What Cannot Be
What Cannot Be Monetized
A quiet assumption governs much of modern life: that anything genuinely valuable can, in principle, be given a price. But the things that make a life worth living, being loved for no reason, trust, wonder, a clear conscience, tend to lose their nature the instant they are priced. Christ points to a whole order of worth that markets cannot reach, where the most precious things are precisely the ones that cannot be bought, sold, or earned.
Try to name the price of being loved by someone who is not paid to love you. The question is not hard because the number is large; it is hard because the number does not exist. Whatever you paid for would no longer be that thing. A friend you compensate is an employee. Affection you purchase is a service. The most important goods reveal their nature by breaking when you try to price them, and yet we increasingly assume that value and price are the same measurement.
We live inside a way of seeing that quietly converts worth into cost. If something matters, we reason, it should have a market; if it has no market, we half-suspect it is not quite real, or at least not serious. This is the water we swim in, and it is not stupid; pricing is a genuinely powerful way to coordinate a vast society and allocate scarce things. The trouble is that the tool is so useful and so pervasive that it starts to feel like the definition of value itself, rather than one limited way of measuring one kind of value.
The habit spread for understandable reasons. As more of life came to be organized through exchange, the market's logic proved so effective that it kept expanding into domains that were once outside it, and we grew accustomed to asking of everything what it is worth in the sense of what it would sell for. In careful, general terms, more and more human activity has been drawn into the frame of buying and selling, until even attention, friendship, and time get discussed in the vocabulary of assets and returns.
What this costs is the slow devaluation of everything that cannot be sold. When price becomes the felt measure of worth, unpriced goods quietly lose status: the afternoon given to a friend feels less serious than the hour billed to a client; the love that earns nothing feels less real than the deal that earns much. People begin, without deciding to, to invest their lives in what the market can score and to starve the things it cannot, and then wonder why a well-monetized life can feel so strangely empty. They optimized for the priced and neglected the priceless.
Christ stands squarely in the territory the market cannot enter. He spoke of a pearl worth selling everything to obtain, of grace that cannot be bought, of a love that is given freely and precisely because it is not for sale. The Christian vision holds that the deepest realities, the worth of a person, the gift of being forgiven, the presence of God, are not commodities at all; they are given, not traded. A human being made in God's image has a dignity that no price could name and no purchase could confer, which is exactly why treating people as priceable is felt, rightly, as a violation.
The better way is not to despise money or markets, which do real and honorable work within their proper domain. It is to keep the market a servant of life rather than the measure of it, and to guard, deliberately, the goods that are meant to be given and not sold. Spend some of your finite hours on things that will never show up on any ledger: unpaid love, useless beauty, unbillable time. Refuse to let price become your only word for value. The best things you will ever receive cannot be monetized, and that is not a flaw in them. It is the whole point.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12The strongest counterargument is that putting prices on things is not cynical but often deeply useful, even humane: markets have lifted vast numbers out of poverty, and pricing something can protect and dignify it, as when caregiving or creative work that was once exploited for free is finally paid what it is worth. To refuse all monetization can quietly privilege those who can afford to work for love because someone else is paying. This is fair and important, and the essay is not against price as such. The claim is that price is one measure of value, not the measure, and that a category of the truly priceless remains, things that change their nature the moment they are sold. Honoring the market within its domain and refusing to let it define the whole of worth are not in conflict; wisdom holds both.
If you have noticed that the parts of your life that pay nothing have quietly been demoted, it may be time to reinvest in the priceless. Living Bread can help you find Christian community and practices centered on exactly the goods no market can sell: being loved without earning it, worship, and grace freely given. Consider giving some unbillable hours to the things that are meant to be received rather than bought.
This week, spend a block of time on something that will never earn or save you anything, given purely as love or delight, and resist the urge to justify it by its usefulness. Let it be valuable without being priced.
Questions worth sitting with
What things in life cannot be bought with money?
The goods that matter most tend to break the moment they are priced: being loved for no reason, genuine friendship, trust, a clear conscience, wonder, and the gift of being forgiven. Whatever you could purchase would no longer be the same thing; paid affection is a service, not love. These realities are given rather than traded, which is precisely what makes them so valuable and why money cannot reach them.
Is it wrong to put a price on everything?
Pricing is a genuinely useful and often humane tool; it coordinates a complex society and can dignify work that was once exploited for free. The problem is not price itself but letting it become the only measure of worth. When we quietly assume that whatever has no market is not truly valuable, we begin starving the priceless goods that a good life is actually made of, and a well-monetized life can end up feeling empty.
What does Christianity teach about money and value?
Christianity honors work and provision but insists that the deepest realities are not commodities at all. Jesus spoke of grace that cannot be purchased and a love given freely precisely because it is not for sale, and taught that a person bears a God-given dignity no price could name. In this view, the market is a good servant within its domain but a false master when it becomes our only word for what is worth anything.