The Arithmetic Of My Time Will Not Come Out Fair

You have tried to make it work.

Not on paper, probably. But in your head, most evenings, there is a running calculation about who has had what and who is owed, and it never balances, and you go to bed slightly in debt to somebody.

And the reason it never balances is not that you are bad at it.

One of them needs forty minutes on a Tuesday and the other needs four. One of them asks and the other does not. One of them has a thing going on this term and the other has nothing going on at all, which is not the same as needing nothing.

There is no distribution of an evening that comes out even. Not one. And you have been treating that as a moral failure for about three years.

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own

There is a question at the end of the parable of the laborers that people find uncomfortable, and the discomfort is the point.

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? (Matthew 20:15, King James Version)

The men who worked all day are not being told they were paid unfairly. They got exactly what was agreed. The complaint is that somebody else got the same for less.

And the answer does not defend the arithmetic. It relocates the whole question: this is mine, and generosity is not a debt, and the objection is really about the comparison.

You have been handed a distinction between what is owed and what is given, and no gift has ever once been able to be audited the way a payment can. Matthew 20:15 refuses the accounting frame entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a relief to a parent doing sums at eleven at night.

And notice the second question. Is thine eye evil, because I am good. That is not a condemnation of the workers so much as a diagnosis: the trouble is in the looking across, not in the wage.

You were never running a payroll, and an evening given to a child has never once been a wage owed to another one. The written word separates the giving from the owing, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a ledger out of a parent's hands.

Equal, and fair

Here is the distinction the whole thing turns on, and most of us use the two words as though they were one.

Equal means the same amount. Fair means what each one actually needs.

Those two are almost never the same thing, and in a house with more than one child they are essentially never the same thing.

You have been chasing equal while calling it fair, and the two have never once been able to be achieved at the same time. Matthew 20:15 gives different men the same wage and calls it good, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a parent hold that without it feeling like an excuse.

And here is why chasing equal actually costs something, rather than just being impossible.

A parent aiming at equal gives the quiet child ten minutes because the noisy one had ten minutes. Which means the quiet child's ten minutes is not about them at all. It is a settlement of an account, and children can feel the difference between being visited and being reconciled.

So the pursuit of fairness produces exactly the thing it was trying to prevent.

You are able to give an evening that is about the person in it, and a settled account has never once felt like a visit. The written word refuses the comparison as the frame, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes ten minutes belong to the child who is in them.

You were never in debt to anybody, and no parent has ever once been able to owe an evening. Matthew 20:15 calls the giving lawful and good rather than balanced, and it is the Holy Spirit who ends an accounting nobody was keeping except you.

Ten whole minutes, and no audit

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the difficult one.

Tonight, give ten whole minutes to one of them. Whichever one. It genuinely does not matter which.

Whole means the other one does not get thought about while it is happening. That is the first half.

You have ten minutes that belong entirely to one person tonight, and a whole ten has never once been the same offer as two halves of it. Matthew 20:15 grounds the giving in the giver rather than in the balance, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present at a table with a book on it and one child beside you.

And then, afterward, do not audit it. Do not run the sum. Do not decide who is owed what tomorrow. Do not lie in bed at eleven doing the arithmetic.

That is the second half and it is where every one of us fails, because the audit is so automatic that it does not feel like an act.

If you catch yourself doing it, say one sentence to yourself: that was a gift and not a payment. Then stop.

You are permitted to refuse a sum at eleven at night, and refusing has never once been the same thing as not caring what each of them gets. Matthew 20:15 declines the accounting frame outright, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in the dark when the calculation does not get run.

Over a few weeks what changes is not the distribution. It will still be uneven, because their needs are uneven and that is the actual situation. What changes is that the minutes stop being currency, and a child can tell.

Matthew 20:15 calls it lawful to give as one chooses and names the eye rather than the wage as the trouble, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody refuses to do a sum at eleven at night.

You are permitted to stop counting, and stopping has never once been the same thing as not caring how much each of them gets. The written word removes the comparison as the measure, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a parent who puts a calculator down.

You have ten whole minutes to give tonight, and they have never once needed to be matched to count. Matthew 20:15 grounds the giving in the giver rather than in the arithmetic, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an unbalanced evening a good one.