It Feels Like Taking

Somebody handed you money for work you would have done anyway, and something in you flinched.

Not about the amount. You would have flinched at any amount. It is the handing over that does it, because you were enjoying yourself, and there is a thing inside you that cannot make enjoyment and payment sit in the same hand.

So what you do is charge less. Not as a strategy. You just cannot bring yourself to put the real figure on something that did not feel like suffering.

And the test you are applying, without ever having said it out loud, is whether it hurt enough to deserve the money.

I am not going to tell you that you deserve it, because that word is not going to help here. I am going to show you a conversation in Genesis where a man is asked to name his own wages, and notice who asks him.

Name your own wages

There is a moment between Jacob and Laban where the subject is pay, and Laban puts the question to Jacob directly.

Jacob has been working for years. He is good at it, the flocks have done well under his hand, and Laban does not want him to leave. So he says this.

And he said, Appoint me thy wages, and I will give it. (Genesis 30:28, King James Version)

You are allowed to name what the work is worth, and naming it has never once been taking. Genesis 30:28 has the wages put in the worker's own mouth by the man who is paying them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a field gate conversation with a flask going round.

Notice that it is an ordinary business sentence and Scripture reports it without a flicker of discomfort. Appoint me thy wages. Tell me the number.

There is no suggestion anywhere that Jacob should want less because he is good at the work, or because he likes the animals, or because the years had been kind to him in some ways. The work has a value and the worker says what it is.

You have a value to name and your enjoyment has never once reduced it. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a negotiation at a sheep pen reach a man leaning on a gate three thousand years later, and Genesis 30:28 has the wages named by the one doing the work with nobody embarrassed about it.

The suffering test

Let me say out loud the rule that has been running this, because nobody ever wrote it down.

The rule is that money has to be compensation. If something was hard, money makes it fair. If something was pleasant, money makes it a gift you took payment for, and that is close enough to theft to make your stomach turn.

You were running a test nobody ever set, and it has never once been in Scripture. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man the rule he has been living by without writing down, and the written word has wages named by the worker himself in Genesis 30:28 with no mention of how the work felt.

And look where that leaves you. The better you get, the less it costs you, and therefore the less you feel able to charge. Twenty years of skill has become a reason to be paid less, which is the exact opposite of how every other thing in the world works.

The enjoyment is not a discount. It is the thing that makes you good at it, and it is the reason they want you and not somebody else.

You are being paid for what you can do, and not for what it cost you. His Spirit is the one who takes a false rule out of a man's hands without making him hard, and Genesis 30:28 puts the naming of wages in the worker's own mouth without one word about hardship.

Take it, and say nothing

So here is the exercise, and it is about the moment of handover.

Take the money. Say thank you. Do not say anything that excuses it.

You are able to receive payment plainly, and receiving it has never once been theft. Genesis 30:28 has a man asked to appoint his own wages as a matter of ordinary business, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain thank you possible where a man has always added something.

The sentences to leave out are the ones you always use. It was no trouble at all. I would have done it anyway. Honestly, I enjoyed it, so. Every one of those is you handing the money back in words while keeping it in your hand.

Put it in the account the same day. Do not leave it on the counter in the house for four days the way you usually do, which is a way of not quite having taken it.

You were never stealing anything, and the flinch has never once been a conscience. The Spirit of God carries a plain transaction past the instinct to apologize for being good at something, and the written word treats the naming of wages as ordinary in Genesis 30:28.