Christian Businesspeople are Handicapped

Christian businessmen and women have a handicap. 

They are confused. 

They waste a lot of mental energy trying to justify things that don’t need to be justified. 

For instance: 

1. Making money — No matter how well we teach that the Bible says money itself is not evil, but rather, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim 6:10), people– Christians and nonChristians alike– think that money is evil. 

The poor are, rightly, held up in Scripture as important to God. They are. That doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you if you are not poor. It only means that God does not allow us to look down on someone because they are poor.

But if you feel ashamed of making money, then you have to find ways to convince yourself to be okay with making money (since you need money to live). That is hard mental work, and there is a contradiction that is inherent and will prevent you from accomplishing it. You will rationalize and self justify making money by offsetting the fact with some kind of charitable motive on the other side of the balance. 

This is what you are seeing when businesses announce that their purpose is to give to charity. They say, “We want to give back, so we are donating…” My question is, “Why are you having to give back? Did you steal your profits from someone?” Their answer is actually, “Yes,” because there is an assumption that any money made from others is stealing. But is it? NO. But since all money is evil, you should be giving your product away. There is that contradiction. What would happen if you gave your product away? In most cases, you will run out of products. You will not be able to provide for your family. 

A business is profitable if they provide something valuable to others. If they don’t figure out a way to provide value at low enough overhead to make a profit, then they will not stay in business. In a free country with the rule of law, the market will sort this out just fine. 

Rather than think of ways to “give back,” think about what you are giving for the money you are paid. Whether you are in business for yourself, or you are an employee, the principle is the same. If you are being paid for the service you provide, then it is a probable sign that you are being valuable to whoever is paying you. 

By all means, give to charity. Help the poor. But it will never make up for doing evil. If making money is evil, no amount of giving or religion will suffice to ease your conscience. The attempt is wearing you out and tying your mind in knots. You need the money, so you work, but you feel terrible about it, so you don’t thrive as you should. You’re too busy devising ways to feel good about yourself. Impossible, since you are an “evil profit seeker.”  

2. Putting People First — Countless manufacturers and construction companies have the motto posted everywhere: “Safety First.” Really? How much can I make going around being as safe as possible? What does it pay to sit in a bunker eating soft food inside a bubble suit? IT PAYS NOTHING.

The reality is that these companies must put profit first, and so they must put providing value to a customer first. Safety is super important, but it is second at best. In the same way, I think there is wrong thinking against the idea of putting people first. There is a great book about managing the finances of your business. It’s called, Profit First, by Mike Michalowicz. The book is about making sure you don’t eat up all your profits by not budgeting and then spending too much on expenses. That’s all. Common sense.

But I heard an accountant call into the Dave Ramsey Show to ask his opinion about the system. Apparently a client who was paying her to work for him had wanted her to read the book and work that budgeting system in her accounting of his business. She called Dave to ask if he’d ever heard of the book and what he thought of it. It was obvious from her questions that she had not read the whole book yet.

Dave, who I have usually found really helpful in the area of personal finance, went on a rant. He had a serious issue with the wording “profit first.” He slammed it with zero understanding of what the book was about, and then he gave a speech about “putting people first.” “Put people first and the profit will come” (he said with a thick and confessing southern accent). He made the author of the book look like a money grubber who hated people. Through the whole thing, the accountant laughed along at the stupidity of her client, saying, “that’s what I thought.” 

Dave’s erroneous point was that it somehow makes money to put people first. I had a friend who was an accountant, and she really hated her job. I asked her why she was working there, and she had obviously done some hard mental and theological work to come up with a palatable answer. It was the kind of answer that can really ease your conscience when you a) make a lot of money, b) make it doing something you are ashamed of—A.K.A. anything besides social work or being a public school teacher. She said, “My purpose there is to love the people, to serve them.” 

I said, “So you hate the job and want to quit, but you love serving people. Easy. Quit and go volunteer at a shelter. You’ll be more fulfilled, because you’ll see a closer connection to the fact that you’re helping people.” 

She said, “Well, I can’t, because I need to make money.” Right. So, again, why do you work there? 

