Undercharging Isn’t Humble.
It Might Just Be Dishonest.
So this is interesting.
I’ve been building a Bible app for the past couple of weeks as a hobby project, call it a calling. Somewhere between code, theology, and curiosity, I stumbled into something I genuinely wasn’t expecting. I was working through a dataset called BibleData, building out a “laws toolkit”, something that lets you explore biblical laws, their verses, and how those laws are interpreted. Clean, structured, almost mechanical.
And then I hit something that didn’t feel mechanical at all.
One verse. Two laws.
Same Hebrew. Same Greek. Same source text. But two completely different commands.
That alone was enough to make me stop. So I dug.
The Verse That Started It
Leviticus 25:14 reads simply enough: “If you make a sale… you shall not wrong one another.” On face value, it’s straightforward. Be fair. Don’t rip people off. Move on.
But Jewish interpretation doesn’t stop at face value. It pulls Scripture apart, examines it, and asks what is being said beneath what is being said.
From that one line, two commandments are drawn. One is a positive command, to conduct business fairly and rightly. The other is a negative command, not to exploit or distort value in a transaction.
Same verse. Two directions.
Not just “don’t do wrong,” but “actively do right.”
Where It Got Personal
That’s where it stopped being theoretical.
Because I run a business. And like a lot of founders, I don’t overcharge. If anything, I undercharge. I’ve always framed it as strategy, positioning, relationship-building, getting ahead by being more accessible than competitors.
But I’ll be honest. There was a moment where I paused and asked a question I’ve never really asked before.
Am I doing something wrong?
Not in a dramatic, “I’m going to hell” sense. But in a quieter, more uncomfortable way. The kind of question that doesn’t accuse you, but doesn’t let you move on either.
The Problem With Surface-Level Thinking
The easy reading of that verse is about avoiding obvious wrongdoing. Don’t scam people. Don’t manipulate pricing. Don’t exploit someone who doesn’t know better.
But the deeper reading isn’t just about behaviour, it’s about alignment.
Because “wronging someone” isn’t limited to overcharging. It’s about distorting what is true in a transaction. It’s about misrepresenting value, whether that distortion moves upward or downward.
We’re very comfortable calling out overcharging. It’s visible, aggressive, easy to label. But undercharging tends to slip through unnoticed because it feels virtuous. It looks like generosity. It looks like humility.
But that doesn’t automatically make it truthful.
The Other Side of the Coin
If overcharging is a distortion of value upward, then undercharging can be a distortion downward.
Both move away from what is real.
That’s the part that hit me. Not as a condemnation, but as a correction. Because when you strip away the surface-level framing, undercharging isn’t always about kindness. Sometimes it’s about avoidance. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to justify your worth. Sometimes it’s about protecting yourself from rejection.
It’s easier to be accepted when you’re cheaper.
And that’s not a pricing strategy.
What the Standard Actually Is
The biblical framework isn’t built around being cheap or expensive. It’s built around being truthful.
Throughout Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, there’s a repeated emphasis on honest weights and measures. That wasn’t just about physical scales, it was about integrity in exchange. What is presented should match what is real.
In a modern context, we don’t use scales. We use branding, positioning, perceived value, and pricing models. But the principle hasn’t changed.
The question isn’t whether you’re charging more or less than someone else. The question is whether your pricing reflects truth, or whether it’s shaped by something else entirely.
A More Uncomfortable Realisation
If I’m being completely honest, not all of my undercharging has been strategic.
Some of it has been fear. Fear of losing the deal. Fear of being questioned. Fear of not being “worth it.” And fear has a way of disguising itself as wisdom if you let it.
That doesn’t mean every discounted price is wrong. Strategy is real. Market positioning is real. There are valid reasons to adjust pricing.
But when the underlying driver is misalignment, when you know the value and choose to present something else, that’s where it starts to drift.
Not into obvious wrongdoing, but into something quieter. Something slightly off.
The Quiet Conclusion
I didn’t walk away from this thinking I’d been sinning in some overt, measurable way. But I also didn’t walk away unchanged.
What shifted wasn’t my pricing model. It was my awareness.
Because the verse doesn’t just sit there as an ancient rule about transactions. It asks something much sharper. It asks whether what you present to the world is aligned with what is actually true.
And that applies far beyond business.
Final Thought
We tend to measure ourselves against obvious failures. We avoid the big, visible mistakes and assume that means we’re on the right track.
But Scripture has a way of cutting deeper than that. It doesn’t just deal with what is clearly wrong. It deals with what is subtly misaligned.
And sometimes the difference between the two isn’t loud.
It’s just honest.