… So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' He said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.'
Luke 16:1-7
The parable of the dishonest manager is probably the most misunderstood of Jesus’ parables because our assumptions about the way business should be conducted are different today. We tend to make three mistakes: the manager was called dishonest because he wasted his master’s goods; reducing the debts owed to his master was dishonest; Jesus commended the manager’s dishonesty as shrewdness.
The manager may have been underhand in wasting his master’s goods but this was not why Jesus called him dishonest. Crucially, the manager is not accused of theft, fraud or any ‘serious’ dishonesty: if he had been, his master would not have told him to make up the accounts but put him in prison until everything was repaid! As the accusation can also be translated as ‘squandering’, I expect he was at fault for commonplace slacking and pilfering.
The manager was not dishonest for reducing the debts owed to his master because it was within his delegated authority to do it. Moreover, it was the morally right thing to do. The debtors were probably the master’s tenants who owed rent, although they may have been customers who owed payment for goods. The manager was responsible for the master’s business and, consequently, he was responsible for the welfare of not just the tenants and others who did business with his master but also their families. Making the reductions was therefore the responsible social action: the rich creditor who did not need the money reduced the amounts owed by poor people who did.
The manager was dishonest because he reduced the debts for his own selfish ends. He did it in order to secure his own future, not because he cared about the welfare of the debtors. Today, if a bank executive wrote off a debt on compassionate grounds we would think it a legitimate use of the executive’s discretion. If, however, we later learn that the executive expected a personal favour in return, we would quickly change our minds and question the executive’s integrity. Or would we?
Would the manager be considered dishonest or shrewd where you work? Is there a case for saying that he shrewdly but legitimately leveraged his position? After all, his master lost nothing because the debts could not be repaid in any event and the debtors gained because their future obligation to the manager would be less than the cancelled debts.
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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