The Third Servant Wasn’t Lazy. He Was Afraid of Losing.

There’s a kid on every team I’ve coached who won’t shoot.

He’s not bad. He can hit it in practice. Sometimes he can hit it in warmups. But in the game, when the pass comes to him with a clean look, he passes it right back. Every time. He’d rather give the ball to a teammate who might miss than be the one who missed.

Coaches have a polite word for this. We say he’s “deferring.” That’s a coward’s word for what’s actually happening. He’d rather not have the chance than have the chance and blow it.

There’s a name for this in behavioral economics. They call it loss aversion — the idea that the sting of losing $100 hits harder than the joy of winning $100. Humans aren’t symmetric about it. Losses sit heavier than gains. We organize our entire lives around not losing what we already have.

You see it in the kid who won’t shoot. You see it in the player who runs the safe play instead of the open one. You see it in the parent who picks their kid’s sport for them because what if he tries baseball, doesn’t like it, and we wasted a season. You see it in me every time I sit on something instead of saying yes to it.

You also see it in the Bible. And the Bible is harder on it than economics is.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a story about three servants. The master gives them money — five talents, two talents, one talent — and leaves. The first two go invest it. They double their money. The third digs a hole in the ground and buries the talent. When the master comes back, the third servant says:

“Master, I knew you to be a hard man… so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”

Read that again. He didn’t say he was lazy. He didn’t say he forgot. He said he was afraid. He was so afraid of giving back less than he started with that he chose to give back exactly what he started with and call it a win.

The master doesn’t reward him. He doesn’t say “good, you kept it safe.” He’s furious. The talent gets taken away. The servant gets thrown into outer darkness.

That’s a hard verse for anyone who’s ever played it safe. Which is most of us.

I’ve buried plenty of talents. Conversations I didn’t have because they might go badly. Risks I didn’t take because they might not work. Posts I didn’t write because they might get misread. Every one of them dressed up as “being responsible” or “being careful” or “thinking it through.” Mostly I was just afraid I’d give back less than I started with.

The kid who won’t shoot will tell you he’s looking for a better look. He’ll tell you he’s being a team player. He’s not. He’s protecting himself from the box score where he went 0-for-1 instead of 0-for-0.

The hard truth of the parable of the talents is that God doesn’t grade on the curve of comfort. He doesn’t grade on whether you protected what you had. He grades on whether you used it.

The third servant gave back exactly what he was given. He thought that was the responsible move. The master called it the worst thing he’d ever heard.

I think about that kid every game. I think about my own buried talents every week.

It’s not that taking risks always works out. It’s that not taking them was never the safe move it pretended to be.