What Christ is describing is the manner in which you change worlds. When a
world is ending, the way to move into a new world is to take
the strength of the world that is ending and seed it into the next world,
so that when this world ends, you find a place in the next
world. You know, if you look at it morally, it's very difficult.
But if you look at it in terms of just it is how a
world ends and how another begins, you can understand how that's the type of
shrewd behavior that you would want to do. This is Jonathan Peshel, Welcome
to the symbolic world. There's one parable of Jesus, the one we call
the unjust Steward, which for many people and for myself, is a source
of great pain because it is very difficult to understand. And no matter what
interpretation I see, whether it's from the Church fathers or from modern theologian,
I always end unsatisfied with their interpretation. As you know, I have just
finished an entire week with Joran Petersen and the same crew from Exodus, adding
a few people like John Raveki, Bisheveraron and also Constantine Kissen who joined us.
We did a week long ten episode interpretation of the Gospels. It was
crazy, it was amazing. But again we hit that parable, which is
a very difficult one. But as we were discussing and as we were thinking
about it, and I was hitting my head against it even during the recording,
I think it hit me. I think I understood it more than I
have before, and I maybe it's not enough. But I'm hoping to take
you through my insights about this parable so that hopefully you can understand. Before
we start, it's important to say, if you love what I'm doing,
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do. And so thanks everybody for your support. All right, And so
the parable of the unjust Stuart is in the Gospel of Luke, chapter sixteen,
and it goes like this. Jesus told his disciples there was a witch
man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in
and asked him, what is this I hear about? You give an account
of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer. The manager said
to himself, what shall I do now? My master is taking away my
job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg I
know what I'll do so that when I lose my job here people will welcome
me into their houses. So he called in each one of his master's debtors.
He asked the first, how much do you owe my master? Nine
hundred gallons of olive oil? He replied. The manager told him take your
bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty. Then
he asked the second, and how much do you owe? A thousand bushels
of wheat? He replied. He told him, take your bill and make
it eight hundred. The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.
For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own
kind than are the people of the light. I tell you use worldly wealth
to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will
be welcomed into eternal dwellings. So what is going on with that? Parable?
You know, on the one hand, you think Okay, it has
to do with him, you know, doing good in order to compensate for
what he's done. But then he's doing good by giving the masters money,
does it mean that he's giving his share of that money? At least the
parable doesn't say so. And also if that was the case, then why
would it say to use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself. There's also
a version where it says, you know, make friends with mammon, you
know, make friends with dishonest wealth, so that when it's gone, you'll
be welcome into eternal dwellings. It's very it's a very strange and suspicious thing.
But when I was thinking about it during the seminar, I think it
hit me. I think at least I saw the applicability of this parable.
And this will bother some people because the only way I can see it as
being applicable is something like an a moral frame. It's hard to look at
it with morality and understand it. But as I've said before, I think
Jesus that Christ is not just representing moral principles, although he is, he's
especially representing the way the world works. That is, he's representing an image
of reality, of how identities function of how unity and multiplicity come together.
And so I think this is what he's dealing with. Now. The way
that I came to understand it was because I think there's an example of what
Jesus is talking about in the Old Testament, and that example is in the
story of the two Spies that go to Jericho. Now think about it,
the story of the two spies in Jericho. When the two spies go to
Jericho, they stay with a prostitute named Rehab. Now, this prostitute lives
in the wall of the city. And it's important to understand these two aspects
of her because on the one hand, she lives in the wall the city,
which means she's on the margin, you know, quite literally on the
margin. And she also is a prostitute and therefore has very little steak in
the identity of the nation, right that isn't that's what the prostitute is.
You know, a prostitute is someone who is let's say, connected to multiple
people and doesn't have one identity, one husband, you know, the let's
say the origin of her children is not known, and so she is someone
who doesn't have a stake in the identity of the city. And so what
she does is that as she discovers that the city is about to be destroyed,
she basically gives her house, gives her home over to the strangers,
and not only the strangers, but the strangers that will destroy the city.
And so she takes you could say, the wealth of the city or the
value of the city, and she hands it over to these two spies that
are going to come and destroy it. And so when the two spies finally
and the army of Israel comes in and they turn around the city and the
city is destroyed. The only person that survives, and the only family that
survives is Rahab and her family. You know, and even you know,
you have this image that it's the only part of the wall that is not
destroyed is the place where Rehab lived in the wall. And she leaves this
red thread, which you know, comes out of her window out into the
outside. So I think that this red thread, which moves from the inside
to the outside is what this parable is talking about, which is that what
Christ is describing is the manner in which you change worlds, which is the
manner in which when a world is ending, the way to move into a
new world is to take the strength of the world that is ending and seed
it into the next world, so that when this world ends, you find
a place in the next world. This is exactly what Rehab is doing.
