THIS, to me, is
the most intriguing parable Christ is
teaching us. (cfr. Lk 16,1-13) A rich man decided to fire
his steward
for mismanaging his business. And the steward, knowing
what was going
to happen, had to do some cheating so he would have
security after
being fired.
The conclusion
of the parable was that the master praised
his dishonest steward for his ‘cleverness,’ saying that
the “people of
this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind
than are the
people of light.” (Lk 16,8)
At first sight,
it would seem that God, who must have been
personified in some way by the rich man in the parable,
is ok with
cheating, with being dishonest, with being calculating as
leverage for
one’s personal gain and interest.
Even the
so-called liberal gospel commentators raise their
eyebrows over this parable and have to take great pains
to find the
rationale behind this parable. You can just imagine how
the so-called
conservative gospel commentators would justify this
parable!
To me, it
simply means that Christ is being realistic with
our situation in this world. We try to put everything in
our life
right, clean and moral. But no matter what we do, we
would always be
hounded by evil and by all kinds of dirt, physical,
moral, spiritual.
This parable
seems to tell us that we should just learn
how to live with this condition and do our best to come
out ok in the
eyes of God in the end. What may be considered as
aggravating
circumstance in human justice may be regarded as saving
grace in God’s
eyes.
We may have to
handle dirt in our life and deal with
situations that are wrought with moral irregularities,
but as long as
we do not compromise what is essential, which is love
that comes from
God as shown by Christ who became like sin without
committing sin
(cfr. 2 Cor 5,21), then things will just turn out ok.
We have to
learn to distinguish between what is a
tolerable cooperation in evil and an intolerable one.
With the former,
we should feel the obligation to do whatever we can to
clean up what
is evil in a given situation, system or structure.
We should try
always to be helpful, positive and
constructive in our outlook, avoiding having the attitude
of simply
looking for faults in others and for what is wrong in a
given
situation.
Of course,
neither should we ignore the wrong things
around, but we should not be discouraged by them. On the
contrary,
they should pose as an invitation and a challenge for us
to do
something about them. It may take a lot of time and
effort to do this,
but we should just be patient and persevering, never
giving up on the
effort to put things right.
Let us always
remember that evil in all its forms cannot
stand on its own. It will always depend, like a parasite,
on something
that is good and true which it tries to deform or deny.
We just have
to find a way to take that parasitic evil away from its
host. What we
have to avoid is to get so frustrated as to do nothing
about it.
In this life,
we should heed what Christ already told us
what to expect in this life—that we have to be clever
like serpents
but still innocent like doves. (cfr. Mt 10,16) We cannot
expect a
completely clean world here. That is reserved for heaven.
This means that
we have to be ready to get dirty in some
way, that we have to be shrewd and not naïve, always
inventive and
creative of how to deal with evil properly instead of
doing nothing
about it.
We have to
learn how to move on and not entangled with the
problems and difficulties that evil would occasion.
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