Shrewdness for the Kingdom

Scripture — Luke 16:1-13 (NRSV)

Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Devotion

Whenever I take a personality test—it doesn’t matter which one—I always come out as some kind of plan-laying mastermind.

I am an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an Enneagram 8, and if you know anything about Harry Potter, when I took the “Which house are you?” sorting quiz I came out as a Slytherin. One of my kids calls me the “supervillain,” since whenever people try on Facebook to match MBTI letters to fictional pop culture figures, the INTJ will always be the villain or at least the one pulling all the strings from the shadows. The INTJ personality type has so far been matched online with Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, Batman, Elrond from Lord of the Rings (movie Elrond; the book one was nicer), James Bond, Scar from The Lion King, the White Witch from Narnia, Hannibal Lecter (!), Gru from Despicable Me, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, Dr. Strange in the Marvel movies, Sherlock Holmes, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. (Yes, I know Oppenheimer was a real person.)

Now, this is all fun and games and good for a laugh at parties, but I am also a practicing Christian and, more or less, a leader. And so for years I have wondered and worried over this aspect of myself. Churches tend to privilege those who are skilled at caring, not planning; at feeling, not strategizing; at giving without restraint, not stewarding resources; at trusting, not questioning.

And yet. And yet, we have this story by Jesus—where a shady guy digs himself out of a hole by some very shrewd dealing, and his master rewards him and says If you deal that shrewdly I want you on MY side, and Jesus says: Look, y’all who are following me need to be at LEAST as shrewd as the bad guys.

You see, we are humans, and despite all our efforts not to, humans in a fallen world build institutions, including religious ones, and institutions can get corrupt or run out of money or fall apart if you haven’t got somebody on staff whose job it is to plan ahead, act judiciously and with restraint, and be able to perceive exactly who you should trust and who is trying to pull a fast one.

I actually learned some of this from Harry Potter. Most of the Slytherins in the series are bad guys, but not all, and a minor theme in the books is that even the traits most characteristic of Slytherin House—cunning, resourcefulness, leadership, and ambition—can, if a person chooses, be used for good. And, in fact, the use of these characteristics by the forces of good is key to the books’ ultimate resolution. (Thus my Instagram handle: slytherinforjesus). And I take comfort in knowing that not everyone on my pop culture supervillain list is actually a supervillain. Sherlock Holmes and Batman, for instance, are people who will probably never hug you, but will definitely strategize to save you from an unjust conviction, and who spend their life working to bring the perpetrators of great evils to justice.

But if those books and movies aren’t your jam, we still have this lesson in a much greater Book, from Jesus himself, right here in Luke 16. God has made all personality types. And if God has made you shrewd, strategic, and able to see ten steps ahead at every move, then your leadership goal is to be shrewd for the Kingdom. Can I get an Amen?

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: The Shrewd Manager and the Prodigal Son (Luke 16:1-13; 15:11-32).