What to Do with the "Gray Areas" of Business
Breakpoint
Colson Center
4.8 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2026
⏱️ 6 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Is it ethical to charge 15% more for rich clients?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. |
| 0:05.7 | For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. |
| 0:09.3 | An ex-user recently asked, is it ethical for me to charge 15% more for my rich clients? |
| 0:15.8 | But that kind of opportunism is not surprising or unusual for non-believers. |
| 0:23.4 | Christian business owners should constantly be taking stock in how they operate, following the example that's set by the author of Hebrews, |
| 0:29.1 | who asked for prayer for, and I quote, a clear conscience desiring to act honorably in all things. |
| 0:35.4 | In a chapter published years ago that was entitled |
| 0:38.1 | Why Johnny Can't Produce Christian Scholarship, Theologian John Stackhouse said that Christian |
| 0:43.5 | scholars have to work, quote, more than twice as hard, because, after all, they have to be |
| 0:48.9 | Christian, they have to be scholars, and then they have to be Christian scholars. The same framing |
| 0:53.5 | would apply to Christians in business. Christians must always be, first and then they have to be Christian scholars. The same framing would apply to Christians |
| 0:54.6 | and business. Christians must always be first and foremost Christian. Christians in business, |
| 0:59.8 | just as in any other vocation, should be competent and excellent in their craft. And also, |
| 1:05.2 | they have to work hard at grounding the idea of business and the practice of business in Christian assumptions, |
| 1:12.2 | about work, about people, about profit, about culture, about ethics, and other things. |
| 1:18.0 | And so, though a Christian business must involve more than just merely being moral and ethical, |
| 1:23.8 | it certainly does not require less. Now, the biblical book of Proverbs offers a time-tested God-breed |
| 1:30.8 | roadmap to living ethically, including speaking specifically about business practices. Chief among |
| 1:37.2 | the qualities of wisdom, of course, are honesty and fair dealing. Proverbs 9 says it's better to be |
| 1:43.2 | poor with integrity than to be a crooked fool. Proverbs 16 says it's better to be poor with integrity than to be a crooked fool. |
| 1:46.1 | Proverbs 16 says it's better to live righteously with a little than to earn great revenues through |
| 1:51.1 | injustice. It also says that a just balance and scales are the lords. All the weights in the bag |
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