th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• A Note on the Use of the King James Version of the Bible
• Introduction: The Enduring Power of the Parables
• Chapter 1: The Hidden Treasure
• Chapter 2: The Pearl of Great Price
• Chapter 3: The Sower
• Chapter 4: The Laborers in the Vineyard
• Chapter 5: The Rich Fool
• Chapter 6: The Two Debtors
• Chapter 7: The Talents
• Chapter 8: The King Going to War
• Chapter 9: The House Built on a Rock
• Chapter 10: Lessons in Stewardship
• Chapter 11: The Good Samaritan
• Chapter 12: The Rich Man and Lazarus
• Chapter 13: The Prodigal Son
• Afterword: Some Broader Thoughts on Economics and the New Testament
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Copyright