The People I Cannot Charge

There is a list of people you cannot charge, and the list has been growing for years.

It started small and it started reasonably. Your sister, obviously. The woman at church who had the hard year. Your neighbor, because she watches the house. The friend who told four other people about you and brought you actual work.

And now you have looked at this week, and of the seven things you did, four of them were for people on that list.

Nobody on it is taking advantage of you. That is the part that makes it hard to talk about. They are lovely, most of them do not know what you normally charge, and two of them have asked more than once and you have waved it away.

I am not going to tell you to be tougher. And I am not going to give you a rule about friends and family, because a rule would be advice and this is not that kind of place. I am going to look at one name.

The ox and the reward

There is a pair of quotations Paul puts together in a letter to Timothy, and the first one is about an animal.

He is arguing that people who do work should be supported for it, and he reaches for two things at once: a farming law from Deuteronomy and a saying about wages.

For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward. (1 Timothy 5:18, King James Version)

You are not meant to be muzzled while you work, and you never were. 1 Timothy 5:18 puts an ox eating while it treads and a worker receiving a reward in the same breath as one single principle, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with a diary open on it.

Sit with the picture for a second, because the picture is doing the work. An ox walking in circles on a threshing floor, grain under its feet all day, and a law saying nobody may stop it eating.

Not a reward afterwards. Not a bonus if the harvest goes well. The ox eats while it works, because the work and the eating belong together, and God wrote that down about an animal.

You have something that belongs together, and separating the work from the eating has never once been godliness. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a threshing floor law reach a woman looking at seven jobs and four of them free, and 1 Timothy 5:18 binds the working and the receiving into one thought.

What the list is really for

Let me say what I think the list is, because it is not generosity, or it is not only generosity.

Every name on it is a relationship where you do not have to say a price. And saying a price is the hard part. So the list is not a list of people you love, it is a list of conversations you have avoided, and it has grown exactly as fast as your discomfort has.

You were avoiding a sentence and not a person, and you have never once needed to. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own free list has been protecting her from, and the written word refuses to separate the working from the eating in 1 Timothy 5:18.

And here is what it is doing to them, which will surprise you. Two of those people feel awkward. They want to use you and they are not sure they are allowed to ask twice, and the not knowing is worse for them than a price would be.

You have not given them a gift. You have given them an unclear arrangement, and unclear arrangements cost friends more than money does.

You are not being kind by being vague, and vagueness has never once protected anybody. His Spirit is the one who makes a plain arrangement possible between people who love each other, and 1 Timothy 5:18 treats the worker's reward as a matter of plain right rather than of goodwill.

One name, not the list

So here is the exercise, and it is deliberately one name.

Do not reform the list. Do not send a message to everybody announcing a new policy, because that is a campaign and it will go badly and you will not do it anyway.

Pick one name. The easiest one. Probably not your sister. And the next time that person asks, say the ordinary price, flat, the same way you would to anybody.

You are able to name one price to one person, and naming it has never once been the end of a friendship. 1 Timothy 5:18 puts the ox and the worker together as one principle about receiving, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain sentence possible to somebody a woman loves.

Do not explain it. No speech about how things have got busy, no apology, no reference to the past. A price, said once, the way the weather gets mentioned.

They will say fine. Almost certainly. And if they are surprised, they will be surprised for about four seconds, and then it will be the new normal and neither of you will ever mention it again.

You were never going to lose somebody over a price, and you are not going to now. The Spirit of God carries a plain arrangement past the fear of seeming grasping, and the written word says the worker is worthy of his reward in 1 Timothy 5:18 without a single condition attached.