Parable Ethics?
And his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. Luke 16:8 NASB
Shrewdly – This has to be one of the strangest of all parables. Is Yeshua really praising a man who deliberately takes advantage of his position in order to protect himself when he will be fired? Is Yeshua saying that it’s acceptable, in fact even praiseworthy, to shirk your responsibilities if you can get away with it? Here’s a servant who knows he is going to be dismissed for mismanagement, so he goes out and cuts deals at his master’s expense in order to ingratiate himself to debtors. Why? So they will give him a break when he no longer has employment. If you were his boss, how would you respond? I doubt you would praise the man. You’d probably haul him into court and see that he was sentenced for financial malfeasance. You’d certainly demand repayment of all the debt owed. But what does Yeshua conclude in this little story? Something like this: “What amazing ingenuity you have shown! I applaud you. Congratulations!”
Can that be?!
Before you run out and proclaim that the Messiah likes con-men, we need to unravel this a bit. Let’s start with epoiesen (shrewdly), the active, aorist tense of the verb poiéō. The tense tells us that the action is complete. It’s what the man did, not what he will continue to do. The verb also has a nice range of meanings encapsulated in the concept of creative activity. This is not just performing a routine task, completing an assignment or getting the job done. This is brilliance manifested. In fact, the verb is typically used in the LXX for God’s acts of creation. In the apostolic writings, it is employed to describe “God’s judicial and more often his redemptive activity.”[1] What’s praised is the inventiveness, the acuity of the servant, not his cunning circumlocution of responsibility. In fact, the parable doesn’t suggest that he is forgiven his malfeasance. It only focuses on the creativeness of his solution. It does not endorse the ethics.
If this is the case, then why did Yeshua tell us this little story? Notice the purpose of the parable. It is a parable of comparison. Yeshua’s point is that men who are savvy about the ways of the world often show greater imaginative execution than those who are concerned about following God. Yeshua uses this man’s unconventional action to highlight the necessity for thinking outside the box when it comes to Kingdom work. We who embrace Torah, who ascribe to the halacha of the Messiah, too often avoid creative implementation because we think inside the rules. We forget that the rules are only protective boundary fences. They are there to keep us from wandering outside. They are not intended to restrict movement inside the fence. If we are going to be full followers of the King, we’ll have to have a little epoiesen in our arsenal.
Where are you exhibiting creative brilliance today?
Topical Index: epoiesen, poiéō, shrewd, creative, Luke 16:8
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). poiéō, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (896). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
Good morning. Are we still open to suggestions?
Being a parable, this story is about teaching something (or making a point), which is stated using characters that represent somebody else…
Who does the master represent? Who does the unrighteous manager represent? The answers to these questions are the key to understand what Yeshua’s point is.
I suggest that the master in this story represents God, and the unrighteous manager represents a man in a certain situation in his life. This man is a rich man that has lived a good life on his own. Suddenly he realizes that he is about to die. (In the story, the unrighteous manager is about to loose his job…)
So what does this man do, when he finds out that his time is up in this life? Well, he begins to do charity with all the wealth that he has, finally understanding that this wealth is not his own, since God is the real owner of everything he has. (The unrighteous manager clearly knows that he has been managing his master’s wealth)
So with that charity that is done with God’s wealth, this man does justice to his peers, giving them what they have lacked all their life.
In other words, this man, who is about to die, acted shrewdly by doing what Yeshua taught us in Mathew 6:19-24:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy [a], your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy [b], your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
footnotes in NIV
[a] Matthew 6:22 The Greek for healthy here implies generous.
[b] Matthew 6:23 The Greek for unhealthy here implies stingy.
Shalom!
I have been outside the box called church for decades. It was circumstantial necessity, among other things, and that is not important, but I was reminded yesterday of a few things I had forgotten. A precious person in my life, who was born and bred in legalism (and has since left the church) set about telling me, with perfect sense of ‘righteousness’, what I should do about a situation I have with other precious people in my life; “for their own good”, and how awful I am for ‘allowing’ such terribleness, etc. I was reminded of the narrow box I had left behind, where, if everything broken does not strive to look good on the surface to everybody else, then there is no mercy. How DARE that brokenness hang all out there and get in the way of others???
I was reminded that, for the heathen, the ends justify the means, but for legalists, the ends also justify the means. I was reminded of just how mean and sanctimonious that can get. I replied that all that was required is that I do right and make good choices and stay in relationship, and others then are free to learn their lessons and make their OWN choices. Freedom. If we are not walking in it, and allowing those around us to walk in it, too, then we have not been set free by the Son.
Love looks different in EVERY situation, for love honors the uniqueness of each of us. The application of righteousness that worked for you may not work for me at all. Love meets others where they are at; it does not require others to meet it where it is at. Love is free to contaminate itself down in the ditches of life, and get creative about exactly how it helps others, too. Again, I was reminded of one of the most colorful characters I have ever met, which I told the story of on TW a while back, but whose story bears repeating. She was an old ‘carny’; a retired circus person, who collected the refuse of the world. Her back yard was full of scrappy cages made out of rusty chicken wire, etc, in which resided animals others had thrown away: the lions and tigers who went berserk or were injured; the wolves no one could tame, etc. and the trees over her property contained thousands of vultures who loved her because she gave them food every day. They would come sit on her shoulders and eat out of her hand, and no animal EVER tried to escape.
