Two years ago I was listening to Pastor Chip Ingram and something he said hit me like a ton of gold bricks. Around the same time I started Severance, Season 1, and although not in the same spiritual “epiphany” category, the show is thought-provoking and expertly crafted. With Season 2 releasing (Episode 1 debuted January 17, 2025), we’ll do a quick, spoiler-free review of Severance (you can watch this recap with spoilers) and, more importantly, explore Jesus’s statement on each Christian’s basic responsibility—on what forgotten virtue is actually foundational and in some sense a moral preliminary to greater things.
Il(Lumon)ating Business Practices
Lumon’s employees who prove themselves competent in entry-level tasks are then given the opportunity to receive the irreversible severing surgery.
Lumin Industries developed a revolutionary process where an implant inserted in the brain cuts an employee’s memories between work and personal time. The process is called “severing,” hence the title’s witty double entendre (using the business term “severance,” which is when an employee is compensated for leaving). The associates supposedly enjoy a work/life balance and the company keeps proprietary information safe. But a split mind has its share of problems.
The series follows the Macrodata Refinement Department which has four members: newly-appointed supervisor Mark (played by Adam Scott), tenacious Dylan (Zach Cherry), by-the-book Irv (John Turturro), and trainee Helly (Britt Lower). The audience is introduced to the weird, often seemingly nefarious business practices at Lumon via Helly’s orientation given by Mark.
The show does an excellent job asking our questions: what are the refiners working on? What pain would drive someone to split their mind? What qualifies a person to receive the surgery? Apparently, Lumon’s employees who prove themselves competent in entry-level tasks are then given the opportunity to receive the irreversible severing surgery. Severance perfectly illustrates Jesus’s teaching on responsibility according to one’s abilities (minus the sinister corporate tint).
Jesus’s Gold Investment Portfolio
Before delving into Jesus’s teaching, we must ask why He came to earth. It may seem like a silly question, but interestingly, most people give slightly (or very!) different answers. Was it to be a good teacher? To die on the cross for our mistakes? To liberate the oppressed and help the sick and the poor? All of these are true, but not the main reason.
John the Baptist and Jesus Himself repeatedly said that Jesus came in order to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.1 But what does that mean? It’s a little nebulous, but in Matthew 25 Jesus tells three parables about what “the kingdom of heaven will be like.”
Often called “The Parable of the Talents” or “The Bags of Gold,” the second story is about a boss employing three managers. The boss is going on a long trip, giving the first manager five bags of gold, the second two bags, and the third manager one bag, according to each manager’s ability. The boss knows what each manager is capable of in terms of following instructions (obedience) and work ethic, and the managers have shadowed and observed how the boss does business.
Competent Stewards: The “You” You Are
In Severance, the previous Macrodata Refinement supervisor, Petey (Yul Vazquez), was a dynamic leader. Productivity was in the green and engagement was high—as Mark says, “He set the tone.” But when Petey disappears, Mark is given the job. Although Irv was more experienced and he assists Mark on portions of the orientation, it is Mark who gets the promotion. Adding to the awkwardness, management does not have complete faith in Mark.
Severed employees have a reverence for Lumon Industries’ founder Kier Eagan, sometimes verging on idolatrous worship. Since his death, Kier’s rules and words, developed into a biblical-style handbook, provide guidance and elicit loyalty. Mark’s obedient work ethic has served him well, but things have become complicated for him, as he simultaneously manages Helly’s contrarian attitude and handles the department’s discoveries of Lumon’s mysterious practices.
Money can be a delicate subject. I always felt that if I thought about money, I’d become obsessed and/or greedy.
In Jesus’s parable, the first two managers “put the master’s money to work.” The word “work” here in the Greek is ergazomai, meaning “to toil [in a] task or occupation.” The third manager buries his gold. “After a long time” the boss returns, demanding his gold back. The first two managers (or stewards) have doubled the money, while the last returns the same bag. The boss is delighted with the first two managers, giving them more responsibility and inviting them to “share in his happiness.”
But the boss calls the third manager “wicked and lazy.” The boss says that he himself is shrewd, harvesting where he didn’t plant, and he asks the manager, Since you know this about me, why didn’t you at least invest my money to gain a little interest? The manager agrees the boss is cunning, exclaiming he was scared of losing any money; he felt hiding it was the best option.
