I Do Not Want To Be Greedy

It is the word greedy.

It sits somewhere near the middle of you, and it has been there since you were young, and it is why the number that comes out of your mouth is always slightly lower than the one in your head.

And I want to say straight away that the instinct behind it is not a bad one. A man who never wants to be greedy is usually a man who has watched greed do damage somewhere, and decided.

So this is not going to be an article telling you to want more. That would be the wrong medicine for you entirely.

What I want to do is show you that the word has drifted, and that what it is currently attached to is not greed at all.

You are not greedy, and asking to be paid for work already done has never once been the same thing as wanting more than your share.

Greed is wanting what is not yours. It is the taking of somebody else's portion, or the taking of more than the thing was worth, or the arranging of a situation so that a person has no choice.

Asking to be paid for work is none of those. It is the completion of a transaction that has already been half performed by you.

And there is a second thing, and it is the one that brings men to a page like this at ten at night.

Your children are watching. They are learning what a man does with his own work, and they are learning it from the sentence you say at the doorway.

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox

There is a line in Deuteronomy that looks like farm regulation and is quoted twice in the New Testament about paying people.

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. (Deuteronomy 25:4, King James Version)

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox.

The ox is working. Grain is going past its mouth. The instruction is that it is not to be prevented from eating some of what it is standing in.

You are on the right side of a command that exists to stop a worker being kept from the thing he is producing, and eating while you work has never once been theft. Deuteronomy 25:4 says thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put that instruction into the law in the first place.

And notice who the command is aimed at. Not the ox. The owner.

Nobody is telling the ox to be careful about how much it takes. The whole weight of the sentence is on the one who might withhold.

You have been policing yourself with a rule that was written for somebody else, and a worker watching his own portion has never once been the person that command was worried about. The Holy Spirit is the one who reads a law to the right party, and it is written in Deuteronomy 25:4 as an instruction to the man with the grain.

What your children are actually learning

Now the part that I think matters more than the money in this particular house.

Children do not learn about work from what a man says about work. They learn it from the thirty seconds at a doorway when somebody asks what they owe him.

They learn whether a man is embarrassed by his own labor. They learn whether being paid is a slightly shameful thing that decent people hurry past. They learn what tone a good man uses about his own worth.

You are teaching something in those thirty seconds whether you intend to or not, and a father at a doorway has never once been off duty as a teacher. The written word protects the worker's portion by name, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present at an ordinary doorway with a child in the hall behind you.

And here is the specific risk, and I say it as a question rather than as a charge.

If your daughter watches you apologize for your own price for fifteen years, what will she do at twenty six when somebody asks her what she charges.

You have a child who will do what you do rather than what you say, and a habit watched from the hallway has never once failed to travel. The Holy Spirit is the one who breaks a pattern before it gets handed on, and Deuteronomy 25:4 puts the protection on the working creature rather than on the owner's comfort.

Say it in front of them

So the assignment, and there is a piece of it that is specific to you.

Say your price out loud to yourself three times, then say it to the next person who asks.

And if it can be arranged without making a performance of it, say one of them where your children can hear.

Not a lesson. Not a speech about money afterward. Just the ordinary event of their father naming a price in a level voice and not apologizing for it.

You are able to let them see one plain exchange, and a child overhearing a fair transaction has never once learned something worse for it. The Spirit of God is the one who works through what a household sees rather than what it is told, and the written word protects the worker in the middle of his working.

And if the word greedy comes up in your own chest while you say it, let it come and say the number anyway.

The feeling is old and it is not an accurate reading of what is happening in the room. Feelings of that age are rarely about the day they turn up in.

You are able to say a true thing while an old feeling is running, and a sensation arriving at the wrong moment has never once been evidence about the moment. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates an old thing from a present one, and it is written in Deuteronomy 25:4 that the one being watched is the man who might withhold.