Reconstructing The Parable Of The Shrewd Manager, Part 4: The Gospel Genre

Today’s post will briefly explore the genre of the Gospels and attempt to identify any characteristics of these writings that might influence our understanding of our chosen parable.

As you know, there are four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Of these four Gospels only Luke includes the parable of the shrewd manager. As I discussed yesterday, there is likely a significant reason why a Gentile, writing to other Gentiles, would choose to include this parable in his version of the Gospel.

Some people may bristle at the idea that human authors were selective in the material they presented, but as Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart point out in their exception book How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth, the stories and sayings of Jesus were handed down orally for at least thirty years before the Gospels were written. By this point in history distinct Christian people-groups existed as audiences to the life of Jesus, each with its own needs; Luke wrote his Gospel differently (under the guidance and influence of the Holy Spirit) to effectively reach his unique audiences.

Knowing this, let’s ask ourselves once again: Why would Luke, a Gentile convert writing to other Gentile converts, be the only person to include this parable in his recording of Jesus’ life? For a clue, let’s look at a list of the other parables which appear only in the Gospel of Luke:

• Moneylender (12:35-40)
• Good Samaritan (10:30-37)
• Friend in need (11:5-8)
• Rich fool (12:16-21)
• Unfruitful fig tree (13:6-9)
• Lower seat in the feast (14:7-14)
• Great banquet (14:16-24)
• Cost of discipleship (14:28-33)
• Lost coin (15:8-10)
• Prodigal son (15:11-32)
• Rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31)
• Master and his servant (17:7-10)
• Persistent widow (18:2-8)
• Pharisee and tax collector (18:10-14)

Well I don’t know about you, but that list doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t see anything that helps me understand the parable of the shrewd manager…but that doesn’t mean it’s not there, so let’s keep this in the back of our minds: Luke included this parable for a reason when no-one else did.

There’s one last point I’d like to consider. Fee and Stuart discuss the fact that many of Jesus’ sayings in the Gospels are not recorded in their original context. Rather, the authors (under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) created contextual storylines for the purpose of including the parables. In other words, the context of the shrewd manager was probably created by Luke to facilitate our understanding of the story. Obviously Luke (and the Holy Spirit) felt the created context was close enough to the original context to convey Jesus’ intended meaning. Our challenge is to delineate between the created context and the purpose for which the context was created. Yesterday one of our readers (Mary) noted that this parable follows on the heels of the Prodigal Son story, and that both parables shared similarities. It is very likely that Luke grouped these two parables because they do share topical similarities.

Questions:

1. Are there any important aspects of the Gospel genre that I missed?
2. Do you see anything in the list of parables above that might help us understand the parable of the shrewd manager?
3. Is there anything about the context of our parable that can help us understand its meaning? What similarities do the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Shrewd Manager share?

Putting On The Yoke Of Jesus

In my last post I tried to describe the difference between Jesus’ yoke as noted in Matthew 11:30, and the yoke of expected performance the Church places on us. In response, a reader posed the following question: “What do I do now?”

To answer that excellent question, let me refer to the concluding lines of my last post:

In context, then, I believe verses 1-27 of chapter 11 provide justification for why we follow Jesus: He is the Son of God. Furthermore, I believe chapter 12 tells us about following Jesus: He lives only to fulfill the expectations of His heavenly Father, not priests, pastors, legalism, culture, or His biological family.

I believe Jesus wants people to serve the Father, not culture (no, not even ‘Christian culture’).

I believe Jesus wants people to worship the Creator, not the creation.

I believe Jesus desperately desires for people to see with absolute clarity the difference between Truth and Idolatry.

So what does this mean? What should you do? Here are ten ideas:

1. Make up your mind to serve God, not the Church
2. Be prepared to serve God more often Monday through Saturday than on Sunday morning
3. Consider whether you use the Church to make yourself feel better
4. Consider whether the Church is the most important thing in your life
5. Remember that the Church was made for man, not man for the Church
6. Ask yourself if you are often forced to choose between doing what’s best for people and doing what’s best for the Church
7. Remember that Jesus is in heaven and all the Apostles are dead; your pastor’s name is not in the Bible
8. Make a list of the rules and cultural expectations of your Church that have more to do with where you were born than what’s in the Bible
9. Quit serving at your Church if you’re doing it because you think you ‘have to’ or because a member of the Church staff pressured you
10. Take responsibility for your relationship with Jesus Christ; quit forcing your pastor to spoon-feed you every Sunday morning

His Yoke Is Easy!

