A Biblical Worldview and Economic Flourishing

So the picture of infusing shalom, it seems to me, is trying to contribute in as helpful a way as possible towards the mutual betterment, another concept that sometimes comes up in philosophical discussions. I think it’s a concept we’ve completely lost sight of in our culture is the concept of the common good.

When you’re moving towards goals that you can share together and move towards one another together about and through so that you are able to cooperate with one another, in some cases even in the midst of [it] you’re aware yes, there are also differences between us. But there is something in common, and there’s something good that we both can work towards as we sort out where our tensions are, that kind of thing.

But I’m not going to take this podcast there. That’s a whole other topic, but I say that alongside something else that I do want to add this element. You know, Os Guinness has a concept that there’s a kind of freedom, a kind of sense of individual freedom that’s suicidal, and that when it’s applied, when the individual is so much the focus without any discipline or constraint, that actually what you do is you exercise freedom, but it’s not a liberty that liberates. It’s a liberty that destroys. It’s a suicidal kind of liberty, and I think that that’s also part of what we’re seeing here; that if we can’t get to the place where we can model a concern and a service and an outreach that looks beyond ourselves, that even though we think we may be defending virtue in a positive kind of way, we actually may be leading to its undermining in many ways.

Property rights were there because you, as a human being, require property to carry out your stewardship duties. The only basis of property rights was that the human person needed property to be a good steward, and we need to recover a sense of stewardship. We need to recover a sense of duty if we’re going to restore any of these freedoms and rights to a constructive rather than destructive role.

Now I don’t want to give up these rights and freedoms.

Joining together with our Christians in our vocational fields, in our neighborhoods, wherever we end up living our lives, to carry on common purposes together.

Now that can be very different in, say, a blue-collar type of setting rather than in a white-collar type of setting, and it may not be the Christian factory workers get together in a vocational group for factory workers, but, believe me, there is community to be had. There is relationship to be had, and that sort of mutual reinforcing of Christian virtue in our vocations is something that I think we all need.

But anyway, there were two sets of questions here that I thought immediately come to mind in light of what you’ve just said that they raise, and as we’re kind of wrapping up here, I’m getting ready to come to a section in which you talk about the special responsibility that business leaders have because of the way in which they have oversight over larger corporate structures that influence society.

And you’re also getting ready to make the point that clergy in this level of laity have very little cross contact. I think you site a thing that says: “Almost two-thirds of Christians in elite social positions are not active in their local churches,” which shows a complete disconnect in that area. I’m going to come back to that later, but I’m setting the stage for the question I’m going to ask, and it has to do with what about the people who have kind of the “average, everyday job?”

You know, they’re not manager; they’re not controlling where companies go; they’re not CEOs, and so he says: “How do we communicate the concept of entrepreneurial blessing to a congregation which includes people who do not see themselves as entrepreneurial” or I might add, do not function in kind of what we traditionally see as entrepreneurial roles or “how do we communicate to people the idea of infusing shalom into a society of they don’t perceive themselves as leaders or influencers in the community and, in fact, they may not be?” They may have a very, for lack of a better description, common role and a common job. How does this work for that level of our society?

I think, first of all –two things that stood out to me: One, people who don’t see themselves as entrepreneurs; and, two, people who don’t see themselves as leaders or influencers. And I think in both cases part of what we need to do is help people think of themselves in that way wherever they are, and those words may not be the best words for doing that, but to be an entrepreneur is not simply about owning your own business.

An entrepreneurial mindset is about having agency, seeing yourself as someone who does rather than someone who is acted upon [crosstalk].

And a good illustration of that: You think about on a factory floor typically there may be a guy who’s been there for 30 years, and everybody knows him, and he has a reputation as the guy who looks out for people or the guy who helps you get things done that need to get done or something like that. That person is an influencer and a leader. You get to any institution that’s been around for a while, pretty quickly you discover there are people who are not high on the org chart, per se, but have a lot of influence and power – sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. But one way or another there will be people who either because of their good example or for whatever reason have become leaders and influencers, and I think we all have that opportunity to some extent.

So I think we want to help people see themselves as actors, not simply being acted upon, and as someone who has an influence, even if it’s in a small sphere.

I suspect that what we’ve just walked into is exactly why the Kern Family Foundation exists, and that it is this gap in particular that is certainly one of the things that is why the Foundation has put this topic on the table for the church to urge the church to think about it and what the impact is if this gap would be reduced and dealt with.

They each bring something indispensable to the table. Religious professionals have a store of knowledge and wisdom about the word of God and the historic Christian faith that we all need, and the pastor is an indispensable member of both the faith community and the human community, and the economic professionals are the people who do the work and the people who understand the world of work that is outside the walls of the church, and their knowledge needs to be on the table as well; that just as every individual human being is both a creature of God and a creature of human culture, we need both religious professionals and economic professionals bringing their knowledge to the table.

And part of the problem is very often one side will not recognize that the other side has knowledge. This is something that was transformational for me when I read Dallas Willard’s book, Knowing Christ Today, and one of the things I got out of that book is huge amounts of the way we live both in the church and in human society is based on who[m] we think has knowledge. Who[m] do you think are the people with knowledge?

So I think we need to recognize that pastors and seminary professors and other religious professionals have a knowledge that we need to learn from, and we also need to recognize that economic professionals have knowledge that we need to learn from, and that you’re not allowed to simply dictate to the other side what their approach should be on the conceit that you understand this issue and they don’t.

Rather, we all need to come to the table and say: “Okay. Both sides have some knowledge that needs to be integrated,” and returning to this theme again – we’re made for relationship. We’re made for community. The Lord has not made us to be “Lone Ranger Christians” and figure out our faith on our own. The Lord has made us for a faith community in which we build each other up.

I used to say about the center that the center was a wonderful place for theological reflection, for practical reflection, but without some good core sociology it wasn’t going to make any sense. And what I’m excited about and what we’re talking about is that I think we’re helping people who don’t have a sociology degree or don’t think about sociology and economics and politics and that kind of thing as a regular basis. Give them some hooks to hang on and to think about as they think about the integration of their lives, as they think about how God walks into certain spheres of life.

They certainly know God has them active in because every nine to five they’re there where God has them, and hopefully with some thought about how that can impact their life in a positive way so that when they invest their time and their energy into those relationships and into those responsibilities, into those duties, if you will, they do it with such virtue and with such character and with such shalom and such blessing that they are productive and they change the environment that they work in, and their work becomes more fulfilling as a result.

How’s that for positives?

Thank you again, Greg, for being a part of our discussion, and we thank you for being a part of The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture.