The twentieth episode of the sixth season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (September 28, 2022). It retells Jesus’ Parable of the Unjust Steward (or perhaps we should call it the Parable of the Shrewd Manager). The original parable can be found in Luke 16:1-13. Direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.
You can listen to the story right now and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:
Show Notes about the Story
This parable has long been one that people have struggled to understand because Jesus seems to be praising a man for doing things that seem to us to be ethically suspect at best.
I decided to rush this episode out because recent events and developments in the matter of student debt relief in the United Stated of America seemed to offer a unique analogy that would help people to understand how people in Jesus’ day might have heard the parable
Biblical Law and Debt
Though they don’t often seem to come up for discussion today, there are many passages in the Old Testament that are focused on the problem of debt. In particular, the Bible bans charging interest on loans as we see in this passage:
19 “You shall not charge interest on loans to another Israelite, interest on money, interest on provisions, interest on anything that is lent. 20 On loans to a foreigner you may charge interest, but on loans to another Israelite you may not charge interest, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings in the land that you are about to enter and possess.
Deuteronomy 23:19-20
In the gospels, Jesus seems to pick up on the issue of debt and has a great deal to say about the problems that has caused. He taught his followers to forgive debts (Luke 11:4). He told parables about debt forgiveness (Matthew 18:23-35) and announced a year of God’s favour, that is a Year of Jubilee when all debts were to be forgiven (Luke 4:16-21).
The original legislation regarding the Year of Jubilee is found in Leviticus 25:1-13.
Though Jesus’ sayings about debt forgiveness are often interpreted to be concerned with the forgiveness of sins, there are many reasons to think that he was very concerned about financial debt. His sayings and parables also often focused on the people in his society who suffered the consequences of indebtedness, such as the destitute (Luke 6:20), the day labourers (Matthew 20:1-16) and the enslaved (Luke 17:7-10).
This parable is also one that has debt as a central concern but for some reason, the matter of debt relief has rarely been the focus of people’s interpretation of the parable as they become perplexed by the apparent immorality of the manager.
I expected that the people of Jesus’ own time had various opinions regarding the problem of debt and the feasibility of canceling interest and forgiving what was owed. I hope that the way I have told this parable might help us to appreciate how the story that Jesus told might have connected with those various opinions.
Stories of Student Debt
The stories of people struggling with student debt that I used in the episode were based on true stories (and specific numbers) that were submitted to the Student Debt Crisis Center (SDCC) You can read the stories at studentdebtcrisis.org.
Media in this Episode
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: AhDah by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3345-ahdah
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com
Music: Inspiration by Rafael Krux
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/5493-inspiration
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://www.orchestralis.net/
Sound Effects from Zapsplat.com.
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