Cultivating Competence

Jesus' Lessons for Navigating the End of the World

The Crisis of Competence

“Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?”

The inquiry of Jesus’ disciples provides a glimpse at just how tenuous things can feel behind the scenes.

After a triumphal entry, and a series of astounding rhetorical victories over his detractors, Jesus had retreated to a mountain in solitude, a long established pattern throughout his ministry. The disciples knew that Jesus had come to disrupt the status quo, and they fully expected the expulsion of the corrupt regime that currently occupied the Temple. But they were not prepared for the extremity of his proclamation, “not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

The thought of the Most Holy Place reduced to rubble was disturbing enough for the disciples to approach their master during his time of rest. Their confidence was shaken, and they felt completely unprepared for the uncertainties that lay ahead. How can anyone prepare for an unknown future?

This was no surprise to Jesus, who knew the impact his words would have on them. He used the opportunity to deliver a message that his unusually focused audience would not forget. This dialogue, known as the Olivet discourse, was designed to lead them away from reliance on authority, towards the development of their own competence.

Through candid discussion, Jesus prepared his disciples for an uncertain prelude to a very certain future. He warns them not to be distracted by the signs of perennial upheaval– false christs, wars, famines, earthquakes, apostasy and persecution. Jesus frames these things as tests, leading to a greater tribulation, culminating in a cosmic catastrophe, centered on Judea, as the prophets foretold.

Jesus’ Teaches Competence in Discernment

As Jesus concludes his frank discussion of what is to come, he leads the disciples through a series of parables. These stories, full of subtle nuance, invite us to meditate on the fullness of the scenarios. They give us the opportunity to consider a multitude of alternatives beyond the contrasts provided. This process, which has been ongoing among believers for millennia, teaches those who wrestle with the words of Jesus to develop discernment, wisdom, and competence. But a greater insight is produced when we examine these stories in their unfolding context. Each successive story shifts in frame and scale, adding complexity to the characters and circumstances, comparing and even contradicting certain aspects of the ones that came before.

“The parable of the fig tree” (Mt. 24:32-35) teaches that the signs of the times are as obvious as the emerging leaves of spring.

“No one knows the day or hour” (Mt. 24:36-44) contrasts this by pointing at the suddenness of natural disasters.

“The faithful servant and the evil servant” (Mt. 24:45-51) praises diligence and conscientiousness, while condemning laziness, theft, violence, and drunkenness.

“The Wise and Foolish Virgins” (Mt. 25:1-13) praises the wise virgins who do not share their oil with the foolish virgins who neglected to bring extra.

“The Parable of the Talents” (Mt. 25:14-30) condemns the servant who feared losing his master’s investment more than those who risked it to turn a profit.

“The Son of Man Will Judge the Nations” (Mt. 25:31-46) divides the populace into sheep, who are praised for giving to those in need, with the goats, who are condemned for withholding.

This progression invites us to acknowledge the many ways in which the facts of reality present themself. At first obvious, then unpredictable, complex, deceptive, and subversive. Filtering our perception of our current time and place through these various scenarios forces us to dig deep in search of the truth.

We can ask ourselves, why was the servant with one talent so afraid to invest it? He certainly misunderstood the master, but did he also misunderstand something about himself? Did he have doubts as to his entrepreneurial abilities? What would have happened if he had invested it, but failed to make a profit? Would he still have been condemned? Questions such as these challenge us to rightly discern the nature of our present circumstances, as the actions praised in one parable are sometimes condemned in the next, we must go beyond simple moral principles to examine the context.

Two thousand years of history have certainly proved Jesus right, as the tremors and birth pangs preceding an ultimate apocalypse continue to ripple through time and space. As predicted, many people have been lost or fallen away. Through plagues, famines, natural disasters, political and economic upheavals, God has preserved a remnant of faithful believers. In each instance, the teachings and practices faithfully preserved formed a bedrock for a new heavens and a new earth. Many churches have gone extinct, but Christian traditions from every epoch remain, nearly unchanged, a testament to the various iterations of the faith that adapted to meet a crisis in a particular time and place.

