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ON SHARING AND FAIRING
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.
WILL YOU BE LEFT BEHIND?
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, June 22, 2021 – When I was 17, I belonged to a musical group that was preparing to go on tour in the US. But I hadn’t been to rehearsals for a while, so the group leader pulled me aside a few weeks before the group’s departure and told me I couldn’t go with them. I remember feeling an unreal feeling, as if this wasn’t happening to me, and that at any moment the leader would burst out laughing and yell “KIDDING! Of course you’re coming with us!”, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I was unceremoniously escorted to the door, and that was that.
Two weeks later the group went on tour without me.
I was left behind.
I could go into details about why I hadn’t gone to rehearsals for a while, but let’s just say that some things were beyond my control, and some weren’t. The long and the short of it was that I wasn’t prepared for the trip. I didn’t know the music. It wouldn’t be fair to the other people, the leader pointed out, if they worked so hard to go and I didn’t work as hard (or even at all) and still got to go.
It wouldn’t be fair to them, was the argument.
I was well aware that I wasn’t prepared, but I figured I would get a break. I always got a break. I was used to getting breaks all my life to that point, and frankly I counted on them. I expected them. Exceptions were always made for me. Even if I lagged at something, I got pushed through. People vouched for me. Room was made.
But not this time. In fact, this time set the tone for the next 19 years until my rebirth. I had grown up being made an exception, but I had finally hit the wall. Very few exceptions were made for me from that day forward.
We will all die someday, and after that comes the judgement. We can’t avoid either, though we can prepare now, like the five wise virgins who had enough oil in their lamps. But there are those (and they are the vast majority) who think they are somehow the exception and that even if they’re not prepared, they’ll get pushed through, rules will be bent for them. And so they continue to live as if they have every right to go on tour, even though they haven’t rehearsed and don’t know the music.
Heaven is a reward that is so far above and beyond our greatest expectations that all we can really do when we talk about it is grunt and point. Anything we say is just filthy rags in comparison to the beauty and perfection and unspeakable joy that awaits those who go to rehearsals and fill their lamps ahead of time. There will be no exceptions when, as Johnny Cash puts it, the man comes around. We will be judged not on our expectations but on what we did or didn’t do with the very great privilege of time and space and talents and free will that God so graciously gave us, though we deserved none of it.
You can imagine that I did not learn my lesson about preparing when I was kicked out of the music group. I got angry instead, and the anger grew and grew with each subsequent kick to the teeth. In the final moments before my rebirth 19 years later, I was so full of anger and resentment and outrage at how people treated me, I died from it. Yes, you can die from misplaced pride. I know, because I did. It never occurred to me in all the years leading up to that physical death that I was in fact to blame for every problem that hounded me. Not one thing had been done to me that I hadn’t earned, including getting excluded from the music tour all those years ago.
I know now that when things get uneasy, I need to look at the choices I’ve made leading up to the unease and rectify any wrong ones as best I can. This is a process I’ve learned since my rebirth over 20 years ago. I take nothing for granted now and expect no exceptions to be made for me, any more than they were made for the foolish virgins with no oil in their lamps. Some things are serious and real, and going to Heaven (or not going to Heaven) is the most serious and real of them all.
I pray to God that you won’t be called aside one day and told you can’t go to Heaven because you didn’t do what you were supposed to do when you had the grace of time to do it, and that no exceptions will be made for you.
I pray to God that I won’t be called aside, either.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 