Management Material

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.  -- Luke 16:9

The parable of the Unrighteous Steward is one that has always given me trouble.  The understanding I have of it, I owe, mostly, to Arnot’s The Parables of Our Lord.  The story is simple enough:  a steward or manager has not dealt honestly with his master’s property and is about to be fired.  Desperate to find a means of supplying himself with life’s necessities, the manager, before balancing his ledgers, calls his master’s debtors and offers them a discount.  Those that owe a hundred are told to write down eighty or fifty.  By this ploy, the manager makes friends of those same debtors and may call upon them for assistance once his tenure as manager is over.  The master, upon learning he has been so cleverly cheated, nevertheless commends the ex-manager’s cunning. 

Our tendency is to think that the dishonest manager should have seen the error of his ways, rather like the Prodigal, repented, begged and received his master’s gracious forgiveness.  The Lord, however, had a different lesson He wished to impart. This parable was given to His disciples and was not for the benefit of those outside His circle or as a message for those who opposed Him. 

As Christians, what are we to do with the things of the world?  From our health and strength, our natural gifts, and our families to our property and money, jobs and careers, we have much that pertains as much or more to this world than to eternity.  Jesus wanted to answer that question for us.  The things of this world, including our own bodies and physical lives, are going to pass away.  We should not be afraid or even hesitant to use those things up in order to help us on our journey toward our “eternal dwellings”. 

Unrighteous wealth or, to use the more evocative KJV word, Mammon can be a great hindrance to our spiritual progress.  The Lord’s point is that it need not be.  The Master has given these things to us that we might make the best use of them – not to enrich ourselves and tie our souls to the temporal things of this life, but to make our “calling and election sure”. 

Does wealth get misused?  Are art, literature, cinema, television, the internet channels of evil and wickedness?  Absolutely, but they can be beneficial as well as corrosive.  Arnot asked if the Rich Young Ruler failed because of wealth or sin.  Was the beggar Lazarus saved because he was poor and the rich man in hell because he was rich?  No.  Poverty does not make one holy.  Many will live impoverished in this world only to step from a life of envy into the fires of envy’s just reward.  Some who were rich in this world’s goods already enjoy the bliss of eternal life in heaven.  

Things can be a snare to us.  Things can set us free.  The difference is in us and in our attitude.  The first step is recognizing that nothing we "possess" actually belongs to us.  We are only stewards.  We are responsible for wise management.  This is the key to the parable:  the master commended the unrighteous steward because he wanted him to come out all right.  He couldn’t allow him to go on managing his goods, but he did not want him to starve.  

Our life in this world is coming to an end -- the end of our tenure as steward.  It may be yet many decades for some.  It may be tomorrow.  Regardless of the time frame, we know we cannot go on in this life indefinitely.  Our Good Master wants us to enthusiastically make use of all we have been given, however little or much that may be, whatever form it may take, to improve, augment and further the spiritual components of our lives.  If that is not happening, we are not doing it right, and we are not pleasing God.