The parable of a dishonest steward

Today’s gospel reading is yet another parable. As you know, our Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples through such stories in order for them (I guess this also includes us) to understand the message that God wants us to get, after all teaching people about faith brings about questions that are not easy to answer. Today we learn about the Parable of the Dishonest Servant and you can find it in your Bibles in Luke 16: 1-13.

1 [Jesus] said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. 2 He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship because you can no longer be my steward.’ 3 The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’

5 He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil,’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ 7 Then to another he said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, “One hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Here’s your promissory note; write one for eighty.’ 8 And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.

“For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9 I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. 10 The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.”

11 “If therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? 12 If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? 13 No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

I’m sure that you can find many parallels of this parable in today’s hectic world despite its being given to us more than 2,000 years ago. Here is a man who just got the axe, fired by his boss because the latter heard about his dishonesty. Knowing that his master would fired him, the dishonest steward quickly calls on the debtors whom he extracted highly-usurious commissions for himself and have them rewrite a promissory note that perhaps reflected what would be closer to what the steward’s boss wanted to earn for his money or produce. For this act of “returning” back his illegal commissions or profit, the master commended this dishonest steward for his prudence.

No one will argue that people who cannot be trusted with small items could never be trusted with big sums. More so can such people be trusted with large sums of money by anyone. This is what a man’s character can often reveal. But how does one really find out whether a man can be trusted or not? For me, a good example is a game of golf because it can reveal one’s character. I have played with so many golfers in the past; you can really tell what a man is made of by simply playing a round of golf with that person. This is because golf is known as a gentleman’s game and believe me, nowadays finding gentlemen golfers are a rarity.

The last paragraph of today’s Gospel is quite interesting when our Lord Jesus said, “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” This is quite true in many ways. For instance when one is a member of a particular organization or club, he can truly focus on its activities and achieve a lot. But when he joins another group or club you can bet that his attention will be divided and then someday he would be asked to decide which of the two groups is of higher priority to him?

By now, all Catholics should know that we serve a jealous god and when we develop a personal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ he want your love to be focused on him alone, even if the Lord doesn’t force this love on you. That means our love for Jesus should be prioritized even by your love of your parents, your wife or your children in the same manner, God expects them to also do the same.

However in our human frailty, we often trade our love of God for our love of material things. This is the danger when we adore false and temporary idols. Lest you have forgotten the most first of all commandments is for us to Love God with all our hearts, our soul and all our strength!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.