HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 21, 2025 – I’ve never been good at random sharing because I don’t always see sharing as being fair. What I have always been good at is “fairing”, which means giving others a fair deal that we’ve all agreed on. I believed in fairing even before I was a believer.

In scripture, a good example of fairing is the employer who hires people to labor in his fields, offering them all the same daily wage. They all agree to the wage, but when it comes time to pay the laborers, some of them become miffed because they’re getting the same daily wage as laborers who only worked a fraction of the time they did. The miffed workers believe that because they worked more hours and under worse conditions, they should be entitled to more pay, even though they agreed to their daily wage before they started working.

According to fairing, everyone who labored got a fair wage because it was precisely the wage they’d agreed upon. It wasn’t imposed on them; they agreed to it.

Another example of fairing is the parable of the ten virgins and their oil lamps. As scripture tells us, five of the virgins were wise and five were foolish. The wise had oil in their lamps and the foolish didn’t, so the foolish foolishly presumed that the wise should share their oil with them. But the wise virgins told the foolish ones that they wouldn’t share their oil (why should they, if it would be to their detriment?), so if the foolish virgins wanted oil, they should go buy it for themselves.

I love these parables because they fly in the face of “worldly wisdom”, which is that everyone is owed whatever they want just for existing, and that those who have more (the so-called privileged) must give to those who have less (the so-called underprivileged) for no other reason than those who have less have less. The idea underlying this perspective is that everyone (meaning the masses) should have more or less the same, regardless of ability, aptitude, effort, or need. To the world, the wise virgins not sharing their oil is an outrage that needs to be rectified, and by force, if necessary. Wage parity, undergirded by mass third-world migration and DEI, is the wise virgins being forced to share their oil at gunpoint.

As I said at the outset, I’m not good at sharing just for the sake of sharing, but I have nothing against sharing if it’s done fairly and wisely and according to God’s guidance. If I have two coats, and God indicates that I should give one of them to someone who has no coat, I share my coats, no questions asked. If I have an extra room in my house, and God indicates that I should offer that room to someone who has nowhere to live, then I offer that room to that person. I don’t run around looking for someone to give a coat to or offer a room to; I share with whomever God indicates I should share with. This is how we share fairly and wisely as followers of Jesus, not followers of the world.

The virgins were wise not only because they had oil in their lamps when they needed it, but because they chose not to share that oil when they were goaded and guilted into doing so. It’s not wise to give what God hasn’t guided you to give, or you’ll end up with less than what you need, which is not God’s intention for you. It’s not Christian to give what God hasn’t guided you to give, or you’ll do more harm than good, not only to the recipient, but to yourself.

Share, but share fairly and wisely, as God guides you.