Luke 16:5

This verse begins a process of using external religious ideas – the steward – to seek what is good and true in the variety of spiritual ideas "borrowed" from the true internal spiritual knowledge represented by the rich man.

The idea begins to get complex here, but think of it this way: Someone who truly loves others and loves doing good things for people does not need a strict set of exact rules on how to put that love into action. He can look at a situation and choose his response based on whether it fits the love he feels – a state of wisdom rather than mere rationality. For this man, the rules might actually be damaging, creating doubts and questions that could let the evil inside them infest his loves. And on the deepest level of meaning, the Lord as the "rich man" certainly needs and has no rules telling Him how to behave – He is goodness itself.

But that doesn’t mean the rules are useless. They can be very helpful to "debtors," or people who have learned about loving the neighbor but haven’t internalized it yet. Forcing their lives into external order is going to help them put their internal lives into internal order as well.