Be Shrewd

Photo by Md Mahdi

“The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light” (Luke 16:8 NIV).

In the classic 1986 comedy “Back to School,” Rodney Dangerfield plays an ultra-successful and self-made businessman named Thornton Mellon. When his only son Jason tells him that he plans to drop out of college, he makes a bargain with him. If Jason stays in school, Thornton will attend alongside him.

The only problem is that Thornton, despite all his success, is a high school drop out that has little patience for academics. Nevertheless, he manages to get accepted into his son’s university by offering to donate a new campus building. Once in, rather than studying with his son, he ends up indulging in the characteristic partying enjoyed by collegegoers.    

In any case, while Thornton is clearly not academically-minded, he is extraordinarily savvy when it comes to business. His vast knowledge of the harsh realities of the business world come to the fore when he engages his business professor on the first day of class.

An ostensibly introductory business course, the professor begins the class by proposing to the students that they jump right in and build a hypothetical business from the ground up. Just shortly after the lecture begins, Thornton asks the professor what the product is for this hypothetical business.

The professor—every bit the stereotypical pompous and ivory-towered sort—answers that the specific product didn’t matter. Thornton’s comical and quite telling retort to the professor’s response is, “It doesn’t matter? Tell that to the bank.”

Following this exchange and more of the professor’s simplistic—and thus almost certainly useless—explanation of the steps involved in starting a business, Thornton again chimes in with a far more realistic analysis of what this kind of venture entails if one is to be successful. Despite the professor’s extensive formal training in the field of business, he clearly lacks Thornton’s proven, real-world experience and know-how.     

That is, unlike Thornton, the professor is not shrewd. He doesn’t truly understand that the world is an utterly complex, messy place, and that there are many things that simply do not work as we might think they ought.   

In Luke chapter 16, Jesus offers a strange parable about a dishonest manager who is confronted by his rich master over concerns that he has squandered the master’s wealth and has not, then, responsibly managed it.

After being told that his master intends on removing him from his position, the manager is moved into action: he settles several accounts with his master’s debtors by offering them a payoff amount at a fraction of what they actually owed. Rather than being angered by what the manager did, his rich master commends him for acting “shrewdly.”  

While the master’s response may seem a bit puzzling, the motivation behind the manager’s actions is abundantly clear. In light of his impending termination, he sought to forge good relationships with his master’s debtors in order to gain their help should he find himself in a desperate situation.

As such, while managers are not supposed to do what this manager did, he did it anyway as the best means to ensure his future. His actions may have been morally ambiguous—if not downright unethical—but they are praised here because they represented a bold and remarkably clever maneuver on his part.

Christians may very well have the purest of intentions for how they assess and act in the world. A sizable number of these are by no means ignorant of the depth of depravity that exists all around us and are prepared accordingly. Unfortunately, still others lack the savvy of a Thornton Mellon to know how things really work and how, then, the world can be successfully navigated to work towards God’s good purposes for it.

The parable of the dishonest manager is not a call for God’s people to act dishonestly or otherwise unethically, but to think and act more wisely in light of the circumstances in which they and others find themselves. Indeed, the Greek word here commonly translated “shrewdly” (fronimōs) appears in adjective form in Luke 12:42, where Jesus refers to a “wise (fronimos) manager.” Elsewhere, Jesus similarly calls his followers, whom he sends out as “sheep among wolves,” to be “as wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16; compare with the “crafty serpent” of Genesis 3:1).        

To be frank, it seems to me that too many within the Christian community, at least in America, are plagued by a troublesome—even dangerous—naivety that fails to fully grasp the realities of the world. Like Thornton’s business professor, highly-educated Christians are no less immune to overly simplistic analyses of the times and a failure to act with prudence.

In short, the world, as it presently is, doesn’t play by our rules—and often not by a long shot. So be aware. Be shrewd.