Everybody Takes A Little

There is a level of taking that a whole workplace agrees not to call taking, and every building has its own version.

Picture the woman. At her place it is time. Nobody steals anything physical. What people do is leave twenty minutes early on a Friday and log it as a full day, and put an extra half hour on the Tuesday timesheet because the Tuesday was hard, and take the long version of a lunch on the days the manager is off site.

Everybody does it. That is not an exaggeration and it is not her justifying anything. It is a factual description of that office.

She did not do it for the first two years. She was not being noble about it, she simply had not noticed it was available.

She has done it for the last three.

And she is not comfortable, and cannot work out why, because by any argument she can construct it is fine. The work gets done. Nobody is short changed. The company takes far more from her in unpaid evening emails than she has ever taken back in Friday afternoons, and that arithmetic is real and she has run it many times.

The arithmetic is true and it has not settled anything, and that is the interesting part.

Because what is bothering her is not a calculation about fairness. It is something else, and it is much harder to say out loud. It is that she has become somebody who does a thing she would not describe to her daughter.

That is the actual test she has been using without knowing it, and it is a better one than the arithmetic.

The sentence that links the small to the large

There is a line in Luke that connects two things most people keep entirely separate.

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. (Luke 16:10, King James Version)

Faithful in the least, faithful in much.

Notice that Jesus is not saying the small thing matters because of its size. He says the opposite. The small thing is explicitly the least, and He calls it that.

What He is describing is not a scale of importance but a continuity of character. The same person shows up in both, and the small one is where the shape is being set while nobody is watching, including the person themselves.

You are being formed in the small thing rather than measured by it, and Luke 16 links the least and the much as one continuous person (Luke 16:10), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a description rather than a threat.

And that is why the arithmetic never settled her. The arithmetic was answering a question about fairness and the discomfort was about formation, and those are two different subjects that use some of the same words.

You have been answering the wrong question for three years, and Luke 16:10 is about who somebody is becoming rather than about what anybody is owed (Luke 16:10), and the Spirit of God is the one who was the discomfort the arithmetic could not reach.

Adorning the doctrine

There is a phrase in Titus about workers that is one of the most beautiful in the New Testament and is almost never quoted.

Paul is writing about people in the least powerful position in that society, and the instruction includes not taking small things.

Not purloining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. (Titus 2:10)

Purloining is the small taking. It is exactly the word for it, and the fact that it needed naming tells you it was as normal then as it is now.

And look at the reason attached. That they may adorn the doctrine. Adorn is a decorating word. It is what a jeweler does to a setting.

Paul is saying that a person in an ordinary job, not taking the small things, is making something beautiful visible.

You are able to adorn something rather than merely to comply with it, and Titus 2 gives adorning the doctrine as the reason for not purloining (Titus 2:10), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an ordinary Friday afternoon into something with that much weight in it.

And there is the wider instruction in Colossians about the whole posture.

Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God. (Colossians 3:22)

Not with eyeservice. Which is precisely the tell in her situation, because the long lunches happen on the days the manager is off site.

You have a tell that Scripture named directly, and Colossians 3 uses the word eyeservice for work that changes when nobody is watching (Colossians 3:22), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a person the same on both kinds of day.

What this is not

Let me be plain, because this could become something oppressive.

This is not saying she is a thief. She is not, and using that word about twenty minutes on a Friday would be a distortion that helps nobody.

It is also not saying the company is right. The unpaid evening emails are real and the arithmetic she has run is not dishonest. There is a genuine unfairness there and this article is not defending it.

And it is not telling her to tell anybody, or to stop covering for colleagues, or to become the person who logs everybody's hours. That would be a betrayal of her team and it is not remotely what this is about.

And plainly: if the pressure at that place has gone past this, or if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you wants it all to stop, that is bigger than a timesheet. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. That is not weakness.

You are not being accused of anything, and Luke 16 describes a continuity rather than issuing a charge (Luke 16:10), and the Holy Spirit is the one who can make a change happen without humiliating anybody into it.