1 00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:06,280 What Christ is describing is the manner in which you change worlds. When a 2 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:11,119 world is ending, the way to move into a new world is to take 3 00:00:11,160 --> 00:00:15,599 the strength of the world that is ending and seed it into the next world, 4 00:00:15,919 --> 00:00:20,920 so that when this world ends, you find a place in the next 5 00:00:20,920 --> 00:00:24,320 world. You know, if you look at it morally, it's very difficult. 6 00:00:24,320 --> 00:00:27,559 But if you look at it in terms of just it is how a 7 00:00:27,719 --> 00:00:33,240 world ends and how another begins, you can understand how that's the type of 8 00:00:33,280 --> 00:00:50,280 shrewd behavior that you would want to do. This is Jonathan Peshel, Welcome 9 00:00:50,399 --> 00:01:04,519 to the symbolic world. There's one parable of Jesus, the one we call 10 00:01:04,560 --> 00:01:10,400 the unjust Steward, which for many people and for myself, is a source 11 00:01:10,400 --> 00:01:15,719 of great pain because it is very difficult to understand. And no matter what 12 00:01:15,799 --> 00:01:19,439 interpretation I see, whether it's from the Church fathers or from modern theologian, 13 00:01:19,799 --> 00:01:26,120 I always end unsatisfied with their interpretation. As you know, I have just 14 00:01:26,239 --> 00:01:32,519 finished an entire week with Joran Petersen and the same crew from Exodus, adding 15 00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:37,560 a few people like John Raveki, Bisheveraron and also Constantine Kissen who joined us. 16 00:01:38,040 --> 00:01:44,120 We did a week long ten episode interpretation of the Gospels. It was 17 00:01:44,280 --> 00:01:49,200 crazy, it was amazing. But again we hit that parable, which is 18 00:01:49,200 --> 00:01:53,599 a very difficult one. But as we were discussing and as we were thinking 19 00:01:53,640 --> 00:01:57,280 about it, and I was hitting my head against it even during the recording, 20 00:01:57,120 --> 00:02:00,799 I think it hit me. I think I understood it more than I 21 00:02:00,840 --> 00:02:05,760 have before, and I maybe it's not enough. But I'm hoping to take 22 00:02:05,799 --> 00:02:12,080 you through my insights about this parable so that hopefully you can understand. Before 23 00:02:12,080 --> 00:02:14,759 we start, it's important to say, if you love what I'm doing, 24 00:02:15,080 --> 00:02:19,919 please go to the Symbolic World dot com and there are ways to support what 25 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:23,240 I'm doing. Your support is very helpful in making sure that we can put 26 00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:29,039 out these podcasts and that I can continue to do the things that I do, 27 00:02:29,159 --> 00:02:30,400 to travel to right, to do all the things that I need to 28 00:02:30,439 --> 00:02:35,159 do. And so thanks everybody for your support. All right, And so 29 00:02:35,520 --> 00:02:42,039 the parable of the unjust Stuart is in the Gospel of Luke, chapter sixteen, 30 00:02:42,520 --> 00:02:46,199 and it goes like this. Jesus told his disciples there was a witch 31 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:52,280 man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in 32 00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:55,159 and asked him, what is this I hear about? You give an account 33 00:02:55,240 --> 00:03:00,000 of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer. The manager said 34 00:03:00,039 --> 00:03:04,520 to himself, what shall I do now? My master is taking away my 35 00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:08,039 job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg I 36 00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:13,759 know what I'll do so that when I lose my job here people will welcome 37 00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:17,840 me into their houses. So he called in each one of his master's debtors. 38 00:03:19,319 --> 00:03:23,360 He asked the first, how much do you owe my master? Nine 39 00:03:23,439 --> 00:03:28,039 hundred gallons of olive oil? He replied. The manager told him take your 40 00:03:28,080 --> 00:03:30,800 bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty. Then 41 00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:35,840 he asked the second, and how much do you owe? A thousand bushels 42 00:03:35,879 --> 00:03:38,159 of wheat? He replied. He told him, take your bill and make 43 00:03:38,199 --> 00:03:44,960 it eight hundred. The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. 44 00:03:45,759 --> 00:03:47,840 For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own 45 00:03:47,919 --> 00:03:53,759 kind than are the people of the light. I tell you use worldly wealth 46 00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:59,240 to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will 47 00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:06,000 be welcomed into eternal dwellings. So what is going on with that? Parable? 