Space-Filling Thoughts

  Painting by Willem de Poorter entitled The Parable of The Talents or Minas. What is our tendency when we are accused of something?  Well, the tendency is to justify ourselves, isn’t it?  This is true even if we are caught red-handed.  We may not be able to deny that we have done something wrong, but we will at least argue that we are not the ones ultimately responsible for the mess we’ve made.  This is true even when God is the one doing the accusing.  Consider Adam and Eve in the garden.  What do they do when God confronts them?  Adam has the audacity to blame God (something it turns out we are all good at) for giving him his wife, Eve.  When Eve is confronted, she blames the serpent.  We are all adept at passing the baton of responsibility.  We are all blame-shifters by nature. Or consider the parable our Lord spoke about the talents.  The man who received one talent went and did nothing with it, but buried it.  When his master came to receive an accounting of his use of the talent