Drive-By Scripture, Luke 12:42

Been so heavy on satire lately, and on my novel (including yet another installment today, which concludes chapter 4), that I figured I’d better have something spiritual right here, right now to help restore balance to the Force. Sorry, got off on a “Stars Wars” tangent there. Anyway…

And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? (Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verse 42)

Now, this is just one tiny snippet of a much larger section. Chapter 12 in the Gospel of Luke is chock full of parables about being good stewards and good servants. I encourage you to read the whole shebang, which you can get to by clicking here.

The reason I have the passage above, and the reason it’s in the King James Version (KJV) instead of the New International Version (NIV) that’s in the links I offered, is largely because of the word “steward” used in the KJV. You hear a lot of talk about stewardship these days. “Are we being wise stewards of our planet?” being one of the big questions posed to us as we continue to consume natural resources and commercial products.

In the United States, we use oil and other forms of energy as if we’re the only people on the planet who matter and we’ve created an uber-consumeristic society that demands we keep buying new crappy shit to replace the crappy shit we had that still worked so that we can increase our credit burden and clog the landfills while we’re at it.

We aren’t being wise stewards. God gave us a precious world, and we piss on it. And then we expect him to bless us with prosperity.

I’ve seen bumper stickers that say, “If we want God to protect this country, shouldn’t we honor his Ten Commandments?” Well, if we want him to keep us from crashing and burning, shouldn’t we stop mistreating his planet, too?

Advertisement