Well, yeah, but it's not really about money nor is it about normal everyday work situations between a boss and his hired help. I would have been quite annoyed by such a story when I was young too, by the way, for much the same reasons as you are, Wolfgang.

One has to assume that in the society of Jesus' time people were general fairly familiar with the kind of parables that he used to describe spiritual problems and solutions. If not, he would not have spoken to them in that fashion, but in some fashion more suitable to their understanding. It was a society where virtually everyone was quite religious, and would probably understand that such a story was symbolic, not literal.

Now suppose that you took a modern speaker who talks to people about positive thinking, using all of our present vernacular and expressions...and then translated it (as best you could) into ancient Hebrew and went back in a time machine to the year 3 BC and read it to the locals in Palestine. I suspect they would find a lot of it confusing or incomprehensible. You would probably end up getting stoned to death or something. :-)

This is one reason why I do not place my sole dependence for spiritual inspiration on ancient texts and teachers, but instead read all the modern stuff I can on the subject, and try to find living teachers as well. There are some out there.

- LH