The Dishonest Steward

 

This is about the Parable of the Dishonest Steward in Luke 16: Here it is below:

He also said to His disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. ² So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’

³ “Then the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. ⁴ I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’

⁵ “So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶ And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ ⁷ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ ⁸ So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.

⁹ “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous money/wealth, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. ¹⁰ He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. ¹¹ Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous money/wealth, who will commit to your trust the true riches? ¹² And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?

¹³ “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

The steward was accused of ‘wasting’ the master’s goods, and was asked to present details of his stewardship to the master. We know that the accusation was right, since the steward was not prepared to defend himself, but sought another way out. So he resorts to undercharging the debtors, hoping to gain favor enough with them that they will either help him as friends, or maybe hire him.

The problem that I always had, listening or reading of others who commented on this admittedly difficult parable, was how the master commended him. Thinking of this in today’s business dealings, it seemed obvious that the steward, after he began undercharging the debtors, would have necessarily handed over the shrunken amount to the master. Thus he would have cheated his master again. Instead of ‘wasting’ the master’s goods, he would be cheating the master out of revenues previously determined by contact. A simple example: If a customer owed the master $100, how would you feel, as master, if the steward took an underpayment from the customer, and only handed over $50 in full payment of the debt? You would feel cheated, right? So how can the master commend the servant, who has found another way to disrespect him? No previous commentary that I knew of had an adequate explanation to get past that difficulty.

But I am indebted to “119Ministries” for an answer. It turns out, we need to put a first-century context on business dealings of Jews and Romans onto our thinking. Here’s how it worked: The master has wheat to sell, and a customer wants to buy a hundred measures of wheat from him. The customer negotiates with the steward. Say the master has indicated to the steward that a fair revenue figure for him would be $80.  But the master only tells the steward that amount. It is up to the steward to determine the exact amount to charge the customer. Let’s say the steward is in the practice of charging customers $120. Say the customer agrees to the $120, he gets the wheat and pays the steward. The steward pockets $40 for himself and gives the master $80. (The customer is never told how much of his $120 goes to the steward or the master.) The master is happy to get what he asked, $80, and the steward gets $40. Why does the customer agree to the higher figure of $120? Because the only other steward offering wheat in town down the road charges the same. The only restraint upon this steward from upping the final charge to the moon, is that if he is too high, a customer can get a better deal from the steward down the street. But, let’s say that all the stewards in town wanted to get rich; the steward down the street charges an exorbitant amount too—so all the stewards can continue to charge their high prices and get rich together. And the customers in town who want to feed their families get poorer together.

 The reason for this misalignment is: the master never paid the steward a wage, so charging customers a fee above what the master demanded was the only way for the steward to survive. But he typically overdid it—charging more for his cut than what he needed to live on. If the masters were usually Romans and the stewards were Jews, there would be tension and hatred among regular working Jews for the Jewish stewards, who were getting rich by shafting their fellow Jews. The Romans loved that idea, which is probably the reason for the practice being originally set up. Let’s keep the Jews blaming each other, the Romans figured; if some Jews are rich and others are poor, the Jews will hate each other as much as they hated the Romans. That lack of unity helps keep them under our thumb.

The same practice went on for tax collectors too. The Romans made sure they “hired” Jews to be tax collectors from other Jews. The Jews couldn’t believe that Jesus took on a tax collector, Matthew, as one of His 12. In order for Matthew to follow Jesus, though, he had to quit his job. A brave thing.  I’m sure that he still was not acceptable to many Jews because of his past.

Let’s go back to the $80 figure the master wanted for a hundred measures of wheat. And let’s deal with the steward who is about to lose his job. So the steward, under his new “friend” plan, only charged the customer, say, $80 instead of the past charge of $120. The customer, knowing the usual going rate here and down the street, was super happy he suddenly got a great deal from this steward. It’s possible the steward could be his friend after all, because of his generosity in thinking of the customer’s welfare instead of his own. The master was happy, since the steward forked over the entire $80 to him. The steward got nothing, so in order to feed his own family, he needed to dip into his past savings—of which I’m sure he had a huge quantity. But the steward knows he will lose his job, and one of these guys he has benefited—maybe more than one—will hopefully see that his kindness to them will be remembered by offering to help the steward’s family in lean times, or even offer the steward another job.

 In summarizing: with this important adjustment to first-century business practices among the Jews, the difficulty understanding why  the master commends the steward is swept aside, and we have an easier road for applying this parable to our lives. The master is the Master, God. The typical steward, in benefitting himself by charging the customer $120, is more interested in loving his money than in loving the welfare of his Jewish brothers and neighbors. What was unique about the turnaround in this steward is, he began taking a “longer-range” view—namely, by benefitting his customers and taking less graft for himself, he acquires friends that he would never have had under his previous business method. Those friends would help him if he ever needed help. Stewards (and us, in stewarding our Master’s wealth and income that He gives us) always have a choice:  Shall we be “faithful to God,” or shall we be “unjust” in how we allocate those earnings or wealth we get? “Faithful” would be to share by charging less and loving our neighbor. “Unjust” means our policy is greed and not loving our neighbor, and charging as much as we can.

