“…The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” (Luke 16:8).
I was reading the parable of the rich man and the steward and it got me to thinking…
“Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward’...So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’...for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” (Luke 16:1-8).
And what struck me about this story was the dishonesty of the steward. He thought nothing of the fact that he was lying. A lie was as nothing to him. He had lived dishonestly in his life and was therefore immune to the feeling of dishonesty because he had become accustomed to it…
It was of no consequence to the corrupt steward that he was lying and cheating to secure his place in the world. And I remember learning about a similar concept many many years ago when I was studying taxation law at university. I remember my university lecturer saying that people had different sensitivities in relation to tax evasion. You see tax evasion is theft. It is stealing from the government. However, because many people feel that the government is unjust they think nothing of doing what they can to evade their tax debt. And this is important. You see, this means that people who would ever think for a moment about steal a bar of chocolate from a supermarket, think nothing of stealing thousands of dollars from the government in the form of tax evasion.
And I have been thinking about those sort of lies as I have been considering the lies in my own life…
Saint Maximilian Kolbe said, “No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it.” And he said this because it is God who is the Truth and God Himself who came to the world as the Truth – the WORD MADE FLESH. And it is this truth that I should keep at the forefront of my mind…
For Judas Iscariot betrayed the Son of Man with a kiss. But he was only able to do that because he had become immune to the little lies over time…
And as I sit at my desk I wonder… What affect do all those little lies have on me?
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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