Pay

Pay as you say

The restaurant that says pay what you want is foolishness and I have seen a number of them fail and attract the worse kind of people. Some of them have been used as tax right offs and a way of getting an adrenalin and justification rush as if they are some sort of charitable person.

What is behind the motivation to create such institutions and where are they going and are they a good thing?

Charity is a right and all rights are also responsibilities. They require wisdom and discretion. To let everyone have the right to decide the price and value of your services can be irresponsible and bad stewardship.

I have told people to pay what they want when they think they owe me for things that I have done for them. But I am selective about when I choose to do so. To be honest doing this is often a test and not merely a choice. As a minister of the Church, if I have something entrusted into my care that has a value but is not needed so that I want to exchange it for something that would enable the ministry to continue to others I should strive to exchange it or “sell” it at the actual value. If I let everyone else decide what they want to give then I become somewhat superfluous.

What is the difference between just putting the resources on the street and saying everyone come and get what you need? The truth is to make a policy of trusting everyone to do the right thing only works in heaven. Here on earth such submissive policies tempts the weak and enables the slothful.

Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you. Deuteronomy 1:13

This Deuteronomy was made when there was no kings in Israel for the people had not yet rejected God.

The entire government including health, education and welfare was paid voluntarily by the people. Even the widows and orphans were taken care of by Freewill offerings. Because the people were gathered in groups of ten families they called these charitable offerings tithes.

In fact these ideas or images of charity are laced with the spirit of socialism which often takes the moral di

Anything else would be poor stewardship.

Some one else wanted to do that with rentals. Certainly the Church could rent to people and do it at a loss but they would have to do it on a case by case bases to be good stewards of the asset and the poor they serve. It must be tough love to strengthen the poor.

The restaurant policy is not charity. It is enabling and abusive, slothful and it is bad stewardship.

If the customer has a right to set the price shouldn’t the the people who are doing the work and providing the food also have an equal right to set the price? Since rights are responsibilities and we are all endowed by God with these rights would it not be equally true tht we are endowed by got with responsibilities?.

These pay-what-you-want restaurant (PWYW) allow some people to cheat, to take from the whole without contributing. Are the enabling, even encouraging covetousness and sloth? Are there downsides to this approach? Is it really charity or something else if not something less?

Libby Birky at the Denver-based PWYW SAME Café will "call out" customers who consistently eat meals without paying. So this calling out or humiliation is using guilt or even harassment to get paid or to make others pay. So where do you draw the line?

We hear words like Capitalism, commerce, profit and trade or business and we think we know what they mean but do we?

" A trade or business is an activity done to make a profit.” And profit is gain. If a meal coats 10 dollars and you give it to someone who gives you 10 dollars there is no profit but if you charge 11 dollars there is theoretically 1 dollar profit.

To determine if something qualifies as “trade or business” the question must be asked is their profit?

Commerce may have a legal definition and a more general definition which is “an interchange of goods or commodities, especially on a large scale between different countries (foreign commerce) or between different parts of the same country (domestic commerce) trade; business.”

It is also defined in other senses as:

2. social relations, especially the exchange of views, attitudes, etc.

3. sexual intercourse.

4. intellectual or spiritual interchange; communion.

I have seen rich people who feel guilty about their wealth promoting socialism which just gives to anyone who applies or say they need. This is not discretionary giving and is irresponsible. It is clearly not what the Levites were told. If it was then we can put all the money out and say who ever wants some money just come and get it. This thinking comes from what some call “Yuppy Guilt”.

People have it so easy or good they fill guilty and therefore manufacture token parameters to meet to generate a feel good plateau of accomplishment. It gives them a feeling of well being to meet this artificial goal. This is what rituals are often about. They reproduce a feeling...

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Footnotes

Proverbs 7:7 And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding, Proverbs 17:18 A man void of understanding striketh hands, and becometh surety in the presence of his friend. Proverbs 24:30 I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;