I hope the sense of irony in yesterday’s post was not lost on you. I believe there is an absolute (though not always easily discernible) difference between the yoke of oppression the Church lays on us and the yoke of Jesus Christ. Compare the list of Church and cultural expectations I published yesterday (40 items) to Jesus’ two expectations: Love God, love people.

I believe Jesus’ yoke is easy; I know His burden is light. In my recovery from pornography addiction I have personally experienced the unbelievably, extraordinarily, miraculously easy burden of Jesus Christ. It is a freedom and a lightness I never dreamed existed.

I believe the Church wrongfully exchanges the burden of Christ with its own arduous yoke, and that many an unsuspecting Christian now lies prostrate on the floor of the Temple, crushed under the weight of Holy Expectations.

The phrase “My yoke is easy” comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 11, verse 30. To try to understand what Jesus meant by these words let’s analyze His statement in context:

• Chapter 11 opens with Jesus preaching in Galilee. John the Baptist is in prison, and he sends his followers to ask Jesus to confirm or deny that he is the Messiah. Jesus confirms to the crowd that John is a messenger sent from God and that John’s purpose was to announce Jesus’ coming
• Jesus answers John’s followers’ challenge by asking them to observe the miracles He performs and the fact that “the good news is proclaimed to the poor”
• Jesus goes on to chastise those who fail to believe in Him despite His miracles
• Finally, Jesus prays to the Father and confirms His own identity as the Father’s Son, and concludes with the text we are analyzing: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

This closes chapter 11…but let’s not stop our analysis there:

• Chapter 12 opens with Jesus challenging the Pharisees on the laws of the Sabbath
• The chapter goes on to deal with additional conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees over the legalistic expectations of the priesthood, as well as the spiritual expectations of His mother and brothers (“whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother”)

Thus we see that the closing remarks of Chapter 11 (our primary text) set up Chapter 12 beautifully!

In context, then, I believe verses 1-27 of chapter 11 provide justification for why we follow Jesus: He is the Son of God. Furthermore, I believe chapter 12 tells us about following Jesus: He lives only to fulfill the expectations of His heavenly Father, not priests, pastors, legalism, culture, or His biological family.

I believe Jesus wants people to serve the Father, not culture (no, not even ‘Christian culture’).

I believe Jesus wants people to worship the Creator, not the creation.

I believe Jesus desperately desires for people to see with absolute clarity the difference between Truth and Idolatry.

Yes, His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

If His Yoke Is Easy…

If Jesus’ yoke is easy, and if His burden is light (Matthew 11:30), why am I so damn tired?

• Read the Bible (“…here’s a reading plan!”).
• Pray (“…for at least 15 minutes!”).
• Confess my sins.
• Go to church on Sunday…and sometimes on Wednesday nights.
• Dress to impress.
• Watch my language.
• Watch my thoughts.
• Give the pastor an “Amen!” every time he asks for one.
• Try to follow the pastor through yet another labyrinthine sermon.
• Try to sit through the worship team’s ‘stirring rendition’ of a Chris Tomlin song.
• Follow the pastor on Twitter.
• ‘Like’ the church on Facebook.
• Read the pastor’s blog.
• Volunteer at church.
• Tithe to the church.
• Give to the children’s ministry.
• Give to the youth ministry.
• Give to the women’s ministry.
• Give to the men’s ministry.
• Give to special collections.
• Sign up for special volunteer events.
• Join a prayer group.
• Lead a bible study group.
• Join a marriage encounter group.
• Attend special church events, conferences, retreats and fundraisers.
• Sign your kids up for a group.
• Ignore glaring church problems (“…there’s no perfect church!”).
• Read ‘Christian’ books, devotionals, etc.
• Listen to ‘Christian’ radio stations.
• Watch Veggie Tales and the 700 Club.
• Watch Joel Osteen sermons online.
• Attend church business meetings.
• Attend repetitive group leader training sessions.
• Don’t drink (too much).
• Don’t smoke (unless people can’t see you).
• Don’t chew (see note above).
• Be a ‘good Christian’ in public.
• Be a ‘good Christian’ in private.
• Model the ‘Christianity’ of my father’s generation.
• Fulfill the spiritual expectations of my pastor, my in-laws, my parents, my wife, and my kids.
• And, oh yeah, in my spare time: Make a living, raise a family, and ‘get a life’!

