08.02 God or Mammon
II. GOD OR MAMMON The concluding words give the real key to the interpretation of the parable: “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” The test of every man’s real value is his answer to the question What is the ultimate aim of your life? Tell me what you are really living for and I will tell you what you are. In the last resort, there are but two answers to that supreme question: the one, God; the other, Mammon. The aim of life must be finally either the service of self or the service of God. Most men, capable of asking themselves the question, avoid and postpone the answer. But while their thought delays, their life moves: and its main movement gives the answer. Every man’s life whatever his theories may be is gradually settling down into a final answer. To succeed is to look that answer fairly in the face and choose and concentrate all one’s energies upon it. To fail, is to avoid it, or, worse still, to adopt sometimes one answer, sometimes the other. Divided service has always the doom of failure and futility upon it He who in the common way of speaking tries to “make the best of both worlds” makes nothing really of either. He merely loses his chance of enjoying either himself or God. If the unjust steward had hesitated in carrying out his crime, had allowed scruples of conscience to hamper and hinder him, he would have failed hopelessly he would have lost both the stewardship to which he had been unfaithful and the friends whom he had tried by his trick to secure. His only chance was to be prompt, thorough, unscrupulous; and he succeeded.
Therefore his “lord commended the unrighteous steward because he had done prudently; for the sons of this world are for their own generation wiser, more prudent, than the sons of the light.” That is, with reference to their own real standard of life, their own choice of its main motive, once they have made the choice, their success depends on the determination with which they act upon it. Because they recognize this fact, and allow no scruples to deter them, no half-heartedness and fearfulness to trouble them, they win their object. And thus, in their own chosen line, they are an example of prudence to the “sons of the light” in theirs. If these sons of the light really mean to choose God as their Master, and His service as the aim of their life, they should be just as wholehearted, decided, and courageous. If they, consciously or unconsciously, try to make terms for themselves and their own desires, or to make compromises with the “world,” then they are doomed to a double failure.
They will fail to enjoy Mammon because their service of it will be spoiled by the scruples and rebukes of conscience. They will fail to enjoy God, because their service of Him will be spoiled by their indulgence of alien desires. In teaching this lesson, the parable of the unjust steward has a striking modern parallel in Browning’s poem, “The Statue and the Bust.” That poem has often caused the same difficulties, it enforces the same truth. The two lovers are condemned because they had not the courage and whole-heartedness to stake all for the fulfilment of their love.
Let me quote the words in which the poet points his moral:
“Let a man contend to the uttermost, For his life’s set prize, be what it will! The counterour lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say, You of the virtue (we issue join) How strive you? De te, fabula!” That is just our Lord’s warning to us who wish to be the “sons of the light,” the servants of God. “Concerning you is the parable: how are you striving in your life’s aim? Are you, for your generation with reference to your professed purpose showing anything like the foresight, the decisiveness, the tenacity of the unjust steward? But for your success these qualities are just as necessary as for his.” It is a truth strangely forgotten but abundantly verified by experience, that if it is worth while to be religious at all, it is worth while to be religious “out and out.” That is, after all so the parable teaches us common-sense, prudence.
TAGS: [Parables]