When a Little Problem Isn’t so Little

/ SERMONS / By

A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight.”Proverbs 11:1

 

The digital tools we use to proclaim truth and grace are not neutral. They carry weight. They can build up—or break down. They can open doors—or barricade them.

For the past several days this here Jesus, Amen site—which was created to offer clarity and courage in the blessed bearer of its title—has been locked out of its own platform. The error? “…we couldn’t process your hosting at this time…” A single sentence, but the aftermath wasn’t so simple. Instead of assistance, we received a loop of delays, recycled instructions, and an emerging pattern: the onus was placed on us—the customer—to run diagnostics, extract session IDs, and trace the provider’s failure for them.

Let us be clear: This was not merely a technical glitch. It was a failure of relationship. A breakdown not in code, but in covenant.

The issue occurred not on the public-facing site, but behind authenticated account access—where content is (supposed to be) faithfully stewarded. And while their own system generated failure, the response we got was:

“Please provide more data.” “Please try again.” “Please debug this for us.”

After a while and providing them with plenty of requested data, we finally said no, no more. Not out of stubbornness, but out of conviction and principle. Because we believe:

  • That paying customers are not unpaid quality assurance agents.
  • That accountability isn’t a courtesy—it’s a covenant.
  • That when platforms stumble, restoration should not be outsourced to the very people they’ve failed.

 

Cheap Labor in a Different Dress Ya’ll

 

What we’re seeing across the digital landscape is not an anomaly—it’s the next iteration of exploitation. In a global economy that once devoured cheap labor overseas to fatten corporate margins, many companies have pivoted. As that momentum wanes, they now extract the same labor—from customers. They just shifted a lucrative model, from underpaid and exploited workers, to largely not so tech savvy customers dependent on their tech support. It goes like this nowadays:

You pay dearly, and recurringly (clever little twist), for the service. You install the update. You navigate the bugs. You trace the failure. And in doing so, you become the laborer—for free. In a growing market with cheap labor profits can explode through the roof, that’s what big business managed to do quite well in the past, and now they just shifted the model to keep the profits rolling in at the expense of the customer. They roll out the new design to grab market share, and we the customers get it to fly for them. They “auto update” to stay abreast or outpace the competition, it changes your settings and causes problems, and you fix it for them for free whilst they profit—after all, it’s in your interest to get the silly thing running again, and they know that and exploit it. From the money | profit perspective, it’s a brilliant adaptation of a waning model; it’s the tired, old capitalist model at work (Fig. 1), but it ain’t so pretty from the spiritual perspective, in fact it is odious. Why? It’s exploitation opportunistically repackaged, not as a factory line this time around, but as a support ticket. It’s the imperialist’s new colony: the everyday user. And the cost isn’t just inconvenience—it’s dignity, at least.

 

A Broken System with No Warranty on Grace

 

Here’s the deeper grief: platforms built without accessibility in mind ask the most from those with the least margin—bombarding users with tiny-font emails, convoluted instructions, and interfaces devoid of clarity, adding insult to injury. When dignity isn’t engineered into the system—it hardly ever is—the weight of repair crushes those least equipped to carry it. So, we say this now to our beloved readers across the globe:

 

May every system you depend on—digital or human—hold a just weight. May your voice not be lost in a helpdesk ticket. And may those who serve per se remember that they are ministers of sorts, may they remember that ministry work, like the blessed Gospel itself, deserves more than a shrug and a script.

 

May the Lord who sees in secret vindicate in Light. May the burden of silence not fall on the weary, nor the weight of failure land on those who did no wrong. Let justice be swift, but mercy deliberate. Let every system be measured by its service, and every servant remember what it means to serve. And may those who labor in faith never be left unheard. In your honorable and worthy Name we ask Lord Jesus. Amen.

 

Praised and feared be your Righteous Name in all the earth great Jehovah God. Amen.

 

Illustrations and Tables

Figure 1. Their Profit is on Your Back.

 

Works Cited and References

“A Letter of Invitation.”

Jesus, Amen.

< https://development.jesusamen.org/a-letter-of-invitation-2/ >

Microsoft

Copilot AI Assistant.

July 2025.