Be Shrewd: Stay Godly But Approachable In Our Secular World
Word-of-the-Day: ’<Jesus said to his disciples,> (10) “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. (11) So, if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? (12) And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? (13) No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”’ (Luke 16:10-13)
There are widespread allegations, with verifiable evidence, of various fraud schemes throughout the United States. There have been warrants and seizures of election ballots and data in Georgia, California, and Arizona. Investigative reporters have found illegitimate day-care centers collecting educational and meal funds, in addition to Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP benefits fraud, in Minnesota; and hospice care fraud in California. There have been other cases of similar type of fraud in other states, as well.
There have always been those who have tried to ‘game the system’ and take advantage of others to gain money, power, or influence. Even among pillars in our Faith have gained through dishonesty; in Genesis 27, Jacob (with the help of his mother, Rebekah) pretended to be his older brother Esau to trick his father Issac into giving him Esau’s blessing, to become the leader of the nation promised to Abraham, the nation that would become Israel.
While Jacob’s ruse was likely for the best and fell within God’s plan for His people, it likely could have been done differently in a more honest undertaking had Jacob (and Rebekah) trusted God with the desired outcome. While this ruse worked out for the good of all, many times fraud is done for evil pursuits, for greed or control.
People find ways to cheat each other or try to gain the upper hand. It becomes a question of who can you trust, how much can you trust another, and with what can you trust another with. Personally, there have been people I would trust with loaning them money, but not my car. Other I could trust with providing them a task to complete, but would avoid confiding in them as they were gossipers. Trust comes in degrees and categories, unfortunately.
In Luke 16:1-15, Jesus gives the Parable of the Shrewd Manager, a man who rich master is about to fire him over mismanaging his funds. The manager calls on his master’s debtors and cuts their debt in half, so he would gain their favor and have people willing to take him in should he be out on the streets. The master commended the manager for his shrewdness, and declared, ‘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). Why would the master be praising the manager for cutting the debt owed to him in half?
We find that the manager used his predicament to find a way that not only benefitted himself (making friends from those who likely hated him for making them pay their debt), but benefitted those who saw their debt cut in half. The manager knew that the greed he had (likely the reason for the mismanagement of the funds) could be used for his betterment, the desire for others to not be in debt, or at least having their debt cut in half.
Jesus makes the distinction in Luke 16:8 that the people of the secular worldview, in their given time, understand how to deal with the others holding similar views. The people of the Biblical worldview, the ‘people of the light’, don’t always relate to those holding a secular worldview. We often see Godly people struggle with relating to those of a secular nature. Those who are Godly often only hang out with other Godly people, and rightfully so. But how can we relate to those of the secular world, the fraudsters would be dishonest in their dealings?
In Matthew 10:16 Jesus provides an answer to us, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” We must maintain our innocence and our Righteousness as His children, but we also must relate in a way to deal effectively with the secularist, understanding how it works, though not in alignment with the secular world. In a sense, Jacob was Jacob; he gained his father’s trust through appearing to him as a ‘wolf’ (or Esau’s outdoorsmanship) though he maintained his ‘sheep-ness’.
Unlike Jacob, who lied to gain his father’s blessing, and deceived Esau earlier out of his birthright, we should not try to gain favor through illicit actions, but to gain favor by being shrewd to find commonality with those who we are dealing with. We may need to sit down with those who are drinking beer at a dinner table to talk to them, and try to provide them the Gospel of Jesus, though we may not drink with them. We may need to ignore some of the coarse language in their discourse as they render services (like pool relining) on our own behalf, and gain their trust so we can share Jesus’ love with them. It may take us to get out of our comfort zone to be Great Commission missionaries, living amongst those who need Jesus in their environment, while maintaining our innocence as followers of Christ.
We can show compassion in gaining trust, and not to repay dishonesty with dishonesty but with firm and Righteous responsibility to Jesus and His Gospel message, not looking to gain ill-gotten wealth or advantage but to gain their respect of Jesus through your actions. If we are seen as trustworthy, and relatable to others, though different in demeanor and action, we serve God without serving the world while living and working within its confines.
The world uses ‘fraud’ to feed its greed and lust for power; we who are Righteous use a Godly form of ‘fraud’ to relate to the world while remaining committed to the Great Commission of Jesus, to demonstrate His love and Holiness so that they may come to experience His Saving Grace and Salvation. Be that sheep in wolf’s clothing!
