The Plumbline

One of the silliest arguments I have heard is that of whether God wants his people to be rich or not.  In some "circles" of influence within the church, there are those who proclaim God wants you to be wealthy - so keep "claiming" you will be wealthy and it will eventually happen.  Then there are those who say God didn't want his people to be wealthy because wealth destroys people and should only be used to "win souls to Christ".  While both sides of the coin (no pun intended) carry a valid argument, neither is right on.  Whenever we take some portion of scripture and quote it out of context, we are in danger of believing something only "partially" true - because we lifted only one portion of what was said.  Partial truth may be truth, but it isn't the full truth - we want truth, but we want all of it.  As Jesus is talking to the crowds, he has talked about the kingdom of God being the "possession" of those who are "poor i...

Some of the stories in the Bible are what we refer to as parables - they might tell one thing (having a "surface meaning"), but when you ponder them in the light of the day in which they were taught, you find a much deeper meaning to the story.  If you read the first sixteen verses Luke 16, you are treated to a story about what appears to be instructions in business dealings, or on how to be shrewd in our dealings with financial matters. As the story unfolds, we begin to see a manager taking advantage of his position - he just hoped the boss wouldn't notice!  In today's vernacular, we'd probably liken what he did to "padding his expenses" on the corporate expense account.  It works for a while, but when an audit of the books is called for, his actions are uncovered. I guess you won't be surprised to learn he loses his job - but it doesn't stop him from being as shrewd as he had been in his previous position. In fact, he begins an entirely new ven...