48 00:04:09,319 --> 00:04:13,719 You know, on the one hand, you think Okay, it has 49 00:04:13,759 --> 00:04:16,519 to do with him, you know, doing good in order to compensate for 50 00:04:16,600 --> 00:04:21,240 what he's done. But then he's doing good by giving the masters money, 51 00:04:24,720 --> 00:04:27,839 does it mean that he's giving his share of that money? At least the 52 00:04:27,879 --> 00:04:30,480 parable doesn't say so. And also if that was the case, then why 53 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:34,839 would it say to use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself. There's also 54 00:04:34,959 --> 00:04:40,720 a version where it says, you know, make friends with mammon, you 55 00:04:40,759 --> 00:04:45,879 know, make friends with dishonest wealth, so that when it's gone, you'll 56 00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:50,519 be welcome into eternal dwellings. It's very it's a very strange and suspicious thing. 57 00:04:51,319 --> 00:04:56,600 But when I was thinking about it during the seminar, I think it 58 00:04:56,680 --> 00:05:00,240 hit me. I think at least I saw the applicability of this parable. 59 00:05:00,839 --> 00:05:04,600 And this will bother some people because the only way I can see it as 60 00:05:04,639 --> 00:05:11,279 being applicable is something like an a moral frame. It's hard to look at 61 00:05:11,319 --> 00:05:14,639 it with morality and understand it. But as I've said before, I think 62 00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:20,120 Jesus that Christ is not just representing moral principles, although he is, he's 63 00:05:20,560 --> 00:05:25,279 especially representing the way the world works. That is, he's representing an image 64 00:05:25,279 --> 00:05:30,480 of reality, of how identities function of how unity and multiplicity come together. 65 00:05:30,399 --> 00:05:35,160 And so I think this is what he's dealing with. Now. The way 66 00:05:35,160 --> 00:05:40,360 that I came to understand it was because I think there's an example of what 67 00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:46,439 Jesus is talking about in the Old Testament, and that example is in the 68 00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:50,920 story of the two Spies that go to Jericho. Now think about it, 69 00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:56,279 the story of the two spies in Jericho. When the two spies go to 70 00:05:56,399 --> 00:06:00,560 Jericho, they stay with a prostitute named Rehab. Now, this prostitute lives 71 00:06:00,720 --> 00:06:06,399 in the wall of the city. And it's important to understand these two aspects 72 00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:11,720 of her because on the one hand, she lives in the wall the city, 73 00:06:11,759 --> 00:06:14,560 which means she's on the margin, you know, quite literally on the 74 00:06:14,600 --> 00:06:19,600 margin. And she also is a prostitute and therefore has very little steak in 75 00:06:20,160 --> 00:06:25,160 the identity of the nation, right that isn't that's what the prostitute is. 76 00:06:25,519 --> 00:06:30,560 You know, a prostitute is someone who is let's say, connected to multiple 77 00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:36,199 people and doesn't have one identity, one husband, you know, the let's 78 00:06:36,199 --> 00:06:41,160 say the origin of her children is not known, and so she is someone 79 00:06:41,199 --> 00:06:47,360 who doesn't have a stake in the identity of the city. And so what 80 00:06:47,439 --> 00:06:53,800 she does is that as she discovers that the city is about to be destroyed, 81 00:06:54,480 --> 00:07:00,160 she basically gives her house, gives her home over to the strangers, 82 00:07:00,199 --> 00:07:04,040 and not only the strangers, but the strangers that will destroy the city. 83 00:07:04,519 --> 00:07:08,560 And so she takes you could say, the wealth of the city or the 84 00:07:08,639 --> 00:07:13,959 value of the city, and she hands it over to these two spies that 85 00:07:14,199 --> 00:07:17,920 are going to come and destroy it. And so when the two spies finally 86 00:07:17,959 --> 00:07:23,439 and the army of Israel comes in and they turn around the city and the 87 00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:29,079 city is destroyed. The only person that survives, and the only family that 88 00:07:29,160 --> 00:07:33,120 survives is Rahab and her family. You know, and even you know, 89 00:07:33,279 --> 00:07:35,839 you have this image that it's the only part of the wall that is not 90 00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:42,600 destroyed is the place where Rehab lived in the wall. And she leaves this 91 00:07:42,759 --> 00:07:46,240 red thread, which you know, comes out of her window out into the 92 00:07:46,279 --> 00:07:51,199 outside. So I think that this red thread, which moves from the inside 93 00:07:51,199 --> 00:07:56,839 to the outside is what this parable is talking about, which is that what 94 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:03,480 Christ is describing is the manner in which you change worlds, which is the 95 00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:07,839 manner in which when a world is ending, the way to move into a 96 00:08:07,879 --> 00:08:13,319 new world is to take the strength of the world that is ending and seed 97 00:08:13,399 --> 00:08:18,199 it into the next world, so that when this world ends, you find 98 00:08:18,279 --> 00:08:22,800 a place in the next world. This is exactly what Rehab is doing. 