The yoke of the Church is no less onerous than the yoke of addiction…and I would know. Replacing one addiction (pornography) with another (religion) is not progress, it’s not healthy, and it sure as hell isn’t easy or light.

Top 10 Reasons Why The Modern Church Is Irrelevant

I love the church. Of course, when I say ‘the church’ I’m talking about a collective body of believers, not an organization. And though the Church as an organization is probably one of those necessary evils we must endure in this life, it could be so much better than it is today! So in the spirit of David Letterman here are the Top 10 reasons why the modern church is irrelevant:

10. The Modern Church relies upon a shared theological view, or ‘meta-narrative’; the post-modern world is moving rapidly away from this point of view.

9. The Modern Church wielded power because its organizational leaders held the keys to biblical knowledge and wisdom not widely available to the general public. Then those Google guys came along…

8. The Modern Church uses clichéd stories to educate children and adults. These are usually the same stories our pastors’ parents heard when they were kids. Yeah, kind of a lot has changed since then…we often don’t come away from the Modern Church with the tools necessary to deal with a post-modern world.

7. The Modern Church has (painfully) tried to keep up with contemporary music tastes in an effort to be relevant. Unfortunately most of this music requires a heck of a lot of money and talent to reproduce. Most churches would be better off playing YouTube video clips of our favorite songs and spending the money going to the Worship Ministry on helping the needy instead.

6. The Modern Church’s missionary efforts are based on a model designed before air travel, the Internet, and a global economy. We spend thousands of dollars to send Americans overseas for two-week ‘missionary experiences’, or worse yet tens of thousands of dollars to move American families overseas to serve as full-time missionaries, while people from those same countries live and work in our own communities.

5. Most pastors in the Modern Church were taught to preach three-point sermons to congregations with similar socio-economic backgrounds and who have a shared knowledge of Scripture. If your church’s congregation looks like this today, I’d bet good money it’s a small church on its last financial legs.

4. The Modern Church’s organizational structure is rigidly hierarchical, while the rest of the world is adopting more organic organizational models.

3. The Modern Church’s leaders are vested with the authority of Apostles…by the rest of us. Let me ask you something: If you can read the same books, have access to the same tools, and have the same Holy Spirit indwelling in you, why in the world do you behave as though your pastor is any more ‘holy’ than you? The post-modern world is moving away from positional authority; i.e, job titles don’t mean jack.

2. Most pastors in the Modern Church are trying to teach people the Bible: History, theology, doctrine, etc. But in the post-modern world people are far less interested in theology, at least up front; they want answers to the problems in their day-to-day lives. Ever noticed how many self-help books are on the shelf at your local book store? Yeah…

…and the number one reason why the Modern Church is irrelevant…

1. Social media…heard of it? Sadly, the Modern Church is a social club of sorts for many of its members. The post-modern church can finally shed this horrid function thanks to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Apathy For The Church

Yesterday I posted what was, in my opinion, the most controversial piece I’ve ever written in the relatively short history of my blog.

The response: 2 ‘likes’, no comments.

It shocks me that no-one had anything to say about my assertion that churches should do away with paid staff and pastors, own no property, and receive no tax benefits of any kind. The dearth of commentary suggests at least four possibilities:

1. I missed my core readership with the post
2. Readers thought I was ‘nuts’ and figured it wasn’t worth their time to comment
3. Most of my readers are family, friends, and acquaintances who didn’t have the heart to tell me what a ridiculous, poorly written, and logically corrupt post it was
4. People feel apathetic toward the Church

If apathy is the reason people didn’t comment on my radical post (and I suspect it is), that should give everyone in the Church pause. Is the Church so broken that people just don’t care what happens to it anymore? Have our denominations squabbled over doctrine and opinion to the point where people assume there is no Church left to save? Or do people assume that the Church can’t be saved?

When I bring up my concerns about the Church in conversation the most common response I hear by far is some variation of: “There are no perfect churches because there are no perfect people.” Translation: Don’t bother trying to change the system.

Apathy.

Sorry Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., your fight for civil liberty was a waste of time because there are no perfect people.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Abraham Lincoln, I’ve got some bad news for you gentlemen: There are no perfect governments because there are no perfect people. Sorry you wasted your lives on a lost cause.

Hey, Martin Luther, everybody knows there is no perfect Church because there are no perfect people. Please take those theses down from the church door before someone reads them and realizes the survival of the Church depends upon the impetus of radical change, not the decay of apathetic compromise.

