RealityRevision

McLaren's synthesis of "The Parable of the Unjust Steward"

I thought this was quite good.  I was never really sure what to do with this parable, exactly.  I had heard explanations and this one seems to  sit the best with Jesus' overall teachings.

If you have any thoughts or want to write on how you understand this parable, please do.  Parables are incredible things and there is no one right way to understand one.

This is an excerpt from: "Everything must Change" -Brain McLaren (pages: 239 - 240)

Something similar occurs in Luke 16, which we considered briefly in Chapter 16. My old King James Bible inserted a title for the parable there: “The Parable of the Unjust Steward,” but the word “unjust” revealed more about the presumptions of the editor than about the teaching of Jesus. Again, Jesus uses the common economic situation in Galilee, where Roman taxes forced many small farmers to sell their land to rich landowners, reducing them to the status of tenant farmers. Landowners would frequently hire managers, or stewards, to be the middle-men, demanding a portion of crops from all the tenant farmers and saving the landowner from this unpleasant task.

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The manager in Jesus’ story has been accused of poor management and waste, so the landowner demands an account. Jesus conveys the man’s inner dialogue: “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg – I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.” He goes to all the tenant farmers and cuts their debts: a debt of nine hundred gallons of olive oil is reduced by half, a debt of a thousand bushels of wheat is reduced to eight hundred.

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To modern readers, this move sounds like injustice. But Jesus sees the entire system as unjust, and so in his story, the man isn’t condemned for malfeasance. By reducing an unfair debt that would further advantage the rich and further oppress the poor, the steward is actually decreasing injustice, so he is praised for being shrewd. In essence, he has defected from the systemic injustice of the dominant system and has switched sides, seeking to help the poor instead of seeking to help the rich. Jesus follows up the parable with words we’ve already heard from him: “No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve both God and Money.” Interestingly, Luke offers this epilogue to the encounter: “The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.” Obviously, they like the current system and see no injustice in it: it is “working” for them in a way it isn’t “working” for the tenant farmers. But Jesus tells them their concept of justice is skewed: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”

If you would like to continue reading more, the previous article is called LOVE, the next article is called The Egypt of the Mind.