Christian, Please Don't Take Advantage

This is a bit of a rant today, revealing one of my pet peeves, I guess.

So...you wouldn't call your doctor friend or your attorney friend over to your home and have him provide some doctoring or lawyering for free, would you? Well then why on earth would you think it okay to have your IT friend make a housecall and provide you with free computer work? That's just wrong on every level, and I would never dream of taking advantage of someone in such a manner.

My husband spent the last two full days at a friends' home, repairing and building them a computer, one, by the way, that came from OUR house that WE owned. Not one red cent did they offer him, AND to top it off, they know he is out of work! So not only did he not get paid for two days of computer work (which of course he'd never charge full price), but he lost two available job-searching days. I'm really beside myself with this one, totally on the edge. What's really unconscionable to me is that these are dear, Christian people. Why is it that believers are *seemingly* the very ones who are the worst at expecting things for free from other Christians?

This reminds me of another friend. He is a pediatric dentist, one of the nicest guys on the planet. He has story after story about people from our former church taking their children to see him and simply expecting free dental work - because they knew him and knew he was a Christian. Now, he would be the first person to offer his services free of charge to those who are truly in need, but these were people who could well afford it. I also remember him doing some emergency dental work on Roger one Sunday, years ago, and how we had to pay the bill over time. Every Friday, for months, Roger would stop by the office with a check until that puppy was paid off. A win-win situation, as I'm sure our friend discounted his bill for us, and he got paid for his services.

Over the years, we've had a number of people solicit Roger's computer services, some for which he's either gotten paid or worked a barter deal. But for the most part, I guess people just have a certain mindset about computer work, thinking "it's really no big deal" to have a friend come over and spend hours working on their problem, which by the way, is usually a complete mess by the time they've called for help.

I realize I need to check my own heart about this because I confess, I'm a little bitter right now. Maybe writing this post will help.... But I cannot help but think that Christians should perhaps be mindful of Phillipians 2 - Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others (vs 3-4). Wouldn't it be something if we were all behaving this way toward one another?