Good business depends on theology

Christian business people need theologians.

Periods of hope in human enterprise are followed by times of unprecedented greed and sufferings inflicted on the weak. For every corporate advance in civil rights there’s a business who makes its fortune on the backs of indentured servants. For every green company there’s an oil spill. The business world is fraught with sin, and the potential for a company to inflict harm or share good rivals the power of nations. Before the stark landscape of international corruption, the message of business ‘by the book’ fails to offer the vision necessary to thrust a Christian into sustained action for a righteous cause.

What Christian business people need is a perspective on the Kingdom of God which celebrates the stunning news of Jesus' current reign over all heaven and earth, comprehends the transformative power of the Spirit, and commits believers to a ‘Now and Not Yet’ lifestyle that confronts injustice and cries ‘Maranatha’! In a word, business people need theologians, not rulebooks.

Importance

The threat that faces Christian entrepreneurs is not chiefly moral failure. Repentance is a testimony of its own, and the action of forgiving and receiving forgiveness is absent in the marketplace. The threat is not irresponsibility either, towards the environment, in social impact, or fiscal looseness. The threat is a weak view of God and his Kingdom that leads the entrepreneur to settle for a more conscientious version of the average business.

Application

The three-week break from school was highly anticipated not least because it meant I’d have bandwidth to read something outside of our curriculum. For no reason than that it was on sale, I chose to read a book by N. T. Wright (Wright). His perspectives on the Kingdom of God reawakened me to the breathtaking reality of Jesus' current reign, and that the prayer ‘Let your will be done, let your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven’ is more than wishful thinking. More than anything, the writing, without directly applying any of it to the business world, had more to do with entrepreneurship than Larry Burkett’s sad interpretation (Burkett). It helped me dream again.

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