“To make money.” 

“Do you do something for this money?”

“Yes, I work hard.” 

“So stop trying to justify it, and just learn to enjoy it.” 

It’s really great to serve people and help people, and you should love everyone. Jesus said so. But when it comes to adding value, you have to provide something valuable. You should do it lovingly, but it can’t be just anything. 

Dave was wrong. Putting people first is not going to pay your bills. First you have to answer the question of what you are going to provide. You generally can’t make a profit honestly unless your service or product is valuable for some reason. Putting people first is great if you mean you need people to pay you for the value you add to them. Dave is correct that being attentive to people’s needs is a great way to get them to pay you. After that, Profit First is simply the old adage of save off the top, which I’m certain Dave approves of.

My friend was ashamed deep down, because she knew she was working a job that was hard and she didn’t enjoy it, because she liked that it paid a lot. She needs to reevaluate her priorities. It may be that the money is not really that important. It may be that she is betraying her own values by working there for the money. If so, then this would in fact be a sinful love of money, and she would be suffering for her sin.

But it also may be that the money affords important things in her life that tip the balance toward working a difficult job for now, so that she can have the benefit of what that money can provide. That’s perfectly acceptable. 

But what she must not do is pretend otherwise. If she pretends she is working there only because she wants to serve others, she’ll know she is lying to herself and everyone else. When you know you are living a contradiction, lots of bad things start to happen in your life. When you know you cannot trust yourself, then you earn the anxiety and fear that come about to push you around. 

There are more contradictions, but if we can grasp just those two, it will have a profound impact on the way we live. Be honest, and root out contradictions. You will lose the handicap that has kept your life and performance mediocre and has nearly crippled you with anxiety.

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Principles are Better Than Laws, Part 9 Honor Your Mother and Father

Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

In these posts we’re exploring some of the key laws of God in the Bible and considering them, not only as commands of God, but also as principles for how life can and should be well-lived on earth and beyond.  

Moving along the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20, today’s command is to honor your father and your mother. The reason is for long days in the Promised Land.

Different cultures have different takes on this. In America where I live, we don’t “follow” our parents for life as they do in other countries. In many cultures, and in most cultures of the past you are born to obey your parents. They will raise you, and then you will spend the rest of your life following them, and eventually caring for them. There are some benefits to this system. One is that it dispenses with the necessity of finding an identity. Your identity is the family you were born into, along with the career that comes with it, that is, the family business.

I recommend the book, The Pastor as Minor Poet, by M. Craig Barnes. In it he explains this idea. Today in the West, we often search for a job with the idea that it will give us identity, while in other cultures and even our culture in the past, the identity was covered already by birth. You grew up already knowing who you were. My name is Miller, so I suppose my ancestors were millers. I’d be born to run the town mill. Work identity covered, I could focus on developing my character instead of “finding myself” in a job.

This applies to our commandment, because this would be part of honoring your father and mother.  But in our context, this just doesn’t happen the same way.  So how does a 21st century American think about this, and more importantly, how do we practice it?

As a son (or daughter): I am nearly fifty. I love my parents, but realized at some point that they were not perfect (nor did they claim to be). I know that I am not obligated to obey them at this point even if they were perfect. In fact, I think it is crucial that a person “leave his (or her) father and mother at some point, and do what they think is right. An example could be when a young person wants to have a career in a certain field that is different than the one his parents wanted for him. If he ignores what he wants because he wants to please his parents, he will not grow up. He will not take his place as an autonomous image-bearer, responsible for his choices and beliefs. This will lead to a sense of instability and anxiety. At some point, everyone must separate themselves from their parents in this way.

Most people, unless they have zero self-awareness, will find themselves resenting their parents for the way they were when they raised them. A lot of that resentment will fall away when a person begins to make their own choices and decisions, especially if it requires “disappointing” their parents. But many of us may find that it is necessary to confront our parents, lovingly and gently, to tell the truth about how they have made us feel, or still are, and then genuinely forgiving them for those things which have caused resentment. We should hope that our own children will do the same to us someday.

