Charles Dickens masterfully describes the penny-pinching disposition of the main character in his classic book, A Christmas Carol.
“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.”
Scrooge is so profoundly villainous that he unifies critics. Even today, masses are quick to scorn a man that has the contemptible combination of being both wealthy and miserly. Oil magnate J. Paul Getty made his first million at the age of 23, a number that later ballooned to billions. Despite being the richest man in the world at the time, Getty had a payphone installed inside his mansion (and “dial-locks” affixed to regular phones) to avoid paying for calls made by household workers and guests.
Jesus dealt with this issue in the Parable of the Dishonest Manager. In it an incompetent manager learned he was about to be fired. Faced with the prospect of unemployment, he began to panic, thinking, “What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg” (Lk. 16:3). The manager jumped into action, using his final moments with managerial authority to cook the books. He schemed to contact the company’s debtors and cut their bills in half if they promised to give him a kickback once he was out of a job.
What Jesus says at its conclusion is perplexing at first. “The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness” (Lk. 16:8). How is it that Jesus would highlight the actions of a substandard manager that turned to fraud when he was about to be legitimately sacked? It was neither his work ethic nor his lack of honesty that was being praised, but his “shrewdness.” That is to say that there was something commendable about his initiative.
What was Jesus signaling? It was the cleverness the manager used to accomplish his goal. He had limited time to solve a major problem and he found a way to get it done. Within the parable Jesus is essentially saying, “Well played manager. Well played.” Consider what Jesus says next.
One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Luke 16:10-13).
Here is the point. Every Christian has been given varying degrees of resources—financial, time and talents. Some are given a modest amount and others substantial. Regardless, each person has the opportunity to either hoard their gifts or to share them. Jesus commends the Christian that realizes there is a limited time to solve a major problem, yet creatively gets it done.
It’s easy to resent a billionaire that forces his staff to pay for phone calls, but what about you? Have you been faithful with what you’ve been given? Would an audit of your contributions (all kinds) to the church reveal that could be entrusted with more, or would you look more like Dickens’s “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner”? When it comes to decisions regarding your money, time and talents spent at church, don’t ever take the attitude, “But how does that benefit me?” Instead, shrewdly (cleverly, creatively) consider how you can commit those resources to the service of God since you know your time “on the job” here is short.
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: (1 Pet. 4:10)