Helen also ran an old run down diner of sorts, where there was no menu (I was blessed to eat there one day) and which contained one big soup pot (which contained what you did not ask) but she fed the homeless and rejected of south Augusta. For years, half the aldermen of Augusta had tried to persecute her out of town in various ways, with the other half just as avid in her defense. They told her she had to get rid of the vultures. I won’t repeat what she told them about that. They told her the cages she had for the animals were not strong enough; she told them that if, by chance any of them ever did get out, they would kill themselves with insecurity trying to get back in. They tried to get her diner shut down by giving her a list of rules that other diners had to go by. Chief among them was that she had to price the food the same for everybody. Her policy was, she charged you what she thought you could pay. They told her she had to print a menu and comply with other regs, and that she had to change the name of her diner out on the sign in front, too. I won’t repeat what she told them about those absurd impossibilities, either.
Now, Helen cussed like a sailor. Every other word was blue. The first time my mother talked to her on the phone (we bought animals from her for the zoo we worked at) she asked her name “My name’s Hel” she said. My mother was shocked. She said “I don’t think I can call you that; what is your full name?” “Helen (da-) McKinney”, she replied, “but everybody just calls me Hell”. What was the name of her diner? “Hel’s Kitchen” , of course (for real, ya’ll). Mama asked her one time why she cussed so much. Helen replied it was because the broken people she talked to all day would not understand her if she didn’t. Helen broke all the rules, and her stated principle was to “love the unlovable”. Her methods were totally her own. I still feel she is the closest thing I have ever met on this earth to what Jesus Christ must be. I have a ways to go.
That is wonderful Laurita, I know a couple of her relatives , Our friend ____ who no longer lives in this community was, is much the same way. He was constantly giving. When we moved here four years ago we were invited to the monthly dinner at the community center, it is a social snooty club! ____ would never attend we found out later. But during that first week and our first dinner everyone was outwardly very nice and cordial. As we left after the dinner we began to walk home a 3 block distance, up pulls ____ in his golf cart. “Hop in” he says ” I will give you both a ride home” and then begins a friendship that has been tested again and again. Several trips to the ER and one flat line with him has kept us close, He is shunned by most yet is the closest friend we have found in our four years here. Joy and a deep appreciation for each other has kept us close.
Sounds like Hel found a unique way to walk this rough and broken road back home. Was she serene, at peace?
Confident. She was a pistol because she was fighting at all times on so many fronts, but the fight was to be left alone to love her way. She was at peace with herself, to answer your question, which I am sure was what was producing the confidence. The world was knocking itself out on her because their peace was what was being disturbed. Some of the fights were beyond amusing. You seriously can’t make this stuff up. By the time I knew her she was quite old; the fights had been going on for decades, but nothing had been able to budge her as much as an inch. If peace is what you would call being successful at holding your ground, then I would say she had it in spades. She had a knack at turning the Sadducees loose on the Pharisees while she just went on her (peaceful?) way.
I sure didn’t want to fight her. We rented a couple of her wild vultures for a photo shoot with the state when the speed limit turned to 55. The state of Georgia wanted vultures sitting on their speed limit sign. She caught them for us, but warned us that if we did not return them unharmed to their home in her backyard we were going to regret it. By the time they had thrown up on their handlers a couple of times (foulest stuff on the planet) the temptation to just turn them loose was really high, but she got her vultures back. I wanted to keep the peace with Helen because I didn’t even want to know what the alternative was!
I have counseled a younger man off and on who lead me into a deeper understanding of walking with Messiah. He was raised outside of a religious home while I was raised within one. He grew up in a world I spent my youth denying existed. I was wrong; waking up has been painfully to say the lest. He provided a prayer used in the recovery movment. I had known the first verse of the Catholic Stoic Reinhold Neibuhr. It was the fourth that woke me to a perspective of our Lord underlined in this discussion. “Let me take, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is not as I would have it be.” That I think is the point the Master was making in his parable. Dealing with the way things actually are not the way things aught to be is the only road to real life. How we walk that road is our choice; blindly, knowingly, shrewdly, courageously? The only true Judge of our ways is Messiah Yeshua. It’s good to know he gets how hard our choices can be some times. He is telling us , here I belive, he has available for us when needed ” the grace to accept with serenity the things we can not change, the courage to change the things we should change and the wisdom and understanding of the difference.”
Yeshua’s admonishon in the context seems somewhat enigmatic. “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 ESV Yeshua goes on at the end of the pericope to castigate the Pharisees for disregarding Torah by justifying themselves. A lot to unpack here.
What does “unrighteous wealth” means to God? That is a good question. The answer is scattered thought out the whole Bible. Pieces here, pieces there… Once you get it, it fits perfectly with this parable.
Reading the rest of the parable it almost reads as if this was said to teach others to be truthful in whatever ones responsibilities are. When you can be trusted in the lesser it is easier to trust you with more.
Aligning this to the shrewdness one could also deduce that if the position requires one to be shrewd one will be applauded for shrewdness. The outcome justifies the means attitude..
Then the warning is provided by Yeshua. Those we try to impress we should seek our rewards from them…
Is this linked to the OT record saying do not trust on the arm of the flesh…
Love love love this! One of my favorites Skip!
Cheryl
Just to throw this out there for context: “Sons of light” is a reference to the Essene community. This is how they identified themselves (in their writings) against the rest of Israel. The “Sons of light” represent the Essene community, and the “Sons of darkness” represent the rest of Israel.