Luke Chapter 16: This Week In God's Word
The Unjust Steward
Jesus told this story to his disciples: "A rich man hired a
manager to handle his affairs, but soon a rumor went around that
the manager was thoroughly dishonest. So his employer called him
in and said, 'What's this I hear about your stealing from me?
Get your report in order, because you are going to be
dismissed.' "The manager thought to himself, 'Now what? I'm
through here, and I don't have the strength to go out and dig
ditches, and I'm too proud to beg. I know just the thing! And
then I'll have plenty of friends to take care of me when I
leave!' "So he invited each person who owed money to his
employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first
one, 'How much do you owe him?' The man replied, 'I owe him
eight hundred gallons of olive oil.' So the manager told him,
'Tear up that bill and write another one for four hundred
gallons.' "'And how much do you owe my employer?' he asked the
next man. 'A thousand bushels of wheat,' was the reply. 'Here,'
the manager said, 'take your bill and replace it with one for
only eight hundred bushels.' "The rich man had to admire the
dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the
citizens of this world are more shrewd than the godly are. I
tell you, use your worldly resources to benefit others and make
friends. In this way, your generosity stores up a reward for you
in heaven. "Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won't
be faithful in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won't
be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are
untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the
true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other
people's money, why should you be trusted with money of your
own? "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and
love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You
cannot serve both God and money." —Luke Chapter 16 (NLT)
This parable has been interpreted several ways. As I see it,
this is a story about a crook, a servant of a rich man, just as
pastors and leaders are servants of God. This man had apparently
been unfair or unreasonable in his business practices, which
reflected poorly on his Master. He also may have been
overcharging or otherwise taking advantage of the people his
Master did business with. Now about to be held to account, the
manager went around cutting deals with all of the Master’s
debtors in the hopes of finding favor with these people once the
Master cut him loose. While Jesus seems to commend the manager’s
shrewdness, the point He is making is that none of us can serve
both God and money (hence the reasonable conclusion that, in
this example, the Master is God).
Money is transactional. In and of itself, it’s just stacks of
paper. What gives money authority in our lives is not the money
itself but the things we can do with it. Money allows us to go
into fine stores and walk out with merchandise. Money affords us
the right to sit in fine restaurants and linger over coffee
while some goof plays the piano. Without money, we’re living in
a Maytag box. Without money, no matter how big our heart is for
the work of the Lord, we cannot help anybody do anything. But
money is a means to an end. I’ve never understood people who
worship money, who horde money, who make money—not even the
things money can buy but money itself—a god in their lives.
Beyond that, I’ve never understood people, Christians most
especially, who demean, diminish, and take advantage of others
just to save a nickel. This behavior, by any objective standard,
is evil.
There’s nothing wrong with having money. There’s nothing wrong
in focusing on money, if the focus is about pleasing God and
serving God and you are focusing on money transactionally, as
in, caring for yourself and your family. The lesson of the
manna, rained daily upon the children of Israel as they wandered
40 years in the desert, was that we should depend on God, not
material things or cash we’ve stored up somewhere. Making an
idol of money is blasphemy. Being cheap takes the goodness and
love of Christ out of what you are doing as cheapness is a
capitulation to money not as transactional but as an object.
Frugal Christians want to stretch their dollar to accomplish
even more for the Lord. Cheap Christians get a rush out of
cheating people and being less than honorable or fair in their
dealings, which dishonors God. Being frugal makes a virtue of
wisdom. Being cheap makes a god of money. Just like gambling,
frugality can evolve into cheapness. It’s the same endorphin
rush, winning at the craps table or lowballing a vendor or
worker. Yes! High five! You got over. I’ve experienced this
many, many times: churches with hundreds of thousands even a
couple churches I’ve dealt with who have *millions* of dollars
in the bank, who nonetheless lowball and take advantage of me
every chance they get. This, to these demented, lost people, is
“serving the Lord.”
Write this down someplace: God Is Not Cheap. Being cheap is not
a quality or virtue of God. Allowing people to suffer just so
you can save a buck makes you a scumbag. Churches maintaining a
reasonable reserve for their expenses is the responsible thing
to do. Churches hording money just so they can brag about it are
antichrist. The Holy Spirit does not lead us to be cheap,
unreasonable, and certainly to not horde cash or take advantage
of people.
God Is Not Cheap: Psalm 10: “The wicked boasts of his heart’s desire; he blesses the greedy, and renounces the Lord.” Psalm 112: “A good man deals graciously and lends, he will guide his affairs with discretion.”
Frugal Versus Cheap
As pastors, as leaders, it is our duty to be responsible, even
frugal. There’s no sin in that. Being frugal is a virtue. It is
wisdom and it honors God to be a good steward of His resources.
Being cheap is sin. It makes an idol of money and it demeans the
value of people by always trying to get over and take advantage
of them. As Christians, we are to operate within God’s will and
in the spirit of excellence, which creates obligations between
us. Where Jesus speaks of a workman being worthy of his hire in
Matthew 10, He’s not talking about paying people. He’s talking
about paying people what they’re worth. He’s talking about
valuing people and honoring their investment in you.
Frugality empowers, cheapness demeans. Your frugality reveals
intellect and wisdom. Cheapness reveals ignorance and a lack of
character. You wear it like cheap cologne. Cheap cologne stinks.
And it lingers in places you’ve been such that, long after
you’ve actually left the building, your cheapness is still
stinking up the place. Frugality evaluates real costs versus
real work and comes up with a value. Cheap people don’t do the
math. They are playing a game, and their objective is to win the
game through lies and distortions, emotionally blackmailing
people just so they can later high-five their buddies while
bragging about how cheap they got this product or service. Cheap
people are wholly unconcerned with the struggle of people they
are routinely exploiting by underpaying. Usually, people who
agree to work well below their actual worth do so either out of
moral or religious obligation or out of severe need. Cheap
people exploit such workers and have absolutely no conscience
about the struggle these people endure as a result of being
consistently undervalued by alleged “Christians.” Cheap people
are usually thoughtless and never even consider giving out a
bonus or raising a rate without having to be asked or forced or
negotiated into doing so.