Since this is a parable, we’re not given fully fleshed-out motivations for the third manager’s behavior other than that he seems fearful. But one could speculate that such fear and laziness is indicative of (like Lumon’s severed employees) a split-mindedness, an uncertainty about where to find one’s identity.
The boss immediately gives the uninvested gold to the first manager, explaining that the person faithful with a little will be given responsibility over more, but whoever is unfaithful with a little will have everything taken away. Then, angrily, he commands that the “worthless” manager be thrown into “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Jesus’s parables are open to interpretation, but using the whole guidance of Scripture, Tota Scriptura, we can understand and apply Jesus’s meaning to our lives. I believe that in “The Parable of the Bags of Gold” (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus is represented as the boss, Christians are the managers (with a wide range of abilities), and bags of gold are… well, money.
It should be said that while Jesus’s original audience would have unquestionably heard this as “money,”2 much of church history has rightly broadened the meaning to be anything “tithable,” such as money, resources, spiritual gifts, time, etc. But we’re going to focus on the money aspect because Jesus spoke a lot about money (more in a bit) and I believe most modern Christians don’t understand what is expected of them regarding their finances.
Money can be a delicate subject. I always felt that if I thought about money, I’d become obsessed and/or greedy. As Sam McPheeters said, “Financial literacy itself felt morally suspect.” And maybe you feel like Flo from A Man on the Inside who contends, “I don’t like talking about money, it’s a jinx.”3 But if Jesus commands us to help Him usher in the kingdom of heaven by using money, anything else is an excuse.
Cash is King: If You Don’t Rule Money, it Rules You
And, as Severance teaches us, running away from our problems is never healthy. Mark struggles balancing his individual work projects with managing his team’s resources and interpersonal conflicts. When a coworker attempts suicide, Mark’s boss says it happened on his watch so it’s his fault. And that he needs to fix it. Mark wrestles with a Western dilemma, deciding how much to let work control his life.
And severed employees only know the half of it (literally). The audience gets to see portions of their personal lives outside the office and how Lumon keeps tabs on them. The question increasingly insinuated is: do the means justify the ends?
In other words Jesus is saying, “If you can’t learn how to manage money wisely, I won’t entrust true riches to you.”
Speaking on “The Parable of the Talents,” Pastor Chip Ingram emphasizes that Jesus distributed the talents according to each person’s ability. “And the way He evaluated them wasn’t on the end result, it was, ‘What did you do with what I gave you?’”4 This is completely reasonable and benevolent of Jesus. If I give my friend a car for free, it may get in an accident and certainly parts will break. But my friend’s reasonable response is to pay for repairs and upkeep and to treat it well.
Pastor Ingram then confirms the importance of proper financial management by using Luke 16:10 (“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities”) as proof. To clarify, in Luke 16’s parable, Jesus calls money a “little thing”!
Ingram says, “The reason Jesus talks so much about money is because it’s the cleanest, clearest, most visible, tangible thing where you can figure out how you’re a steward or not.” In other words Jesus is saying, “If you can’t learn how to manage money wisely, I won’t entrust true riches to you.”
This is where Ingram’s explanation of Jesus’s words hit me like a ton of gold bricks. In business practices and secular mindsets, money is the most valuable resource, so the greater amount of wealth a person has or manages, the more powerful and influential they are. But, in a typical biblical contrast, Jesus says money is a basic and low-level commodity to manage. And, to make it more interesting, this isn’t the heresy of prosperity doctrine; instead, proper money management means increasing finances for the sake of being more generous, which ordinarily decreases one’s personal net worth.
I slowly began to truly understand that all of my money was given to me by God and is therefore His. The phrase “money management” is modern, and knowing money is an idolatrous master (Luke 16:13) and the love of money is the root of evil (1 Timothy 6:10), we must never view a good stock return as evidence of spiritual flourishing. Instead, being a good manager or steward involves not only frugality but also generosity. The reason wealth makes it incredibly difficult to enter heaven (Matthew 19:23-26) is because humanity has a propensity for greed. As wealth increases, so does the temptation to use those riches for personal finances and individual gain.
