Morning Musings-Pay Them!

  Morning Musings with the boys at breakfast...



According to the James 1:26-27 standards of being religious, a person should pay their employees on time.  They and their families have to eat too!

If you are rich and/or an employer don't try to get richer or control your employees with withholding their salaries.  Do not neglect payment to those to whom you owe money.

I think back to the history of the slave days in the southern states of the USA.  Many select slave owners treated their slaves so cruelly and unjustly.  Yes, true, slaves are not paid wages in monetary terms but they should have at least been paid by being treated decently.  Especially since many of those owners called themselves "Christians".  God will hold those slave owners accountable and they will have a lot to answer for.  (The question begs to be answered in the first place, why were there slaves?!)

Similarly, it is a known fact that some employers in SEA have withheld salaries for 2-3 months at a time, this I came to know about and likely, in other cases, for longer.  This was not because they did not have the funds.  It was the greed of the employers' hearts that squirreled away the windfall into their own accounts and became reluctant to release payment as they should.

Human beings' hearts are "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked..." (Jeremiah 17:9).  We brothers and sisters in Christ, must guard against such sinful behavior.  Jesus said to his faithless questioners, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God..." (Matthew 22:21).  God sees and knows what we do with what He gives us.

Is your faith being tested?  Do you need to rule out greed?  This could be at any level of 'richness'.  Is it God in whom you trust or is it $$?

God entrusts various ones with wealth in order for them to help others (2 Corinthians 9:11; see also Proverbs 11:24; 2 Cor. 9:6; and 1 Timothy 6:17-19).  Yet all of us need to be good stewards of whatever we have.

Most importantly here, in James 5:1-6, is to not be bullies, to not be oppressors with that which God has allowed us to have.  If you won't listen to the people's cries to whom you owe wages, its a sure thing that God does (vs 4).  He will keep account and He will be your Judge in the end.

If you lack wisdom in how to use your resources, "ask God" (1:5); He'll help you sort it out.  Ask Him who needs monetary help if you genuinely wish to help others.  He'll show you.  But it's for sure you don't need to inquire about whether or not to be paying peoples' salaries!  Get it right!  Be religious in this.  Pay them! After all, who supplies us with the money in the first place?

                                          ~ERC  2016~