Smart business people lock in talent. Talent may start at a flat
or low rate, but once they’ve proven their value and earned
trust, they gradually build a relationship with the client. The
smart client will then provide increasing incentives and reward
the vendor’s diligence even as the vendor tends to throw the
client perks and freebies along the way as such things become
available to him. This is how healthy business relationships
work. There’s a lunch. Routine check-ins. How’s the kids? And
both vendor and client occasionally over-perform for one another
as the relationship grows.
Cheap people are just cheap. They do not extend themselves and
they lord it over whomever they are nickel-and-diming. Christian
business should be conducted from a standpoint of need: let’s
sit together, pray, and evaluate one another’s needs. In my
experience, specifically if not exclusively within the black
church, the overwhelming majority of black pastors I’ve dealt
with are cheap. Their cheapness demeans me as a person and
devalues my calling and my ministry. A Christian negotiation is
like, “I have this need, can you help?” What I hear, routinely,
from these guys is, “I’ve got a nickel. A shiny, new nickel.
What can I get for my nickel?!? I paid you a nickel… where’s my
stuff?!?” This is not Kingdom thinking.
Honesty Is An Expensive Gift: Don't Expect It From Cheap People
Right There, In His Pocket
There once was this pastor who, as these pastors do, waited
until the very last minute to contact me and needed a rush job,
then insisted he could only pay me a nickel. I quoted him half
my rate, and he was adamant that his budget would only allow him
to pay me half that and he needed the work immediately: drop
whatever else you’re doing and jump on my thing and I can only
pay you a nickel and I’ll have to send you a check for the
nickel whenever I get around to it. This is the mentality of
these people. And when I agreed to help, I did it out of love.
But I insisted I be paid on delivery, because I knew, from past
experience, that I’d have to chase this guy for the check. That
he would pay me only a fraction of what I was worth, and I’d
have to spend additional time and resources dialing and calling
and going down to his church and threatening to embarrass him
before he’d actually pay me anything at all.
When I went to meet him, he was a half-hour late. He pulled up
in his luxury SUV and scowled at me, fuming, barely speaking a
word. I had his job on my thumb drive, but the pastor’s PC, in
his office, was so old it didn’t have a USB port. So I had to
leave and go find a PC to burn a disc and come back. Then I had
to sit there and watch this mope write a check. For a nickel.
Cheap. He had the money. I knew this guy. I knew he had the
money to pay me, the money to buy the church a new PC, in his
pocket. Crisp 100’s, folded right next to his Platinum American
Express card. But he’s crying broke. “The church budget this,
the church budget that.” And he’d use the church budget as
justification to exploit me.
These people are liars and phonies and slaves to money, and they
assume everyone else they meet are liars and phonies and slaves
to money, and that’s the story this pastor told, after he hustled me into dropping everything
on a moment's notice to do his rush job for one-quarter of my usual rate: Don’t use
Priest because he made me come down here and write a check
before he gave me my stuff. All Priest thinks about is money.
That’s the story he told. And I’m glad he told it. I hope he put
a good warning out on the street to all the rest of these cheap, phony bastards out
here running their “pastor” hustle. Don’t bother
calling me. If you’re stupid enough to believe that story, you
deserve to be lied to.
This is not how Christians are supposed to work with one
another. Our basis for negotiating should be need: we should
evaluate one another’s needs, with both parties committing to
their best, in the fear of God, to meet those needs. If I work
for you, you have an obligation under God to see to my needs
[Matt 10]. Not scam me for a nickel, but pay me what I am worth.
If a nickel is, prayerfully and truthfully, all you can afford,
it is my obligation to help you regardless of your ability to
pay. But don’t pull up, blinging in pimp jewelry, in your
$80,000 Lexus truck, and cry broke.
If you have no love for me, if you have no respect for me as a
human being, as a brother, you are not a Christian. Whatever it
is you think of yourself is just a lie, maybe one you are
telling yourself. Regardless of your title or position, without
love, you do not belong to Jesus Christ [I Corinthians 13].
The Reality of Creative Services: working in excellence is costly and time-consuming.
Love Invoice
You can demand money from somebody, but, unfortunately, you
cannot demand love. Which is a shame: I mean, what if we could
demand love from one another? Issue a Love Invoice of some kind?
Respect is a component of love. If you don’t respect someone, it
is impossible for you to truly love them. I’m not saying respect
what they do—honor the drug addict’s disease. I’m saying value
that drug addict’s humanity. Without your respect, your
friendship is absolutely meaningless. Without love, you’re just
a liar and a phony.
We need to take better care of each other. We need to check on
one another, just to see how we’re doing. Our business
relationships should be conducted in the fear and reverence of
God, Who demands that we love one another and that we see to
each other’s needs. We should negotiate from that biblical
position: what are your needs, what are my needs, how can he
help one another? Whenever this formula is corrupted by the
grossness of the world’s bondage to money, it is, by definition,
an antichrist relationship. If you’re working for a church or a
pastor or a Christian and you’re feeling taken advantage of and
stepped on, if you have no relationship with these people but
are treated only as a hireling rather than a brother, if they
are underpaying and undervaluing you, you need to get out. There
are plenty of secular opportunities out there for you to be
exploited, you shouldn’t be exploited by people who claim to
follow Christ.
Christopher J. Priest
16 September 2012
editor@praisenet.org
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