99 00:08:22,920 --> 00:08:28,759 She's she's betraying her country. You know, I've thought about this for a 100 00:08:28,759 --> 00:08:31,360 long time in terms of Rehab, because I always tried to read the Gospel 101 00:08:31,399 --> 00:08:35,080 stories from both sides, you know, with through the lens of all the 102 00:08:35,159 --> 00:08:39,039 characters, and when you read it from the point of view of the people 103 00:08:39,080 --> 00:08:43,799 of Jericho, Rehab is a trader. Rehab betrays her nation to the two 104 00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:50,600 spies, and when they take over, she's able to survive and find a 105 00:08:50,639 --> 00:08:54,840 home. And even Jewish traditions and you know, kind of secondary traditions that 106 00:08:54,919 --> 00:09:00,120 say that Rab marry Joshua, that she was Joshua's wife, which is it's 107 00:09:00,159 --> 00:09:07,000 pretty fascinating, and so you know, if you look at it morally, 108 00:09:07,039 --> 00:09:09,120 it's very difficult. But if you look at it in terms of just it 109 00:09:09,279 --> 00:09:16,240 is how a world ends and how another begins, you can understand how that's 110 00:09:16,279 --> 00:09:20,720 the type of shrewd behavior that you would want to do if you were facing 111 00:09:20,720 --> 00:09:28,639 a situation like that, which is I don't know, you know, imagine 112 00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:33,320 just someone who's about to lose their job, just similar to the to the 113 00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:35,360 manager, even if they're not dishonest, someone's about to lose their job is 114 00:09:35,399 --> 00:09:41,159 going to take their time in that work, you know, or if they're 115 00:09:41,200 --> 00:09:43,519 noticing that the company is about to be destroyed, they're going to take their 116 00:09:43,519 --> 00:09:48,120 time and that work in order to make friends with people from another company in 117 00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:52,759 order to be able to change worlds once that happens. Now, that is 118 00:09:54,240 --> 00:09:58,759 a moral version of it, But you can imagine someone in a much shrewder 119 00:09:58,799 --> 00:10:01,600 way, you know, So someone who uses the knowledge that they learned at 120 00:10:01,600 --> 00:10:05,600 one company in order to find place in another. We see that all the 121 00:10:05,639 --> 00:10:09,200 time in tech companies, which is that the things that you've learned in one 122 00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:13,399 company, the knowledge that you've acquired and the technology you've developed, that's pretty 123 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:18,840 valuable. If you have to switch camps, then you have to go into 124 00:10:18,879 --> 00:10:22,120 another in another camp. And so that seems to be what it is that 125 00:10:22,679 --> 00:10:28,200 christ is describing the ultimate version of that, I think, And in some 126 00:10:28,279 --> 00:10:33,000 ways, the strangely the most moral version of that, I think has to 127 00:10:33,039 --> 00:10:39,519 do with the manner in which Christianity moved from Israel and moved from Jerusalem to 128 00:10:39,679 --> 00:10:45,639 Rome. And what's wonderful about this version of it is that it actually is 129 00:10:45,679 --> 00:10:50,679 not a moral it's actually quite moral, which is that even if the Christians 130 00:10:50,679 --> 00:10:56,320 didn't totally understand the warnings that Jesus was giving about the daughters of Jerusalem and 131 00:10:56,360 --> 00:11:00,799 taught he has these prophecies that he gives to Jerusalem to say, you know, 132 00:11:01,080 --> 00:11:03,960 watch out, because one day you'll run out into the hills and you'll 133 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:09,000 be You'll want you would rather die than go through what's about to happen. 134 00:11:09,960 --> 00:11:13,879 It was predicting the destruction of Jerusalem. But the man in which the Christians 135 00:11:13,919 --> 00:11:20,279 acted, which is the fact that they went out and seeded the word of 136 00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:26,080 God, seated the traditions even of Israel, recapitulated in Christ into this new 137 00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:31,279 seed. They seeded that out into the external world, especially in the Roman 138 00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:37,000 world. The fact that they also were not revolutionaries, that they that they 139 00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:39,320 helped the poor, that they took in the orphans, that they did all 140 00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:46,919 these things to in order to kind of make friends in the other world. 