THE MATTHEW PRINCIPLE

 I came across the Canadian hockey players' birthday illustration (in yesterday's post) in a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers, the Story of Success. 

To recap: 40% of Canadian hockey players have birthdays in January, February or March and only 10% have birthdays in October, November or December. This is the result of the young hockey hopefuls playing on teams organized by birth year. Those born early in the year have a size, speed, and coordination advantage over their younger teammates born months later.

Gladwell explains that those early advantages - based only on chance of birth - slowly snowball into further advantages over time. Likewise, those dealt a losing hand by virtue of a late birthday tend to experience disadvantages which often give birth to further disadvantages. 

Apparently, this is commonly referred to as "The Matthew Principle" based on a parable from Jesus found in Matthew 25.

You are likely familiar with the parable. Jesus uses it to describe what the kingdom of heaven will be like. 

A man leaving on a journey calls his three servants and entrusts each with gold - "according to his ability". The first gets five bags, the second gets two and the third gets one. 

The first two servants invest the gold and double its value. But the third hides his bag of gold in a hole in the ground. 

Upon return from his journey, the master rewards the two servants who had invested the gold, but punishes the third, calling him a "wicked and lazy servant". 

The parable concludes in Matthew 25:28-29 with the master stating, "So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them."

It doesn't take long to realize this is how the world works. "You have to have money to make money" is a pretty obvious truism, especially to anyone who has ever dreamed of starting a business. If I ever doubted the hold the "Matthew Principle" exerts over this world before I moved to Haiti, I am definitely a true believer now. I know countless Haitians who are so far down that even a good paying job (by Haitian standards) is not enough to even start to raise them out of poverty. 

I don't take Jesus's parable as some sort of defense of the "Matthew Principle". Rather, I think first, that Jesus is simply acknowledging that this is how the world works, in its fallen state. And second, that the spiritual world works the same way, for better or for worse: Those who exercise their faith will gain more while those who sit on their faith will lose even what they started out with. 

I think that's true. Do you?