A eulogy to creative accounting?
 

“1 Jesus also told his disciples: ‘A rich man had a steward. He was accused before the man of squandering his wealth. 2 So he called him in and said to him: “What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be my steward.’ 3 The steward thought to himself, ‘What shall I do now that my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough for hard labour, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I know what I will do, so that people will welcome me into their homes when I am removed from my position as steward.’ 5 And he summoned his master’s debtors, one by one, and asked the first: ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He replied: ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ Then he said to him: ‘Take your debt note, sit down quickly and write fifty!’ 7 Then he asked another: ‘How much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred bushels of wheat.’ Then he said to him, ‘Take your debt note and write eighty!’ 8 And the Lord commended the dishonest steward for acting shrewdly, saying, ‘The children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.’
 

The Word of Christ Foundation aims to spread the message of Jesus Christ, that is, the Christian Gospel, by making the Good News accessible to a wide audience via the internet. Yes, Jesus proclaims a Good News. But this message is not always smooth and easy to grasp. It is not uncommon for Jesus to resort to provocative statements to shake up his listeners.

One example of this is the parable of the shrewd steward in Luke 16:1–8. Perhaps it would be better called the parable of the unjust steward. What the main character in the story does is more than just irritating; it is outrageous – and this remains true not only on first reading, but also upon repeated readings. The steward’s actions – arbitrarily reducing the debts people owe his master in order to ingratiate himself with them – are nothing short of fraud for his own gain. His ‘creative accounting’ is all the worse because he had evidently not been particularly scrupulous with his master’s entrusted wealth even before this (vv. 1–2). Viewed in the context of law and order, the whole thing is simply criminal. Full stop.

But why on earth does it say at the end: ‘And the master – meaning Jesus – praised the dishonest steward because he had acted shrewdly’? By ‘shrewdness’ surely only his cunning criminal energy can be meant. The subsequent explanation doesn’t make things any better: “The children of this world are wiser in dealing with their own kind than the children of light.” Such a statement would likely appeal to members of mafia clans! It reminds me of a book by Ulrich Wickert: “The Honest Man is the Fool”.

What, nevertheless, can be gleaned from this provocative parable?

First, I must take a good look at myself: when major fraud cases are uncovered (e.g. the Wirecard scandal), I get just as worked up as the majority of society about the brazen machinations of the perpetrators. But what about myself? Surely I, too, have occasionally taken office supplies for personal use, embellished receipts on my tax return, and so on – always with a justifying excuse. Does someone who isn’t so strict about the small things have the right to judge the big fraudsters?

Back to the text. Jesus provokes by acknowledging behaviour that is legally and morally incorrect. In view of this, the majority of exegetes reduce Jesus’ intended message to a single ‘crucial point’ on which it all hinges: the spontaneous, decisive action taken in an existential decision-making situation. Jesus does not tell the story with a view to honesty versus criminal cunning, let alone advocate the latter; rather, he emphasises solely this aspect: at the decisive moment, one must act decisively. Since all of Jesus’ preaching revolves around the imminent Kingdom of God, this means: in the face of the Kingdom of God, one must seize its presence wisely and consistently, even if this requires unconventional means. The radical nature of the story serves only to emphasise this aspect of the message.

Is it permissible to interpret this beyond this reduced interpretation? The steward’s cheating is an offence against his master, no question. On the other hand, however, the steward appears as a generous benefactor towards the debtors. Should they have been in financial straits, they would have perceived his estate as an act of mercy and accepted it gratefully. Admittedly, the fact that he acts out of self-interest (v. 4) also speaks against him in this regard; nevertheless, the beneficiaries experience his actions as benevolent giving. I do not go as far as earlier materialistic interpretations of the Bible, which saw the rich master as a capitalist, and regarded taking his money away and giving it to the poor debtors as merely a just redistribution from top to bottom. But the parable is about loving action (albeit tainted by selfishness), for which a breach of the law is accepted. ‘Love sometimes takes precedence over justice’ is how one might describe this prioritisation.

And yet there remains a sense of unease with this difficult parable of Jesus. The word of Christ is often difficult to grasp, and that is a good thing.

Gerhard Hotze