Jesus wants you to steal.

I have to confess that I never understood Jesus' parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1-12). It was only recently, while reading Richard Horsley's book "Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs," that it finally made sense to me. I've read several of Horsley's books but for some reason it finally made sense to me now.

I've heard sermons on the parable and read things on it, but they always spiritualize the text or assume a social context similar to our own, by which I mean an industrial (though perhaps we're post-industrial) economy with a middle class. That's not the case. The steward was not skimming money off the top, and his master was not a legitimate business man, but a wealthy landlord operating with the blessing of Rome who was probably given a vast estate that already belonged to others. What was owed him was part of a vicious cycle of economic exploitation where the poor were robbed of even the little that they had. (Some estimates put total taxation at 2/3 of crops.) Eventually, through Roman taxation, local taxation, and the temple taxes (what we call "tithe"), peasant farmers, surviving on subsistence farming and dependent on good weather, would often lose their land and end up as day laborers working for an absentee landlord for meager wages. Such conditions resulted in increased banditry, among other things. The New Testament shows evidence of this in Jesus' trial. Barabas, who was release instead of Jesus-- was an insurrectionist, one of many. Likewise, the two crucified next to Jesus were bandits, not mere theives. They robbed Roman caravans, and often shared the wealth with local villages, who offerred the bandits protection from local authorities. History is full of such examples, the most famous being Robin Hood.

But Robin Hood stole. Does that mean that what he did was wrong? Not according to Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argues that since all things belong to God, when a poor person takes what he needs as a matter of survival from a rich person, he is not stealing. I think Jesus would agree.

The "dishonest steward" was not giving up his commission in writing down the debts of farmers (certainly the beneficiaries of his action, rather than merchants). Rather, he was breaking the stranglehold of economic exploitation that follows imperialism. He was giving the farmers a fighting chance. In a society where patronage was the norm, this would have indebted the farmes to him. They would not owe him goods, but hospitality. He was creating space for himself among the villagers as a sort of hero, as some one who dared to take on the system, even if his motives were not entirely charitable. And since the peasants would have viewed the Roman occupation is illegitimate, and collaborators as heretics, then it was a hero's welcome he would have.

So what do Jesus' comments on the story mean? "Use worldly wealth to gain friends for youreself so that when it is gone, you may be welcome into eternal dwellings." A typical interpreation would not be able to make sense of this. But if we read it within the upside down matrix of the kingdom, it makes sense. Jesus wants us to use the mechanisms available to us to do good. (Think Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello having a Harvard education.) We need to be as shrewd as we can in order to help others secure their well being, specifically the poor, for whom God has a "preferential option." Sometimes what we're called to do may not be legal, but history has shone that was is legal and what is right are not always the same thing. In the kingdom we sometimes defy the world's code of ethics in order to serve a greater good, and when we do this we are faithful.

Note: This is not the same as doing evil to bring about good. That is strictly forbidden. What this means is that we do good, even if such good defied cultural norms, sensitivities, or laws.