The Church: Salvage Or Scrap?

Two weeks ago I wrote that I wanted the Church to fail (read the post here), and it’s true: I do want the Church, in its current form, to fail.

Luckily for me the Church is already failing. Pastors may claim an “American revival” and point to organizations like Mars Hill Church in Seattle as examples of the re-energized Church, but in my opinion these are the dying gasps of the modern Church.

Consider the many books about the emerging post-modern Church available today. The modern way of ‘doing Church’ is on the way out and pastors are scrambling to find the new model for ‘doing Church’ in the post-modern, post-Christian world. However, I believe many of these pastors go wrong in trying to design a future Church based on the modern Church platform. Building the post-modern Church on the modern model is like trying to build a new mansion on a cracked foundation, and it is a critical mistake to imagine the post-modern Church as the next step along a linear growth path from the modern Church.

Instead, let us look to the origins of the Church in first-century Palestine. Our post-modern world more closely resembles the spiritual atmosphere of the days Christ walked the Earth than any other time since. We shouldn’t be trying to build a post-modern Church on the ruins of the modern church; we should build our Church on the example given to us in Scripture:

• A Church not adopted or supported by government (including tax breaks of any kind)
• No paid church staff
• No church programs, retreats, or age- and gender- separated ministries
• Pastors supported only minimally, if at all, by a local congregation
• Outreach efforts defined by examples of love and perseverance in the face of difficulty and persecution rather than vacation Bible camps

The modern Church is dying; let her go. Jesus Christ will raise up a beautiful new Church to replace His modern bride of failing health now corrupted and unbiblical…if we let Him.

Church: Don’t Trust The Rich!

“The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable…The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

There are too many verses in Scripture which speak out against the rich for us to ignore. In our own life experiences we know that Chesterton’s following assertion is also true:

“To be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck.”

To say that the rich are necessary is tenable from a Christian perspective. You could argue that in this fallen world the rich are a necessary evil; perhaps this is what Jesus meant in telling the confusing parable of the shrewd manager (Luke 16).

But to say that the rich are trustworthy (whether verbally, as in a conversation, or politically, as with your vote) is not a tenable position for Christians to take. And yet the contemporary church seems wrecked upon the rocks of riches:

• The Health and Wealth message is preached under the guise of the Gospel,  though this is really magical thinking at best, rather more akin to heresy than orthodoxy
• In direct contravention of Scripture (James 2:2-3) the rich in the Church are given preferential treatment, places of honor within the organization, and are frequently recognized publicly
• American Christians (I include myself in this group) are more likely to twist Scripture to fit their lifestyles than change their lifestyles to match Christ’s mandates regarding wealth

Everywhere in the Church you see the rich trusted and celebrated, and what’s so heartbreaking is that the Church is the one place in our world where this should not be.

But the rich help build bigger churches. They fund amazing church programs. They buy nice equipment and carpets, and they support bigger salaries which are used to attract better preachers. Long-story-short: Church without the rich ain’t sexy. What’s more, many churches are closing up shop these days because they don’t have the financial resources to carry on. Armed with these facts, leaders in our Church justify their idol worship of the rich by arguing that wealth allows them to reach and ‘save’ more souls.

Pastors: I get it. Like you, I want to preach the Word. I want to save souls, help to heal pain, and love the body of Christ. And yes, sometimes I want to be rich. I want to write a best-seller, make my blog commercially lucrative, and get a high-paying pastor-gig at a mega-church somewhere. We’re all susceptible to the same temptations, but my fear is that many of you no longer see riches as a temptation of the Church but rather as a trusted comrade-in-arms.

Loving & Hating The Church

After reading several of my posts, a pastor and friend gave me some advice wrapped in a warning: “Do not become someone who attacks the church. You don’t want to become that person.” What I think my friend misunderstands is that there is the Church, and then there is the church. It is the latter which I love and want desperately to succeed, and the former which I want to fail.

You see, the church and the Church are not the same thing. The church is the body of Christ, His bride; the universal fellowship of believers without walls or borders. I love the people of God desperately, so desperately that I feel pain at the hurt the Church does to its people. The Church is the organization which governs the church, and in it we have rendered many of the principles of the Christ weak or altogether worthless. I believe the Church failed the day it was co-opted as the official religion of Rome; the Church annexed and enslaved the church.

