Ain't Nothin' Free

I recently began to serve on the board of the Indiana Free Library. Indiana is the name of a borough (town) in Pennsylvania. Residents of the borough, the surrounding township, the school district, and a couple of nearby communities have access to library cards at no direct cost to them because the borough, township, school district and communities contribute to the operational costs of the library. All others wishing to check out books and other media must pay a $25 fee their library card. Every and any person may use the “in house” services of the library without direct cost to them. On a regular basis, people outside of the supporting entities express their dismay, lack of understanding, and even anger that the word “free” in the name of the library does not mean without cost to them.

It is difficult for us to realize there “ain’t nothin’ free.” There may not be an immediately direct cost to us, but some where along the line somebody or some entity has paid the price. Think of the things we refer to a “free.” Multi-lane roads are often called freeways. We  do not have to stop and pay a toll to use the road. We do pay for the roads when we purchase fuel. The fuel tax included in the price per gallon is used to build and maintain the roads. Every person who purchases fuel for a motor vehicle has contributed to the costs of the “freeway.”

When we travel, in this digital age, we look for establishments with “free wifi.” It may be without an immediately direct cost to us, but somebody or some entity has paid for our ability to use the wifi. Many times it is a hidden cost in the price of our food or room. When the wireless access to the internet cost is spread out on a per meal or per room basis it is miniscule. What I have not been able to wrap my head around is why the lower cost motel rooms come with “free wifi” while the more expensive lodging levies an additional fee to use their wifi band width. Regardless, the use of the wifi is not free. Some municipalities provide open access wifi in certain sectors of the town. That is not free. A fraction of every tax dollar pays for that “free” open access.

What we really should say is “available at little or no direct cost.” Free is a word we use to avoid counting the cost. If we do not pay for something ourself somebody else has. Money is the common means of purchase. In our culture and in much of the world money represents the expenditure of time and energy. The old saying is “time is money.” We are bartering our time and energy, represented by money, in commercial exchanges. If I can find a means of reducing the expenditure of my time and energy in the production of a product or service then I can exchange it for less of your time and energy represented by money, or I can keep the price the same and make a greater profit. We view everything, even relationships on this transactional model.

It would be possible to reduce our relationships into the exchange of time and energy. I expend an amount of my time and energy in another and, in return, the other expends time and energy in me. Then we could begin to quibble about which of us is expending more in the relationship. If I do not feel I am receiving an equal or great amount of time and energy than I am expending, I begin to feel having been taken advantage of. There has to be an exchange or a reasonable substitute. Ain’t nothin’ free, or is there?

Some wonder how we, in the Reformed Tradition of the Church, can talk about free and unmerited grace and substitutionary atonement at the same time. Are not free and unmerited the opposite of a substitutionary exchange? If God’s grace is given to us freely and unmerited why do we talk about Jesus’ death as the price for our salvation? Isn’t it because we are so totally bought into the transactional model that we believe there had to be a “purchase price?” What if we truly are the benefactors of God’s FREE and unmerited grace without a price having been paid? What if, as Rene Girrard and others posit, that Jesus’ death was not the ransom price demanded by God, but was the ultimate display of human depravity countered by the Resurrection as God’s free gift? What if that is the Divine economy? What if that is the relational economy we are adopt? What if we are to freely give ourselves in relationships without counting what it costs us in terms of time and energy?