For us who are not self-employed, the application goes like this: what do we do with the excess income over truly necessary expenses that we earn, or could earn? If we earn $5000 a month, but necessities cost us $4000, can we give a big chunk of that to our poorer neighbors, or friends, in the world? Or do we just spend it on the “good life,” or add to our “retirement fund?” (Current analysts of late say we need $2-3 million for a “great” retirement, so if you went this way, you’d never stop piling cash into the fund—and never help the poor).  Since Jesus has always been a promoter of helping the poor, He is implying that the stewards should make a habit of charging the customer less than other stewards, because he loves his poorer neighbors, and is thinking of their family’s benefit, not the steward’s greediness to get rich. We should not strive to keep for ourselves all of what God gives us in wealth and earnings, IF those earnings are above our family’s NECESSITIES to live. For us to live in wealth with income above our necessities, and never to love our neighbor enough to share with the poor, is not ”faithful” to God. Let’s repeat verse 11, part of Jesus’ speech:

  ¹¹ Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous money/wealth, who will commit to your trust the true riches? 

In the first phrase, Jesus is not saying that all incomes or wealth are unrighteous. But in the context of the stewards, it is. There is a special warning in Jesus’ words “not been faithful.”  God requires our faith to achieve heaven. (see my latest blog). We are not talking about a one-timer faith, but an ongoing faith.  IF we have enough faith in God, we will share to the utmost with our poorer neighbors. Because we love them and we know they are hurting. Here’s how it should work: Sharing says to God, “I am helping my neighbor because I believe, Lord, that if I do not keep all my excess income, I could more quickly get into trouble if the economy unwinds, where I might not be able to provide for my family. That may seem to be foolish, not having a large savings backup. But I am not foolish, because YOU are my backup. You are better than savings. I have faith that You will, under Your great power, get me out of a fix.”  (Jesus talked a lot about that in the Sermon on the Mount, see Matthew 6:25ff).

Secondly, sharing is a love of neighbor (also a requirement to achieve heaven. (See my previous blogs). For me to call this “long-range,” as I called it earlier, means if we, too, change the course of our lives to helping the poor, this is, what Jesus calls, in verse 9 above, earning an “everlasting home.” That’s definitely hinting of heaven.

So, reader, sacrificing current dollars to share with poorer neighbors is helping you on a path to heaven in two “eternal life vs eternal death” ways.  After all, what can we take with us when we die? All that money we might acquire could be Monopoly money; it’s worthless, if you’re thinking about wanting to get to heaven. Didn’t Jesus say, in Matthew 16:26:

For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 

We may be showing our love for neighbors and our faith in God by sharing, and thereby keep on abiding in Christ, who commanded those qualities for heaven. This truth also goes the opposite. If we take our earnings and burn them on acquiring the nice things in life (verses the necessary ones), that disservice shows a lack of love for our poorer neighbors, and a lack of faith in God (since, if we’re building up savings, means we depend on them when things get tough, and not depending on God for help). (There is a separate argument against going into credit card debt: first, doing it means you are assuming that you will have sufficient income in the future to pay the debt—such an assumption about your lifespan is up to God, not you. You are not making allowance for the possibility that if you die early, the debt might not get paid off; thus you will have stolen from those creditor retailers. (With a mortgage, it’s different—the creditor is the bank, and you aren’t requiring them to take much risk since your home will likely sell for more than your debt, so the bank will be satisfied).  If you live but lose your job, and your future income can’t pay a credit card debt, then you will have effectively stolen from retail stores or services. Secondly, assuming you do not pay the debt off each month, you will build up a higher and higher INTEREST payment on your bills—an extraordinary waste of your Master’s assets.)

Any time I give to charitable organizations (not necessarily churches), I know nearly all the money (using MinistryWatch as a trusty agent), will be expensed for the poor in other nations, which have it far worse than we do in the U.S. I figure this treasure in heaven (I have another blog on that) that I am building up will mean that when I go to heaven, I will be hugged by everybody that I benefitted. God will make sure that we all know our beneficiaries, our new friends’ names. I will have lots of new friends, people that due to my contribution finally had a chance to get a leg up and sought God and got heaven. Maybe my money bought a Bible, maybe it helped them to medically recover from sickness, and they got saved later. Heaven is my desired “everlasting home,” I know. It’s so sinful to waste money on myself, seeing I’m on earth for only 80 years or so, but I’m taking a chance on heaven or hell-- an eternity. Is greed worth that risk? We must think how we can build treasures in heaven.

Even worse, based on other parables (that I have blogged), heaven could actually be denied me if I don’t share when it was possible.  I might have obtained initial salvation—but it is meaningless if I don’t endure and fail to follow Jesus’ commands. Doing that, I am not abiding in Jesus, and my destiny is to be burned (John 15:1-6).

Thank the Lord for the opportunity His Spirit gives to ignore greed and sacrificially give instead.