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. 

Practical Poverty

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.  -- Luke 14:33

The cost of following Christ is great.  I believe I have mentioned before standing on a sidewalk one Sunday evening as a man with tears in his eyes and voice talked about the Pearl of Great Price.  God only wants everything we have, and it is what I hold on to, or try to hold on to that hurts me.  We get confused, though, if we see this as meaning that we have to live in the manner of monks or desert hermits.  We might think of the story of St. Francis who piled all that he had, even to his clothing, at his father’s feet and went off naked and trusting God.  But Wuest’s translation says, “… who does not in self-renunciation bid farewell to all his possessions …”, and this may help us to see that the problem lies not in what we possess or do not possess but in the self which would possess. 

Perhaps it would help clarify if we think not in terms of possessions but of rights.  We are all be endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and, as citizens, we may claim and exercise those rights.  Oppressive people, individually or in groups, may deny us our rights but they don’t take those rights away.  Every human who has ever lived has the right to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness – which pursuit generally involves family and other relationships and the things that in turn support those girders of happiness.   

Jesus demands that we offer our rights up to Him and submit ourselves to His lordship.  If we need further evidence, we may look at another well-known passage wherein the Lord tells us to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, and surrender our coat along with our shirt.  We are bidding farewell to our right to self-defense, our right to liberty, and our right to our own possessions.

This is so contrary to the way I think.  If some fool comes down my road and decides he wants to slap me and take my motorcycle – especially Serenity – he’d better be mighty big and mighty quick.  In any case, he will earn it.  Here’s the thing, though, remember when Jesus sent His disciples to find a donkey for Him to ride into Jerusalem?  He said that if anybody questioned what looked like theft, the disciples were to answer, “The Lord has need of it.”  What if Jesus wanted my bike or my tractor or the old Chuckster?  Most of us would say without hesitation – and mean it, “What do I have, Lord, that You did not give me?  It all belongs to You.”  Does it matter that He sends an agent to take from us what we acknowledge is His?  His rights supersede ours, and we exercise our rights only as managers under His proprietorship.  If God’s agent is a fire or a flood should we weep long over what He has taken? 

God’s law forbids stealing and killing and abuse, so the thief or the thug  is operating contrary to the divine edicts.  We may reasonably resist such a one.  We have an obligation to defend the weak and the innocent from unlawful predation.  Nevertheless, if a thief steals my car, he has not stolen from me but from God, and to God he is accountable.  Of course, the Lord would be justified in asking the stupid steward why he left the doors unlocked and the key in the ignition and in leaving him afoot until he learned better. 

We renounce our rights to ownership not to care and good stewardship.

Material Management

Why should I fear in times of trouble? The iniquity of my foes surrounds me. They trust in their wealth and boast of their abundant riches. Yet these cannot redeem a person or pay his ransom to God – since the price of redeeming him is too costly, one should forever stop trying – so that he may live forever and not see the Pit. – Psalm 49:5-9

Whoever tries to make his life secure will lose it … -- Luke 17:33 (HCSB)

Some years ago my father had a neighbor who was a Pentecostal preacher. Dad liked the man and his family. Both the preacher and his youngest daughter often went coyote hunting with Dad. The preacher wasn’t particularly successful or prosperous in a material sense. His church was small, and his attempts at farming ended in losses rather than gains for the most part. The family kept afloat by the preacher driving a school bus and his wife working as a cook at a local restaurant. They did manage to eat well or at least in large amounts.

One day the transmission went out on their van, which was their only means of transportation. They had enough money to cover putting in a new one except for the fact that the pump on their well went out at nearly the same time. Dad loaned them a thousand dollars and told them to pay it back when they could with no interest. It took the folks a few months but they did repay his loan. When the wife gave him the check, Dad commented that it would be a good idea to keep a little in reserve. The lady replied that they just always trusted God.

When Dad told me the story, he said, “That’s all right, I guess, but it don’t hurt to plan ahead a little.” He thought we ought not to presume too much upon the Lord when it was in our power to put up a little for a rainy day. Dad never feared rainy days. It was drought that bothered him. He had lived through the droughts of the 1930’s and what he considered a worse drought in our area in the mid-1950’s. Once he had a crop planted on one of the ridge fields, a crop he really needed in order to get by that year. He went to look at it one Sunday morning and saw that it was in bad shape. He came back to the house and commented, somewhat bitterly, “If it don’t rain in the next fifteen minutes that ain’t gonna make nothin’.” The family loaded up and went on to church. Before the service was over, it began to rain.

There must be some balance in our views. Lack of dependence upon the Lord is wrong but so is presumption that leads to complacency or even laziness. The same Paul who told us that God will supply all our needs also told us that anyone who refuses to work should not expect eat. The right idea is to do what we can and not worry. I’m not very good at that. I like security. I like having a nice house to live in, having my gadgets, tools, and toys. I like knowing that I have money to cover everything that might ever possibly come up, or that I will always have a job if I need one. But if I have all that, am I depending on God or my bank account? Am I laying up treasures in the wrong place? How do I deal with the fears of economic uncertainty, of potential inflation that could make my savings virtually worthless in a matter of months? What if I get sick and can no longer work? What happens if the government decides I have too much and confiscates my money or property? What if … What if … What if I lost everything? How would I take care of my wife? How would it feel to be, as my nephew says, financially embarrassed?

How much of anxiety is commonsense, and how much of commonsense is lack of faith? Once we begin to walk the road of “prudence” and “commonsense”, where do we stop? Once we begin to accumulate possessions, how do we keep from making idols of them? I need to take care of my truck as a good steward, but I don’t want to obsess about it. The secret is in the word “steward”. Most of us – unless we’re state-raised – will not drive someone else’s car as we drive our own. We’ll take it a little easier. In college, I was always more protective of my roommate’s stereo equipment than I was of mine – his was better anyway.

Nothing I have, not even life, is mine. I’m just the manager. I’ve been left in charge. I’ll be held accountable for what I do with it, but it is not mine. The reason I can’t redeem myself is that I have nothing with which to pay. I can’t give my life to God in exchange for anything because it has been His life all along. He just wants to see how I handle it.

That’s a scary thought.

On the other hand, it is kind of freeing, as the Psalmist says, to just quit trying to ransom myself. I don’t have anything and never will have anything except that which is the Lord’s. Give it up forever. Not being the owner frees me from the delusions and bondages of wealth and possessions. Being the responsible manager keeps me from being complacent. It almost sounds like God has this figured out.