141 00:11:46,639 --> 00:11:52,639 Then once Jerusalem was destroyed, then that place became their home for all intents 142 00:11:52,679 --> 00:11:56,279 and purposes. Even though you know, they still were persecuted, but it 143 00:11:56,320 --> 00:12:01,399 became the new soil into which they grew. And you know, the old 144 00:12:01,480 --> 00:12:07,320 world, which is the world of Israel, is now seeded into Rome. 145 00:12:07,679 --> 00:12:15,279 So that seems to be the most powerful version of what this this parable is 146 00:12:15,320 --> 00:12:20,519 talking about, and you know, in a way a manner that is not 147 00:12:22,200 --> 00:12:26,440 related to an amoral version of it, you know, and so then you 148 00:12:26,480 --> 00:12:28,159 can then apply it once you see that when it's like, okay, well 149 00:12:28,159 --> 00:12:33,320 that's what it's talking about. It's talking about the idea that if you're going 150 00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:37,559 to change worlds, you should seed into the next world in order for once 151 00:12:37,639 --> 00:12:41,960 this world the crumble, then you move into the next one. You take 152 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:45,600 the strength of this world, you take the power of this world, you 153 00:12:45,679 --> 00:12:48,799 take you know, even the value of this world, and you start to 154 00:12:48,919 --> 00:12:52,679 aim it towards the next world. That now we can understand why Jesus is 155 00:12:52,720 --> 00:12:56,799 talking about this in terms of the idea of eternal dwellings or the idea of, 156 00:12:58,200 --> 00:13:01,000 you know, the end of all things in the new world, in 157 00:13:01,039 --> 00:13:05,120 the sense of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, which is 158 00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:09,080 that you know, he's saying, look at how shrewd people are acting with 159 00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:13,840 money even willing to take the money of the Master in order to seed into 160 00:13:13,879 --> 00:13:16,600 the next world. When you could say that about now yourself. Now, 161 00:13:16,639 --> 00:13:22,399 if you think about your own soul, which is to take your strength, 162 00:13:22,480 --> 00:13:28,000 to take your energy, to take your intentions and to seed them into the 163 00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:33,360 next world, to invest in the Kingdom of Heaven, you know, even 164 00:13:33,399 --> 00:13:37,840 if it means the loss of your energy here, so you can imagine the 165 00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:41,600 martyrs, that's exactly what they've done. They've basically taken the strength of their 166 00:13:41,679 --> 00:13:48,200 life and be willing to completely lose it in order to seed it into the 167 00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:52,759 next world. That seems to be what is going on in terms of the 168 00:13:52,360 --> 00:13:56,840 in terms of the story. And so I think that once you think about 169 00:13:56,840 --> 00:14:01,399 it this way, understanding that the story of rehab is actually an application of 170 00:14:01,440 --> 00:14:07,840 this parable into our lives. Although it seems shocking at first, and you 171 00:14:07,879 --> 00:14:13,919 can find examples that are quite dark and that include betraying your nation, you 172 00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:16,240 can also see that the highest version of it, right, the most redemptive 173 00:14:16,360 --> 00:14:22,279 version of it, does not need to be so dark and represents, you 174 00:14:22,320 --> 00:14:26,799 know, both the way that Christians spread the seed out into the outer world 175 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:31,559 and we're able to gather the fish outside, and we're able to to have 176 00:14:31,679 --> 00:14:39,159 trees grow in Rome and Armenia and Ethiopia and all the places where Christianity sprouted 177 00:14:39,279 --> 00:14:46,679 up. But also it's a good understanding of how sacrificing your own strength and 178 00:14:46,720 --> 00:14:52,600 your own life and your own intentions today is ultimately seeding into the Kingdom of 179 00:14:52,639 --> 00:14:58,080 Heaven. And so I hope this was useful, and I hope that it 180 00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:03,360 at least opening your mind to a different way or a little further in the 181 00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:07,960 understanding of this very strange parable So thank you for your time, Thanks again 182 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:11,919 everybody for your support, and we'll talk to you very soon.