Do not misinterpret this post and believe I am full of hate for organized religion, hate for God’s Church, or hate for religious professionals. To help me to express my true feelings adequately, allow me to quote Gilbert K. Chesterton from his book Orthodoxy:

“No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.”

If I hated the church I would simply ignore it. No, I love the church, and so I would smash the Church for the sake of itself. I hate the Church enough to change it, but I love it enough to think it worth changing.

What about you? Are you willing to both love and hate the church, to recognize both its colossal good and its colossal evil, and save it? Or will you be content with the shadow of what was, and what could be?

When God Speaks Through Dreams

I don’t dream in my sleep much these days. My nights are far more likely to be interrupted by the need to pee or the cries of my two-year-old son than by a dream…which is why I believe God spoke to me through my dreams this week: Three nights in a row I had very vivid dreams with embedded life-lessons. I want to share the dreams and the lessons with you so we can all benefit from His wisdom.

The First Dream: Tuesday, August 28th
Subject: Anger

In this dream I experienced extreme road rage. I’ve been guilty of rage outbursts in traffic before so this dream wasn’t entirely surprising. In this dream I beat a man to death with my bare hands, then proceeded to spend the rest of my dream justifying to the police why what I did was not a crime.

What God Showed Me: First, though my recovery program is teaching me to surrender my anger to God, my inner rage is just as real as the day I entered recovery, and just as dangerous. There is a temptation which besets you in a recovery program wherein you begin to believe that perhaps you are ‘recovered’, ‘healed’, or ‘fixed’. You say to yourself, “I haven’t acted out in over 18 months! I must be getting better…maybe God has taken it away, finally.” Bad news, compadre: That’s not how God works. Second, God showed me my automatic response to sin: Justification rather than confession. Even after 18 months of confessing my most private sins to a group of addicts-turned-friends I still have to resist the urge to ‘cover up’ the wrong I do by justifying it.

The Second Dream: Wednesday, August 29th
The Subject: Lust

As a recovering pornography addict, my dreams of lust are more common than seems fair. It’s as if my subconscious has retained images and fantasies from my years of acting out, and every once in a while it throws out a wild escapade in a withdrawal-induced spasm. But the dream I had Wednesday night was different. No sexual activity was involved, but my lust was present in a very real and specific way.

What God Showed Me: As with my anger, my lust is just as powerful and capable of destruction as the day I entered recovery. I believe God was also trying to show me that Sin is not black-and-white; it is grey-scale. Do not misunderstand me: Every shade of grey falls short of being purely white. But as I’ve said before: ”If having an affair was like eating a dirty ashtray, no one would have an affair.” In this dream God showed me that what starts as a ‘harmless’ look eventually ends in sin, abasement, destruction, and death. He also showed me how to start thinking about Sin like a grown-up rather than a child. We like to teach our children that Sin is black-and-white; frankly I’ve known pastors who preach the same way to adults. But that’s not how Sin works in the real world: It’s a slippery slope, not a cliff. God showed me in my dream that yes, I could have an affair with someone. There is nothing to stop me from doing that. However, before I take that plunge I should evaluate the costs: I would lose my marriage, my family, maybe my job, my sobriety, etc. Yes, lust is thrilling, but is indulging my lust worth the heavy cost I would eventually pay?

The Third Dream: Thursday, August 30th
The Subject: Religious Persecution

My challenges with my former church are well documented (most notably, here), and in this dream I was chased from that church by a group of leaders who mocked me and hurled insults at me. The sense of shame and self-doubt in the dream was powerful; my co-dependent nature screamed for me to ‘make things right’ with those who were deriding me. I awoke feeling very alone in the world.

What God Showed Me: God’s voice was clear during my prayer time following this dream: “Don’t judge them by what they say, but by what they do. What were these ‘religious’ people doing in your dream?” As often happens when the Holy Spirit is involved, a word I’ve never used before popped into my mind: “Scoffing, Lord. They were scoffing at me.” I recalled several verses in Scripture that deal with ‘scoffers’ (most notably, Psalm 73:8: “They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression”) and I realized God was telling me to judge my fellow Christians by their actions, not their words. We can all talk a big game: Anyone can go on a mission trip and brag on Facebook about their good deeds. But in such a case the action of bragging screams louder than the news of the mission trip. God also taught me that leading change is a lonely proposition, and nowhere is that more true than the church. Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles will all attest to the fact that challenging the religious status quo is not fun. But it is necessary.