A long time ago I heard of someone who was looking for investment ideas in the Bible. I have no idea how that worked out, but it did occur to me that—because of the parable of the Pearl of Great Price—this individual might have ended up in the jewelry business. The parable is:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.” Mathew 13:45-46, KJV
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a sermon on that parable, although a Sunday School teacher did once tell me that the Pearl of Great Price was “faith.” I felt that was weak tea.
But what is the Pearl of Great Price for you? What is the one thing that, if you gave up everything to possess it, would make you happy forever? To live a life of love? To follow Buddha’s Path? More generally: is it the life of the spirit? Is it romantic love? Bearing children? To create and experience beauty? To farm your own land? To study science? To be famous? To teach the young? To help the poor? To save lives?
For me, I believe it is to seek and hold the truth, both objectively and subjectively. Objective truth is science and also simple practicality, attending to one’s work without opinions or egotism or fear of failure. Just working with patience and humility to understand the facts and to conform to them. Whether you are trying to build a cabinet or understand sub-atomic particles, there is immense dignity and power in the admission that you don’t know something, but are determined to do so.
There is also an implicit courage in conforming to the objective truth in a world that often sees objective truth as the enemy. Faithfully holding to the truth can even cost you your life.
And subjectively, standing with the truth is similar but perhaps less intuitive (or more intuitive?). To admit, for example, that you have always been frightened of love, or that there is a little numbness in your heart when you confront the suffering of others. Or, to realize that the Odyssey is a mirror to your own loneliness and isolation. To admit that narcissism may destroy the human race, and that you too can be narcissistic, that the source of our extinction lives right there in your own heart, and you feel it every day.
If you hold with subjective truth, then you easily recognize that the Jews are not unser Ungluck, and you cherish that recognition. When you feel the force of truth in your own heart—“no, the Jews are not responsible for this” or “no, it is wrong to punish the poor”—then there is so much peace and justice in that, who could want more? Of course you may in the end be executed for your wisdom, but your physical safety is part of the price you gladly paid for this pearl.
If you believe in subjective truth, then you know it is almost better to kill a man than it is to lie to him about the life of the spirit. It’s dreadful to tell a young person that mastering finance is more important than reading Yeats or Jung or the I Ching. Of course we all need skills to earn a living, but “man does not live by bread alone.” To convince a young person that his or her spiritual life is unimportant—or non-existent!—is a terrible thing. I believe this is what Christ meant when he said:
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
What is the Pearl of Great Price for you?
The Socialist Investor 