In this case it is not necessary to get a certain response from the parents. It is nice if they acknowledge their sin and apologize, but it is not the point. If you think it is, you will not be free. It is enough that you can say what you honestly feel, and then forgive.

That said, we should always be respectful to our parents.  We should not pretend they are something they are not, but the very fact that they are our parents is cause to honor them.  Don’t speak ill of them.  Don’t talk down to them, even when they are old and at your mercy.  You will be judged for it.  

As a father (or mother): Teaching our own children to respect God and biblical wisdom is done by teaching them to respect their parents. You must not try to control your children with shaming and manipulation. Give consequences for disobedience and disrespect and apply them dispassionately. Insist on respectful attitudes, but NEVER take it personally when they fail. Simply discipline accordingly and lovingly, explaining the importance of honoring their parents. Don’t allow sassy tones, eye rolling, disobedience, yelling at you, or anything of the kind. If it happens, stop them and say calmly, “My dear, I love you too much to let you treat me (or your mother) that way. You will be disciplined for it. There will not be warnings.” The discipline must be appropriate and not out of anger.

Valuing your parents’ traditions: Be slow to throw them out. Doing them “just because” can sometimes give you the benefit of taking advantage of the practices without totally understanding them yet. It is often hubris that causes us to assume our parents and grandparents are dumb and don’t know anything. Until you know exactly why you are chucking out their time-honored traditions, seriously consider just continuing them.

The “principle” of honoring your parents is a principle of humbly honoring the God who made the commandment, and who identifies himself as “Father.” It is the opposite of a spirit of rebellion, while it leaves ample room for proper independence as an autonomous image-bearer who can be useful to others, especially his or parents. I invite you to see an earlier post for more details on biblical parenting.

How Jesus Restores Mankind Part 6, Anxiety and Freedom

Yesterday in part 5 we started to look at how Jesus wants us oriented when it comes to finances.  We saw that greed is evil, money is neutral, and it should be handled as though all we have belongs to God, because it does.  Today we’ll go on to what Jesus says next in relation to all that about trusting God for provision.  If Jesus is restoring mankind and the world, then part of what he is restoring is a trust for God to provide such as Adam had in the garden of Eden before the fall.  Jesus says is like this, in Matthew 6:25-34:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Verse 25 says, “Do not be anxious about your life.” And the section ends with verse 34, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.”  So see this first as a command. No command of Christ can be bad for us.  So, no anxiety about provision.  Does this mean we sit on the couch, watch TV, and wait for someone to show up at the door with money, food, and shoes for the kids?  No. It does not mean that.  Look at the last part of verse 25: “Is not life more than food…” Is not life more than food. Don’t be anxious about your life. This goes back to where we started at the beginning of the book.  God has assigned to us life. Life is what was broken when Adam rebelled. The wages of sin is death, the absence of life.  Restoration in Christ is abundant life. We are called to joyfully, faithfully, and trustingly pursue life. But now we see that this does not mean pursuing wealth.  We are to pursue work for God’s sake, but trust him for money.  

We are to pursue life, and that means pursuing something specific.  Jesus tells us the answer in verse 33: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  What things will be added?  Whatever you actually need, because “your heavenly Father knows that you need them” (32).  So what is this “seeking the kingdom and his righteousness?” 

In short, it is everything.  It is looking to abide in Christ in every second of every day. It is seeking to be present with him in his presence.  It is “be still and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10).  It is walking in him. It is looking to fellowship with him as we pray without ceasing and, in him, pursuing the activities and work that he puts before us.  When we can learn to abide with and in him, obeying him, and living for him, we will not only experience perfect peace, but we will see him provide everything he knows we need. And if he doesn’t know we need it, we don’t need it!  

How about “his righteousness?”  Seeking his righteousness is seeking his ways, his principles and living accordingly. This is why he has given us his word (more in chapter 7) and his Spirit. How much time do you prayerfully consider his ways of truth, honesty, integrity, love, generosity, faithfulness, and joyfulness?  How much energy do you put into understanding and obeying his commands? Seeking life is seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness, or his right ways, and trusting him completely as we carry out our calling as productive, faithful, image-bearing stewards of whatever he puts in front of us.  If you devote yourself to God, and what he has for you to work at, money, provision, and perfect peace will be a forgone conclusion. 