In hindsight, the triumph of orthodoxy seemed inevitable, but at various times and places, it seemed that all the smartest thinkers were backing the heretics: Gnostics, Arians, Montanists, Donatists, and Cathars. Some were stamped out, while others planted the seeds of ideas that bloomed in later movements, minorities that refined and reformed the greater body through righteous opposition.

In a given cultural moment, it took a particular set of insights to recognize the pathway through the mire. Discernment helps us recognize the frame in which we live, while wisdom provides us with understanding of what must be done. But the execution of that plan requires another skill, often overlooked; the one Jesus sought to develop within his followers on the mount of olives– competence.

Identifying Competence

Competence, in the broadest sense, the ability to do “something” successfully or efficiently, still exists in the general population, but it has been relegated to trivial pursuits. What is lacking is the generalized ability to solve novel problems and navigate unfamiliar circumstances. This is what needs to be developed in preparation of an unknown future.

Competence, much like wisdom, is acquired two ways. It can manifest in the form of innate skills and abilities, producing the type of superstar performers beloved as “natural” talents. This form of competence is often limited to a specific domain. Competence can also be developed through discipline and effort.

A person’s competence at a given skill is tied to the limits of natural talent and the amount of discipline applied. The most competent athletes are those who harness both, rare individuals like Bo Jackson, contrasted by both talented prospects who skate by on talent alone, and hard-working overachievers that achieve success in spite of physical deficits.

The limits of natural talent are only discovered in contexts designed to exploit them. The Bo Jackson’s of another era might have been celebrated as the farmer who could plow a field faster than anyone else, or chop down the most trees (Paul Bunyan?); a novelty within a small community. The reward of adding discipline was wealth and success for the talented, and survival for those less blessed.

Without a cultural need, natural talents can remain hidden. Physical strength and stature are readily apparent, an external indicator of a potential for excellence in certain domains that increase opportunities. Talents less readily observed are only discovered within contexts that allow exploration. It was easy to spot Dikembe Mutombo’s basketball potential in the rural bush, but the success of his transition was aided by an intelligence and discipline that he originally aimed at becoming a doctor.

This is one of the great benefits of cultural development. When agriculture frees up time and effort required for securing basic necessities, creative and intellectual pursuits can be explored, increasing the quality of life for individuals. This is the basic argument for increasing technological innovation. The negative consequences of such progress are often unforeseen, and are sometimes catastrophic; but once they are overcome, people accept that the benefits of progress outweigh the costs. This is why no serious thinkers are seeking a return to a pre-industrial society, despite the problems we are still working through.

There are many fears surrounding our current technological frontiers of AI, increased automation, and bio-medical innovations. This fuels a desire for the return to a simpler age; for a minority, perhaps the time before the internet, but not the time before air conditioning, or electricity. People that pretend to want that life can afford the luxury of larping at the high end of pre-industrial culture, and we only know about it from their YouTube channels. Their unconscious survival instincts remain at rest, trusting in satellite networks, rescue helicopters, and modern medical facilities. These are valid concerns that need to be addressed, but our societal crises are fueled by a bigger problem.

The Failure of Relying on Institutions

Perhaps the greatest blessing of living in times of genuine crisis is that almost everyone is pushed to discover the limits of their natural talents. Once the point of failure is discovered, discipline and innovation come to the fore. This is the key insight of the cyclical maxim “hard times make strong men, strong men make good times”, but it comes at a cost, described in the other half of the saying, “Good times make weak men, weak men make hard times.” On and on it goes; but it’s only true to an extent.

History has shown us that the good times, created by strong men, can last for several generations. When their efforts are put towards the development of technology and institutions designed to perpetuate and extend their labor. This can be observed quite easily in old homes. A well built house will last for several hundred years. To inherit such a home means that someone does not need to struggle through the “hard time” of living without shelter. Those who enjoy building homes can do so as laborers meeting the needs of a growing population.

But if the population remains stagnant, or begins to decline, the skills of homebuilding will need to be rediscovered once the older buildings begin to decay. This creates a hard time, leading to the rediscovery of competence, but it comes at a high price.

Fortunately, great men with insight into the human condition devoted some of their time towards the development of institutions that would preserve wisdom, and encourage the development of skill and competence, even in good times. Schools, guilds, and competitive endeavors direct our energy into personal development, simulating the “hard times” of a crisis towards more specific ends. The exploration of new frontiers channels the energy of conquest towards a positive end, reducing the temptation to create hard times for others.

But without stewardship and reformation, these institutions can fall prey to the cycle of decay. Good schools that created strong men can gradually become weak schools that make weak men. They continue to bestow signifiers of competence, in the form of credentials, while depriving students of the challenges necessary to develop real skill. In turn, a populace that has long benefited from trustworthy leaders places their trust in these weak men, because they have not developed competence in discernment.

The institutions meant to identify and cultivate the skills and talents of our population are severely damaged. Schools still function to identify top athletes, and exceptional talents in a few highly sought fields, but they are failing to provide a navigable transition to adult life for a significant portion of students, including a majority of young men.

Likewise, colleges do more to perpetuate their own existence than encourage innovation or adaptation to shifting circumstances. Several top universities are now approaching or even exceeding a 1:1 ratio of administrators to undergrads. These institutions seem designed to sort for incompetence, to foster its development, and defend its virtue.

These symptoms of institutional decay reflect an inversion of values, between the center and the margin of society. As culture shifts towards collectivism, the incentives for personal responsibility diminish, while learned helplessness is rewarded. What happened to cause this trend? We have failed to properly discern and apply the wisdom of the olivet parables.

How Jesus Message has been Corrupted

Among the parables delivered on the Mount of Olives, the one most commonly cited is the parable of the sheep and the goats, which is reduced to the single moral principle that the righteous are those who give to the needy, indiscriminately. This seemingly straightforward lesson seems to justify all manner of charitable laws and organizations, while condemning excluding immigrants, or cutting funding to NGOs.

But when this moral imperative to give freely is applied to the parable of the talents that precedes it, we end up condemning the master, and defending the foolish servant, in direct opposition to the judgement of Jesus. The same application condemns the wise virgins who did not share their oil with the foolish ones. It affirms the message of “The Faithful Servant and the Evil Servant” in theory; but experience shows that most institutions are run by, or tolerate evil servants.

Jesus' message that “No one knows the Day or Hour” is ignored by the culture, while the Church has flipped it on its head. Instead of recognizing that those “taken away” are the wicked ones swept up in the flood, Christians have sidelined themselves in anticipation of a rapture. Which leads to the first, and final, inversion– the parable of the Fig Tree. “When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know summer is near.”

Jesus invites us to recognize the spiritual realities unfolding around us by comparing them to the obvious and reliable information of the natural world, acquired through the senses. While the latter parables invite us to probe more deeply, it implies that deception and subversion are the exception, and not the rule.

Yet recent memories of the covid crisis prove that when we are told to doubt our senses in favor of “expertise”, Christians fare no better than those who do not believe. People offered little pushback when they were instructed to forsake fellowship with other believers, to abandon elderly relatives, and deny their loved ones physical affection, when so many longed for it within their own souls.

The simplification of Jesus’ teaching to “social justice”, and its prescribed execution - “trust the experts”, resulted in a pattern of emotional manipulation peddled by both the experts, and the conspiracy theorists. On all sides, people are told they are incapable of developing their own competence and discernment, and must rely on others to guide them. “Trust no one, except for us.” Fear paralyzed the populace, and glued them to their screens. Whether they were watching MSNBC or InfoWars, the result was the same.

This pattern ought to be of special concern to Christians, who are finding different reasons to leave one denomination or tradition for another; some seeking the stability of older institutions, while others embrace the start-from-scratch mentality of newer movements. But those aspects of tradition created by men, regardless of how smart, strong, or good they may have been, are capable of corruption and decay. Even if they’ve lasted for millennia.

