By: John S. Morlu II, CPA
Imagine a sold-out TED Talk in a shiny convention center.
The slide behind the speaker reads in bold red:
“Crisis Management 101: How to Get Fired on Friday and Still Have Friends by Monday.”
And out walks the keynote speaker.
No Harvard MBA.
No Silicon Valley unicorn.
No hedge-fund billionaire.
Just an unassuming first-century estate manager — the man Jesus made famous in a parable that has baffled theologians and delighted satirists for two millennia.
Scene One: The Pink Slip — Ancient World Edition
The setting: Roman-era Judea.
A world where land was concentrated in the hands of absentee landlords, often tied to Roman elites.
Large estates needed professional stewards — the middle managers of antiquity — to oversee crops, collect rents, pay taxes, and keep the ledgers.
They were powerful but expendable.
Our parable’s master — call him the Olive-Oil Baron of Galilee — gets reports that his steward is “wasting” his goods.
In a society where olive oil and wheat were both food and export commodities, this is no minor infraction.
The steward is summoned:
“What’s this I hear about you? Bring the account books.
You’re finished.”
In HR jargon: “Performance issues, loss of trust, imminent termination.”
The steward freezes.
He isn’t built for ditch-digging, and begging is social suicide.
He mutters the first timeless line of crisis management:
“I need a plan.”
💡 Critical Insight:
In the ancient Near East, a steward’s reputation was his entire retirement plan.
Lose the trust of the landowning class and you’re unemployable — like a disgraced CFO in a tightly knit financial sector.
Scene Two: The Crisis Pivot
What happens next is both scandalous and brilliant.
The steward decides to turn his remaining hours in office into a leverage opportunity.
He calls in the estate’s biggest debtors.
These are not small farmers; they’re significant tenants and merchants.
- “You owe my master 100 measures of olive oil? Make it 50.”
- “You owe 100 measures of wheat? Make it 80.”
In modern MBA-speak:
“Slash the receivables, create a network of grateful allies — hedge your unemployment risk.”
Fun facts:
- A bath of oil ≈ 8–9 gallons. Cutting 100 baths to 50 means forgiving about 4,000+ liters of high-value olive oil.
- A kor of wheat ≈ 10–12 bushels. Reducing the debt from 100 to 80 means forgiving 7–8 tons of grain.
That’s not a coupon. That’s a major balance-sheet rewrite.
It’s also an act of social jiu-jitsu: in a patron-client society, reducing someone’s debt binds them to you with gratitude — a favor you can later call in.
📌 Critical Insight:
Most scholars think the steward was cutting out his own commission or illegal surcharge, not robbing the master directly.
Either way, he’s betting everything on strategic generosity — creating a safety net of goodwill.
Scene Three: The Ironic Commendation
Here comes the twist worthy of a political thriller.
The master — instead of having the steward prosecuted — actually commends him:
“You sly fox. Cornered, you at least acted with foresight.”
Jesus delivers the punch line to His disciples, word-for-word from Luke 16:
“The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.
Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.”
💡 Critical Insight:
Jesus does not condone the steward’s dishonesty.
He highlights a contrast: even corrupt people can recognize a crisis and act decisively — why do those who claim to seek higher purposes so often fail to act with similar foresight?
Moral Twist — The Inconvenient Lesson
The Bible is not handing out the Fraud of the Year Award.
It’s holding up a mirror:
“If hustlers can hustle for a short-term future, why can’t the faithful plan wisely for the long-term future?”
It’s not a celebration of trickery — it’s a satire of spiritual inertia.
Historical & Cultural Color
- The Debts Show the Scale: The estate was large; the manager’s decisions impacted an entire local economy.
- Public Perception: Debt remission often happened publicly. The master may have felt pressured to accept the reductions to save face.
- Social Contracts: In that society, favors created a web of obligations more binding than written contracts.
💡 Critical Insight:
This is why Jesus’ audience would have nodded knowingly.
The steward wasn’t just shrewd — he understood the rules of his culture’s survival game.
The Satirical Mirror for Our Times
Two thousand years later, the playbook hasn’t changed.
- Politicians forgive debts or slash taxes right before elections — a modern form of strategic “debt reduction.”
- CEOs announce “efficiency pivots” (translation: layoffs), then land comfortably on new boards.
- Influencers flog hustle culture in daylight and overpriced miracle courses by night.
We gasp at a first-century steward who played the same game with a reed stylus and clay tablets.
💡 Thought-Provoking Twist:
It’s easier for many people to respect cunning that delivers survival than to respect steady, principled planning that delivers nothing spectacular in the short term.
That’s not just an ancient problem — that’s us.
Machiavelli’s Footnote
Niccolò Machiavelli, centuries later, would have nodded approvingly:
“A man who foresees danger and acts before it acts upon him is a man who understands power.”
Jesus’ moral is sharper:
“If even foxes know winter is coming and prepare, why do the sheep pretend it isn’t?”
💡 Critical Insight:
The parable exposes not merely the steward’s cunning but the complacency of the righteous — who often trust in lofty ideals yet fail to make concrete plans.
Closing Punch — The Eternal ROI
The parable is not a handbook for fraud.
It’s a roast of spiritual procrastinators and short-sighted idealists.
Modern translation:
“Stop being shocked at the cunning of hustlers.
Be at least as deliberate in using your resources for what truly matters as they are in gaming the system.
Eternal ROI beats quarterly ROI.”
Fun punch line:
The steward prepared for unemployment with a few urgent conversations and some quick math.
Today’s world offers unlimited tools — spreadsheets, CRMs, mentors, project-management apps — yet many still sleepwalk through life as if there’s no reckoning ahead.
💡 Thought-Provoking Insight:
The parable challenges not just personal procrastination but whole religious cultures that can celebrate lofty rhetoric yet avoid practical planning.
Final Moral in One Sentence
If people with no higher vision can plan wisely to save themselves in a crisis, people who claim to have higher vision should plan even more wisely — with urgency, integrity, and purpose — for what ultimately counts.
Author: John S. Morlu II, CPA is the CEO and Chief Strategist of JS Morlu, leads a globally recognized public accounting and management consultancy firm. Under his visionary leadership, JS Morlu has become a pioneer in developing cutting-edge technologies across B2B, B2C, P2P, and B2G verticals. The firm’s groundbreaking innovations include AI-powered reconciliation software (ReckSoft.com) and advanced cloud accounting solutions (FinovatePro.com), setting new industry standards for efficiency, accuracy, and technological excellence.