She's she's betraying her country. You know, I've thought about this for a
long time in terms of Rehab, because I always tried to read the Gospel
stories from both sides, you know, with through the lens of all the
characters, and when you read it from the point of view of the people
of Jericho, Rehab is a trader. Rehab betrays her nation to the two
spies, and when they take over, she's able to survive and find a
home. And even Jewish traditions and you know, kind of secondary traditions that
say that Rab marry Joshua, that she was Joshua's wife, which is it's
pretty fascinating, and so you know, if you look at it morally,
it's very difficult. But if you look at it in terms of just it
is how a world ends and how another begins, you can understand how that's
the type of shrewd behavior that you would want to do if you were facing
a situation like that, which is I don't know, you know, imagine
just someone who's about to lose their job, just similar to the to the
manager, even if they're not dishonest, someone's about to lose their job is
going to take their time in that work, you know, or if they're
noticing that the company is about to be destroyed, they're going to take their
time and that work in order to make friends with people from another company in
order to be able to change worlds once that happens. Now, that is
a moral version of it, But you can imagine someone in a much shrewder
way, you know, So someone who uses the knowledge that they learned at
one company in order to find place in another. We see that all the
time in tech companies, which is that the things that you've learned in one
company, the knowledge that you've acquired and the technology you've developed, that's pretty
valuable. If you have to switch camps, then you have to go into
another in another camp. And so that seems to be what it is that
christ is describing the ultimate version of that, I think, And in some
ways, the strangely the most moral version of that, I think has to
do with the manner in which Christianity moved from Israel and moved from Jerusalem to
Rome. And what's wonderful about this version of it is that it actually is
not a moral it's actually quite moral, which is that even if the Christians
didn't totally understand the warnings that Jesus was giving about the daughters of Jerusalem and
taught he has these prophecies that he gives to Jerusalem to say, you know,
watch out, because one day you'll run out into the hills and you'll
be You'll want you would rather die than go through what's about to happen.
It was predicting the destruction of Jerusalem. But the man in which the Christians
acted, which is the fact that they went out and seeded the word of
God, seated the traditions even of Israel, recapitulated in Christ into this new
seed. They seeded that out into the external world, especially in the Roman
world. The fact that they also were not revolutionaries, that they that they
helped the poor, that they took in the orphans, that they did all
these things to in order to kind of make friends in the other world.
Then once Jerusalem was destroyed, then that place became their home for all intents
and purposes. Even though you know, they still were persecuted, but it
became the new soil into which they grew. And you know, the old
world, which is the world of Israel, is now seeded into Rome.
So that seems to be the most powerful version of what this this parable is
talking about, and you know, in a way a manner that is not
related to an amoral version of it, you know, and so then you
can then apply it once you see that when it's like, okay, well
that's what it's talking about. It's talking about the idea that if you're going
to change worlds, you should seed into the next world in order for once
this world the crumble, then you move into the next one. You take
the strength of this world, you take the power of this world, you
take you know, even the value of this world, and you start to
aim it towards the next world. That now we can understand why Jesus is
talking about this in terms of the idea of eternal dwellings or the idea of,
you know, the end of all things in the new world, in
the sense of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, which is
that you know, he's saying, look at how shrewd people are acting with
money even willing to take the money of the Master in order to seed into
the next world. When you could say that about now yourself. Now,
if you think about your own soul, which is to take your strength,
to take your energy, to take your intentions and to seed them into the
next world, to invest in the Kingdom of Heaven, you know, even
if it means the loss of your energy here, so you can imagine the
martyrs, that's exactly what they've done. They've basically taken the strength of their
life and be willing to completely lose it in order to seed it into the
next world. That seems to be what is going on in terms of the
in terms of the story. And so I think that once you think about
it this way, understanding that the story of rehab is actually an application of
this parable into our lives. Although it seems shocking at first, and you
can find examples that are quite dark and that include betraying your nation, you
can also see that the highest version of it, right, the most redemptive
version of it, does not need to be so dark and represents, you
know, both the way that Christians spread the seed out into the outer world
and we're able to gather the fish outside, and we're able to to have
trees grow in Rome and Armenia and Ethiopia and all the places where Christianity sprouted
up. But also it's a good understanding of how sacrificing your own strength and
your own life and your own intentions today is ultimately seeding into the Kingdom of
Heaven. And so I hope this was useful, and I hope that it
at least opening your mind to a different way or a little further in the
understanding of this very strange parable So thank you for your time, Thanks again
everybody for your support, and we'll talk to you very soon.