History Demands a Return to Personal Competence

We live in an epochal moment, when a mere remnant of the true church may be preserved. Yet this crisis is unlike the crises of centuries prior, when survival dictated the pattern of orthodoxy, the discovery of correct beliefs contrasting heresy. In those days, people sought teaching that would give them permission to live in opposition to the Kingdom.

The Church that emerges from our current woes will be recognized for defining the boundaries of orthopraxy, the embrace of proper practice, regardless of doctrinal statements susceptible to misinterpretation and linguistic drift. Tribes, tongues, and labels will not define the body that survives our current trials. Rather it will be composed of those who cultivate and bear lasting fruit. This is of course, the true meaning of the parable of the sheep and the goats.

Nietzsche criticized Christianity for its exultation of the weak, and while he may have meant it as a warning, it played a role in sparking the cruelty of World War 2. The meaning of the maxim of “weak men make bad times” was twisted, and so the “bad times” made a twisted version of “Strong men” This resulted in the virtue of competency being directed towards the idol of race supremacy; right action, wrong goal. The West sought to refutate Nazism through regime enforced compassion. The wrong action, coercion, was directed towards the right goal.

This expansion of “rights” penalized competency and responsibility, and eroded the structures that fostered their growth. The right action was condemned for the wrong reasons. Weakness and oppression, symptoms of circumstance, were redefined as virtues; regardless of cause or aim. The result is a resurgent outcry of blood and soil, only now it is being demanded as a right, by petulant children embracing coercion to advance their aim. The wrong action, directed at the wrong goals.

This cycle of inversions has left one clear path out, the embrace of competency in the pursuit of compassion. Those with the strength to take care of themselves must lift up the weak, not to enable them to remain a burden, but to make them competent, so they can do the same for others.

Curiously enough, this is the context in which Jesus’ parable would have been understood. When the disciples heard the words of his parable, they would have recognized it as a twist on a popular text from the time:

“They sold me into slavery; the Lord of all set me free. I was taken into captivity; the strength of His hand came to my aid. I was overtaken by hunger; the Lord himself fed me generously. I was alone, and God came to help me. I was in weakness, and the Lord showed his concern for me. I was in prison, and the Savior acted graciously in my behalf. I was in bonds, and he loosed me; Falsely accused, and he testified in my behalf. Assaulted by bitter words of the Egyptians, and he rescued me. A slave, and he exalted me.” - The Testament of Joseph 1:5-7

These words are spoken by Joseph, the son of Jacob, in which he praises God for delivering him from the unearned miseries of his circumstances. In each instance, God intervened, allowing him to survive, only to be tested again, and again. But the result of God’s compassion was Joseph’s competence - ultimately employed to perform the task no other man had the wisdom or ability to perform.

Jesus’ parable takes the role of divine intervention, and places it in the hands of the faithful. Compassion is not meted out by a central welfare system, but by those who have something to spare, and a willingness to share; people who recognize their own relative success, and would gladly receive such kindness if the situation was reversed.

These gestures are investments in an economy of grace, an economy that produces occasional returns that far surpass the normal losses, as in the parable of the sower, where a quarter of the seed produces fruit, but does so at rates of ten, sixty, or a hundredfold. This economy is not like a market economy based on fungible goods, but a personal economy, based on unique, personal investments into unique people.

Finally, these acts of compassion are not just about planting seeds, but about stirring the soil. Each act removes stones and weeds, encouraging future growth. Moments of compassion play a crucial role in the lives of many successful people, including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Oprah Winfrey. In each instance, these stories of personal investment were tied to some potential an investor saw in them, a potential we assume is quite rare. But it is not the potential that is so rare, but the ability to see it, and discern its nature.

Perhaps the greatest competence is recognizing the unique potential in everyone, made in the image of God. To discover this is to understand why the King said “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”