What is antithetical to perfect peace? Anxiety. Perfect peace and anxiety do not exist in the same person at the same time. One is godly, and one is not. One comes from faith, and one comes from fear. One comes from God, and one comes from satan.  I think probably most Christians rarely experience perfect peace because, first of all, Jesus’ instructions about it are too simple for them, and second, that word, perfect. Because we know that we were born so sinful that we needed Jesus to die horribly for us, and because we know that we still have sin indwelling our flesh, and we confuse our self with our flesh, we assume that anything with the adjective perfect could not apply to us. This is unfortunate and a great victory for satan. 

The truth is, it is God’s desire for you to live in freedom. It’s part of the blessing of the true Christian life. God holds out life, peace, joy, spiritual and personal power (I don’t mean power over people, but over the darkness), and most of us say, “That’s ok, I’ll settle for your grace and an eventual trip to heaven. Then we live 80% like the world who is in darkness. Satan loves it. God doesn’t, but he allows it because though he could make us follow him, it only matters to him that we choose for ourselves. I’d like you to understand that if you want to, you can grow in these things. In fact, this is the true point of discipleship, growth in Christlikeness. Usually we think that means reading the Bible more, praying more, and maybe going to church more. But it doesn’t mean those things. It means more freedom. Seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and grow.

How Jesus Restores Mankind Part 5, Anxiety about Provision

In part one of this post, we learned of the Gospel and the restoration that Jesus bought for us on the cross. We learned about the atonement that Jesus, fully God and fully man due to his birth to a virgin by the Holy Spirit, accomplished, bringing us peace with God.  This was the most crucial step toward healing the world and mankind of the effects of the fall and Adam’s rebellion. 

We learned that Jesus paid for all our sins, and that he showed us what it truly meant to be human, what it was supposed to have meant all along to be an image-bearer of God put on the earth with authority to create and rule.  When we believe and put our faith in Jesus, he causes us to become a new creation, no longer enslaved to the sin that bound us and kept us from pursuing life for the glory of God, or our own sake, and more importantly, for his sake and his glory.  Because we have been made new, we can begin to live the way God intended.  

Then we began to look at the sermon on the mount to see what Jesus considered to be the mindset and attitude of a godly image-bearer.  We learned that the inward condition of the heart is more important than the outward actions.  In general, our outward actions will be a reflection of our inward state. But in our fallenness, we often have some dishonest and selfish reasons to put on an outward show.  Whether it is about controlling anger and lust, giving or fasting in secret, taking oaths, loving our enemies, or anything else, why we obey God is more important than that we obey him.  True belief will lead to an obedience that is not done for the reward of the praise of men.  Rather, true belief leads to an obedience born out of the certainty that to obey God is the abundant life. It will lead to good results, but more profoundly obedience is the good result.  It is the reward, because it means that we are free from the necessity of sin, or what Jesus called, “slavery to sin” (Jn 8:34).  

Seeking the Kingdom

Now we will look further into the sermon on the mount, away from deeds practiced to be seen by others, and into states of being, states of the heart.  Look now at Matthew 6:19-21:

19 Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And then, in 24:

24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Now Jesus is talking about one of his favorite subjects, money. He doesn’t seem to be speaking of it in the same terms as he was in Matthew 5.  There the emphasis was on the nature of giving and why you should not give to charity in order to be seen by men.  Here it seems Jesus has in mind the heart attitude that loves money for its own sake.  Whether the issue is the desire for luxury and comfort or security and status, the issue is the same. You can’t take money with you into heaven, and you cannot serve money and the accumulation of wealth without becoming a slave to it, a worshiper of it.  And if you worship money, you do not worship God; in fact. you will despise him for getting in the way of your money-making.  

