Someone help me out with this one. I've read the parable of the ten minas before, but this time I actually tried to understand the point of telling other people this story. Here's my problem: you would have to have a reason to tell this story to people, and then to write it down, and then to continue to copy it over and over until the invention of the printing press. That's a lot of motivation to preserve a story, so you'd think the meaning would pop right out at you. Instead, I'm left with confusion.

For those who aren't familiar, it's about a king who leaves his money with 10 servants, and tells them to "put it to work" (in the new international version). So here we have a king entrusting his financial planning to slaves. Wow. Somehow, "retarded" doesn't cover it.

Anyway, he gives them all one "mina" each (let's say for the sake of argument that it's one gold coin). Here's the miracle: when the guy comes back, one of his slaves got a 10000% return on his one gold coin by making ten more. Fantastic! So the king gives this guy ten cities. A smart king would have put him in charge of his finances and paid him a shitty wage, but remember, this guy is dumb as a bag of hammers.

Another one of his slaves comes up with a 5000% return, and so the king gives him five cities. At this point in the story, I'm thinking the moral is "collect at least 5000% interest on money that isn't yours and a king will give you cities" Yeah, I figure that's pretty applicable to my life.

A different slave comes up and says he basically kept the money under the mattress. The king goes ballistic and gives the money to the guy he just gave ten cities to. So I'm thinking now the moral is "those who charge the maximum possible interest are going to get rewarded no matter what, and that 'save your money' guy from ING doesn't know what he's talking about" But wait! There's more.

Someone objects, and says, "but he already has ten!" and the king says that more will be given to those who have more, and those who have nothing will have their shit taken away.

Oh, and another thing, if anyone doesn't want me to be king, just round up the motherfuckers and kill them right here.

...

Sorry, what? Is this about finances or unreasonable dictatorial oppression?

Seriously, besides the suddenly violent punchline, I have no idea why you would tell people this story. It's not a good story, and the moral seems to be that being stupid combined with being a hard-ass is condoned by Jesus. Or is it sarcasm? As in, greedy violent bastards rule the earth, and that's just the way it is. I'm honestly at a loss.