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And now we come to one of the most uniquely difficult parables in the Gospel of Luke.

The parable of the two sons is easy enough to understand. We get why the shepherd and the woman celebrated finding their lost sheep and lost coin. But this parable? This one is tricky. It seems to portray the acts of a dishonest man as good and rewards him for his deception.

Nobody wants to be tricked, but we are surrounded by scammers. Technology makes it easier to scam someone every time it advances, and that has only compounded with the advent of AI. When we do get scammed, it makes us feel foolish, unsafe, and violated.

Not long ago, I was waiting on a package. I knew it was coming from overseas, and I expected it to take a while to arrive. But one day, I got a text message. It claimed that a package I’d ordered was being held at customs and needed verification that I was the one who had purchased it.

Since I did have a package coming from overseas, I didn’t give it a second thought. I clicked the link and provided the information it asked for, including my debit card number. The page refreshed without updating, so I entered my number again. Only after I’d done this a couple of times did I stop and think. I Googled the exact text of the message I’d been sent.

And I realized it was a scam.

Irritated at myself, I quickly called my bank and had them lock my card. Thankfully, it all happened so quickly that the scammer had no time to use my card or any of my information for anything. But it was still a frustrating feeling to be taken advantage of.

The story Jesus tells in Luke 16:1–13 begins with someone we might call a scammer. A manager working for a wealthy landowner, this man was wasting his lord’s possessions. The word used for his wastefulness is the same word used for the Prodigal Son’s wanton spending.

He was throwing it all away. The implication seems to be that he was, in a way, scamming his lord, using the master’s funds for his own gain and well-being. In doing so, he was leaving big, obvious empty spots in the landowner’s ledger.

It’s possible that the landowner, when he found out about it, thought his manager was just incompetent, not corrupt. He told him to turn in the logbooks and leave because he was fired. Whatever the landowner understood about the situation, the manager knew his time was running out.

The manager went into a panic. He was no good at manual labor (he said, “I am not strong enough to dig”), and he did not want to become a beggar. He had to make a decision, and fast.

But the manager was good at one thing: shrewdness.

He took his logbook and went to each of the people who owed his lord money. One by one, he asked what they owed and reduced the amount of their debt.

He didn’t do this for his master’s sake. He did it for himself. He thought that if those debtors owed less, they’d appreciate what he’d done for them. That way, when he was fired, he would have people who owed him a favor. He could go to them for temporary shelter, and they would feel obligated to receive him because he had helped them out.

When the manager’s master noticed this, he wasn’t fooled. He realized what the manager had done. However, he commended his shrewdness. He complimented him, not for his dishonesty, but for acting wisely and decisively to prepare for what was coming.

Jesus doesn’t tell us if the manager still got fired or not, but He closed the story by saying, “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.”

Jesus proceeded to tell His disciples to make friends through “unrighteous mammon” as well. This is where interpreting the parable grows difficult. Was Jesus telling them to be scammers?

No.

Jesus wasn’t praising the manager’s dishonesty. Instead, He was pointing to the way the manager intentionally used what was available to him with the future in mind. In the same way, the disciples were to use their money to benefit others. Just as the dishonest manager used money to make friends, the disciples were to use their resources to make a difference in the world and shape the lives of those they came into contact with.

Why?

Because Jesus said, “when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”

The things we possess in this life are temporary, but how we use them can have an eternal impact. Our generosity and kindness can influence the people we help, opening doors for relationships, ministry, and the Gospel.

God gives us the responsibility to take care of things: our families, our homes, our money, and our possessions. And Jesus said that whoever would be faithful in the little things would also be faithful in big things. Whoever was dishonest in little things would be dishonest in big things.

He wanted them to prove that they could be faithful with something as temporary as money because they were being entrusted with something much bigger: the message of His Kingdom.

Ultimately, we all have a choice to make: Who do we serve?

Jesus says we can’t serve both God and money. We can devote ourselves to gaining money, but at the end of the day, it won’t benefit us spiritually or eternally. That’s why He tells us to use it for the good of others.

Our focus should be on Him and not on ourselves. And if our focus is on God, then it’ll also be on helping others.

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