You may have heard that money is evil.  It is not, just as it is not the root of all evil.  “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim 6 ), but even then, you need to understand that money itself is neutral.  Here’s what happened. When men accumulated on the earth, they likely struggled with one another because of sin. But at some point, sinful though they were, they realized that they could trade with one another value for value.  One had a pig he didn’t need, and the other had a bundle of spears he wasn’t using. “How many spears will you give me for this pig,” said one.  “Twelve,” said the other. And they made a good trade. The pig was more valuable to the new owner because he needed it, and the same goes for the spears.  At some point, someone figured out that they could substitute metal and jewels for products, because it was hard to carry a pig to the spear market every time you wanted to shop.  But if a pig is worth three pieces of metal, then the pig farmer could carry twelve small pieces of metal that would represent four pigs.  This is much easier than carrying four pigs.  And money was born.  

Money wasn’t in itself a problem, because you could be as greedy for pigs or spears as you are for money.  Love of money is the problem, because greed is the problem, and money is usually associated with it. But if you took away money and currency and still had bartering, you’d still have a greed problem.  The love of money may be a root of all kinds of evil, but greed is the root of evil concerning money.  Jesus used money. Jesus was not evil, so he used money in a way that was not evil.  

Now that that’s out of the way, what is Jesus warning against? It seems that, although Jesus often addressed the issue of accumulating wealth for the sake of appearances and status seeking, here he seems to be speaking simply of the security that one feels will be attained by the accumulation of wealth.  In this case, the admonition is against laying “up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” (19). The reason has to do with the heart.  Profoundly, he points out in verse 21 that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Instead he counsels to lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.  It’s easy to think that Jesus simply means give all your money away to charity and you’ll be rewarded in heaven.  But we know that God expects us to provide for ourselves (2 Thes 3:10), and for our families (1 Tim 5:8). We know that if our rent is due Friday, but we get paid Monday, we need to save our rent money at least until Friday in order to be good stewards and show good character to our landlords, reflecting well on the God we serve.  

Surely it does mean, to some extent, that we would give money away.  That seems like common sense.  But it also means using the money for what money is used for, which Jesus and his disciples did, but in a way that displays trust in God and keeps him first, our purposes in him second, and money, only as a neutral tool in the process. In verse 24 it says that, “No one can serve two masters…you cannot serve both God and money.” If God is your master, then you are his servant.  As his servant, make money your servant, so you can fulfill your job as his servant.  

This really started to make sense to me when I realized something about the responsibility I have at the church where I serve as an elder and pastor.  One of the responsibilities of our elder board is to steward the money that the members give to the church. We pay the rent on the building, staff salaries, insurance premiums, giving outside the church, and a host of other things that a nonprofit “business” like a church needs to operate.  I have a hand in both budgeting that money and spending it.  And, compared to my personal finances, it is a whole lot of money to manage. Over the years I’ve stewarded millions of dollars for the purposes of the church.  Here’s the thing: 

I’ve never once been confused about whose money it was.  It was not mine, although I helped manage it. 

It belongs to God and his church for the purposes that he has called us to in our city. Simple as that. For me to help myself to some of it (I do get a salary by the church.  I have nothing to do with what I am compensated. There are other men responsible for that) would be evil and wrong, theft even. It would disqualify me from ministry and qualify me for prison.  

It occurred to me one day that my personal finances should be thought of in the exact same way. 

My money is primarily God’s money, for God’s purposes for my life. This includes provision for me and my family, investment in business and mission work, and investment for the future care of my needs if possible (retirement), so that no one else has to supply it.  When the leaders of our church are planning and praying for God’s leading in direction for our church and the mission we’re on, profit is never a consideration. Paying the bills is.  Keeping our agreements with landlords and vendors is. Maybe building a reserve amount to have in case of emergency is.  But building a wealthy church is not anyone’s goal, nor should it be.  The same goes for personal finances.  Seeking to make a profit as a good steward is right and good, but trying to rich for the sake of getting rich is never the point. 

With the church’s money we budget faithfully and somewhat conservatively so that we are financially healthy. We follow biblical principles, operate honestly and wisely, and trust God completely. Tomorrow we will look in part 6 at the next section, which shows how Jesus wants his people as individuals to think the exact same way, especially the part about trusting God completely.