When one reads the Gospels of the NT, there are several parables which stand out as either obscure or ambiguous. For example, the parable of the rich man’s steward-the guy who is about to be dismissed for incompetance, who then saves himself by allowing his master’s creditors to cancel their debts! Seems like the parable is endorsing embezzlement!
The one that really has me puzzled is one that I cannot name the source (I don’t have aBible handy). It goes like this…“a man takes an eveil spirit and dwells with it… the last part of a man’s life is worst that the first”…
This is really obscure to me-what is it supposed to mean?
This is why they have Bible Commentaries. There are a lot of them, and I’m sure they end up explaining things in different ways.
Some of the Biblical comentaries dissect down to the individual line. I have the Pelican commentaries for the four evangelists. The Anchor Bible commentaries, in the same vein, are supposed to be quite good.
No doubt there are some such commentaries on-line.
Al I can suggest is that you get hold of a few of these and ream 'em. Choose what you want to believe from the stack.
I don’t recognize that particular parable. Perhaps over time, you have garbled it beyond recognition, assuming you heard it correctly to begin with. At any rate, here is a Handy Bible for you in ten languages, including many English versions, with an excellent search engine.
Here is the entire Strong’s Concordance with original Greek and Hebrew interlinear and lots of commentaries.
And I opened this thread thinking that it was some sort of weird Windows thread… 
Zev Steinhardt
What about the one that says you can guarantee 99.9% uptime ?
OOH!! “NT” … you mean ‘New Testament’! I thought you meant the other NT.
: : ducking and running : :
darn zev, you beat me to it!
It takes him.
Matthew 12:44 - 46.
The parable I think you are confused by is where the guy has/is possessed by an evil spirit. This is non-voluntary, as becomes clear from the rest of the parable. The evil spirit is then cast out of the guy, and “wanders thru waterless places seeking to find rest”. He then finds none, and returns to the guy he originally possessed, and finds things all cleaned up, spiritually speaking. He then gets seven other spirits worse than himself, and “the end of that man is worse than the beginning”.
Jesus is saying to the Pharisees that He can take care of their problems (by dying to save them from their sins) but they will go out and find worse problems, because they will not believe in Him, who is the only protection from spiritual degradation.
The other is Luke 16:8 - 10, and I am afraid I can only guess what my Lord is saying on that one.
Yours in Christ,
Shodan
It looks like the story in Luke 16:1-8:
[quote]
[ol]
[li]He said also to his disciples, "There was a certain rich man, who had a manager. The same was accused to him of wasting his possessions.[/li][li]He called him, and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’[/li][li]The steward said within himself, ‘What will I do, seeing that my lord is taking away the management position from me? I don’t have strength to dig. I am ashamed to beg.[/li][li]I know what I will do, so that when I am removed from management, they may receive me into their houses.’[/li][li]Calling each one of his lord’s debtors to him, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe to my lord?’[/li][li]He said, ‘A hundred batos of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’[/li][li]Then said he to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred cors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’[/li][li]His lord commended the unrighteous steward because he had done wisely, for the sons of this world are, in their own generation, wiser than the sons of the light.[/ol][/li][/quote]
I don’t quite get what’s going on. Is he giving his master’s debtors (those that owe him) the paperwork for their debts in exchange for a fraction of what they actually owe, then showing his master that all his debtors have paid off (“See, no paperwork!”), plus here’s all the stuff.
This parable is saying that the manager is only serving himself, and not his master, even though it looks that way to the master.
Luke 16:13 summarizes this:
The meaning of the parable of the corrupt steward SHOULD be obvious to anyone with an IQ and a LITTLE imagination. The whole story is a metaphor for the way you live your life on earth.
Short version of the story:
A steward gets a message from his boss: “Turn in your account books. As soon as we finish closing out your accounts, you’re fired!” The steward figures, “My employment is almost over. It may take the boss a few hours, a few days, maybe a week to close out the books, and THEN I’ll be out on the street. I’d better do something NOW to make sure I have another job lined up, when this one is gone.” So, he did some dirty deals to ingratiate himself with some of the other businessmen who dealt with his boss. As a result, he had some important people who owed him favors, and he knew that one of them would surely hire him when he was finally fired.
MORAL:
Think of you life on Earth as a job. Well, then, getting fired is obviously a metaphor for death!
In a sense, then, EVERY human being is on notice that his job is being terminated. We don’t know exactly when, but we know we won’t have our current jobs (i.e. our lives on Earth) for long. So, if we want to have another job waiting for us when this one is over (if we want to go to Heaven when we die) we should do something about it NOW, while we have the chance.
A man who knows that there are layoffs imminent at his workplace shouldn’t wait until the moment he gets his pink slip to look for a new job. He should start looking now… and he should start taking action to make sure he has a new job lined up. Similarly, we all know we’re going to die, so we should act NOW to make sure we have a better place to go after we die!
In a crude sense, loving your neighbor, giving to the poor, and leading a good life are not only virtuous, they’re smart moves. Think of them as things that will look good on the resume you hand St. Peter.