Whereas, in God’s economy, it appears that not only should all savings and monetary bonuses be funneled toward the kingdom (keeping personal finances net neutral), but Christians should find new ways to cut expenses and give even more. So as years go by, a Christian’s personal wealth is decreasing as their joyful generosity increases.
Filling Out an Application
Severance juxtaposes the preeminent importance of work and unquestioning job loyalty with personal freedoms, life balance, and healthy devotion. One of the show’s strengths is knowing when to feed the audience (and characters) clues in order to unravel its many mysteries (the joys of which are impossible to impart in a spoiler-free review).
We must obey by spending our money wisely, oddly enough on those with a split mind, on people who are hurt, sometimes unlovely and a little risky.
Initially, Jesus’s parable was a little mysterious to me but I’ve been a Christian long enough to know, sometimes you just have to trust what He’s doing even when you don’t understand. I waited two years to write this article because I wanted to be sure I comprehended Jesus’s money management command, and that it was both possible and sustainable. And it is! If you’re interested in how to live debt free there are some great materials online (most famous are Dave Ramsey’s resources, which have helped many, but sometimes give off a cultish-inspirational-speaker-salesman vibe). However, my concern here is our heart toward Jesus’s command.
There’s a case to be made for tithing (yes, especially in the New Testament age) and simultaneously giving to parachurch organizations. And we may be familiar with Jesus’s commands to give generously and joyfully. But here we also surprisingly see Jesus encourages risk-taking. I think it can apply to how we invest, such as in the stock market or in high interest-bearing accounts (both of which I’ve done for free by myself). But more likely, the risk is where we invest spiritually (i.e. how we spend the money).
A modern analogy for the first two money managers’ success might be like me buying meals for two drug addicts. I give each one $5 of food and invite them to a Celebrate Recovery meeting. One turns me down, curses God, and eventually OD’s. The other attends, follows Jesus as his Savior, gets clean, and lives out his life helping others. I don’t get points or deductions for where the addicts spend eternity—that was between them and God. But if Jesus harvested where He didn’t plant (from under Satan’s influence of addiction) and my money management was used by God, then I was faithful to help bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.
As Severance Season 1 concludes, there are some shocking revelations and even bigger questions that only Season 2 can answer (check out the cast’s pop-up promo!). But one thing is clear: the Lumon employees are living unnaturally with severed minds. Media like Severance is indicative of our culture’s belief that corporations (ironically) treat their employees poorly when it’s those associates who deliver the results.
I think Jesus’s lesson that it’s impossible to serve God and money extends to similar concepts: a business whose primary goal is profit maximization cannot also have its employees’ best interests in mind. And this is Jesus’s point: do not expect money-driven decision-making to have the power or play by the same life-changing rules that God’s economy of love and justice and generosity does.
Like many things in God’s economy, this parable seems paradoxical: (1) money is a basic responsibility, (2) though most of us can be lazy and incompetent we’re still managers, (3) the “little thing” of money has a big impact on heaven, and (4) we’re only accountable for the toiling, that hard work of investing, not the results.
Being accountable on earth is hard work but brings greater fulfillment and more responsibility, blessing, happiness, and eternity in heaven. Those irresponsible, the people with a split mind, have an “easier” life on earth, but slowly have more taken away and ultimately may not even be a Christian, since “outer darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” sounds a lot like a literal hell.
But there is hope. Our boss is not Kier Eagan or a ladder-climbing C-Suite sociopath. Jesus is good, forgiving, and repeatedly provides instruction. He also knows exactly what our abilities are and only holds us accountable for what we are capable of. But we must obey by spending our money wisely, oddly enough on those with a split mind, on people who are hurt, sometimes unlovely and a little risky.
- Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 5:3, 5:10; Mark 1:15, etc. ↩︎
- Jesus uses talanton which was a weight applying value to coins. Therefore, as France says, “the Greek talanton is simply a sum of money.” In fact, this Greek word is where English gets its word “talent,” hence our modern confusion that Jesus (“erroneously,” per one commentator) meant “talents” as simply one’s natural abilities. ↩︎
- Flo (Margaret Avery) on A Man on the Inside, “Presents and Clear Danger,” Season 1, Episode 5. ↩︎
- Chip Ingram, “Effective Parenting,” Session 5. ↩︎
