Augustine on luxury

In speaking of the fall of Rome in The City of God, Augustine says,

It was at that time also that the proconsul Cn. Manlius, after subduing the Galatians, introduced into Rome the luxury of Asia, more destructive than all hostile armies. (p 99).

Luxury was more injurious to the virtue of Rome than all hostile armies. Could there be a more apt description of the effects of luxury on our own nation?

The implications for entrepreneurship based on the Gospel are clear: we do not engage in entrepreneurship to multiply the luxuries of the wealthy; rather we plunge into entrepreneurship to manifest the reign of Christ in ventures that creatively address needs, particularly those of the poor.

Aligning interests: moving in with the poor

The Gospel calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Many Christians have interpreted that to mean that we remain where we are (or further insulate ourselves from poverty), and give to the poor in order to better their situation. Our consciences are (at least partially) salved for having helped, but often our whole hearts are not poured into loving the poor. So how do we change that?

One way to align our interests is to move in with the poor. Then giving is not merely to salve our conscience; it is to seek the good of those who are truly our neighbors because our lot is bound up with theirs. More than that, we will begin to understand what are the issues that perpetuate poverty - and we can begin to address them personally (and not just by throwing money at the problem) through the Gospel.

I am not suggesting that this is easy. I am suggesting, however, that apart from this move there will naturally tend to be the NIMBY (not in my back yard) attitude toward loving the poor. Our interests will be conflicted: we want good for the poor, so long as it does not threaten our comfort or security. By moving in with the poor, their interests become ours, because we begin to truly live as neighbors.

If I am not mistaken, this will also drive true gospel entrepreneurship because we will begin asking the question:

How does the good news of Christ need to be manifested in the public square in this community?

Social, or Gospel Entrepreneurship?

There is an emerging field of entrepreneurs who are not Christians, and and interested in starting similar ventures in similar communities. They are social entrepreneurs, motivated not primarily by money, but by social change. They are convinced that commerce, and not just non-profits, can be the vehicles of change among the poor.

As I have been getting involved in entrepreneurship, I have been asking the question,

What is the difference between social entrepreneurship and gospel entrepreneurship?

Do we share the same values? Are we pursuing the same goals? Are we working together, or at odds?

I'll try to answer each of those in order:

• Do we share the same values? Yes and no. Yes, we care for poor communities, and yes, we believe that commerce can be a vehicle of social change. Yes, we believe that entrepreneurship is not about profiteering, but adding value and creating capital.
  But, no we do not believe that social change will happen in the the same way, and no we do not have the same hierarchy of values.
  
• Are we pursuing the same goals? Yes and no. Yes, we want to see poor communities revitalized, residents becoming invested in their communities, and local commerce flourishing. But there we part paths. With these outcomes a social entrepreneur will be satisfied; with only these outcomes, the gospel entrepreneur will not be satisfied.
• Are we working together, or at odds? There are many ways in which gospel entrepreneurs will join hands with social entrepreneurs to work for the good of a neighborhood. It is precisely in this context of partnership that the differences in our values and goals will emerge, and will, in a sense, put us at odds, even though we both seek the good of the neighborhood.

If you're asking, "So what are the values and goals of gospel entrepreneurship that differ from social entrepreneurship?" you're asking the right question.

1. Values: The primary interest of a gospel entrepreneur is to seek first the Kingdom of God. At its very core it is different from social entrepreneurship because it seeks to be a sign, instrument and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. Social entrepreneurship has none of these aims.
   
2. Methods: Gospel entrepreneurship believes that lasting social change happens through the Gospel and not apart from it. In fact, it believes that social entrepreneurship, though active and well-intentioned, does not address the real issues of poverty. Consequently, in its dialog with social entrepreneurs, it focuses on the chief end, and the methods of achieving that end.
3. Results: Gospel entrepreneurs measure success entirely differently than social entrepreneurs. Gospel entrepreneurs look for the extension of the reign of Christ over all things through the Gospel. If they start a business that is profitable, provides jobs to the community, and contributes to social change, but does not result in people submitting to Christ as King, they will not consider their work a success.
   

Social entrepreneurship and gospel entrepreneurship are distinct. They have different values, methods and metrics. Yet the business of gospel entrepreneurs is not to criticize social entrepreneurs, but to call them to Christ through the gospel, that He may be all in all.

Bigger is better?

Woe to those who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is no more room,
and you are made to dwell alone
in the midst of the land (Isaiah 5:8)

We do not live in the only age of expansion. The 'bigger is better' mentality had gripped the people of Israel to whom Isaiah prophesied. They did not regard the deeds of the LORD (v12), but were set on expansion.

How easy it is to say that growth is the blessing of the LORD! Yet small and humble may more honor the King than a vast empire.

Loving by lending

The books of the Law give many indicators of how are to fulfill the two great commandments of loving God supremely, and our neighbors as ourselves:

“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’" (Deuteronomy 15:7-11, emphasis mine)

In the previous chapter, God had commanded the tithe for the poor:

“At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns. And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do." (Deuteronomy 14:28-29)

Thus on a triennial basis, the people were to care for the poor by bringing the tithe of their produce for those in need: the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widows (and the Levites, who had no inheritance). The thrust of the command in chapter 15 is to show that the normal way of loving one's poor neighbor is not through the tithing every third year, but through lending regularly. He does not mean lending to the poor in order to profit from them; the Scripture is very clear that exacting usury of the poor is wicked (e.g. Exodus 22:25) - and in this very passage, lenders are warned against hardening their hearts because the year of release is near.

What ought to draw our attention is that the way in which God provided for the poor among His people was primarily through the ordinary laws of not gleaning the edges of the field (Leviticus 23:22) that the poor might gather the fruit, and through generous lending to those in need (Deuteronomy 15:8). The tithe at the end of every third year was bounty for the poor, but could not possibly sustain them for the intervening years. The regular provision for the poor required them to work (in gleaning the edges of the fields), and to repay loans (except in the year of release).

What difference does it make what laws God had for His people Israel, now that we live not in the theocracy of Israel, but as Christians? Jesus said that the law and prophets were summed up in this: To love the LORD with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Thus, the law is to us an instructor in how to love our neighbors, even though it does not govern us in the way that it did the people of Israel.

We desperately need this instruction in our day. I have witnessed the destruction of cultures through handouts in Uganda and in the United States. Well-intentioned people (including Christians!) have provided for the poor in ways that did not require or enable them to work, and in ways that did not affirm and maintain their responsibility. The effect of this well-intentioned charity was to plunge those cultures into ruin, not to lift them from poverty. If we would seek how to truly love the poor, we must heed the wisdom of God.

This teaching is not confined to the Old Testament law. Jesus, I think, was alluding to this particular kind of lending when he said:

"And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount." (Luke 6:34)

Jesus could have said, "Give to the poor" (as he does elsewhere), but instead here he commends lending in which we assume the risk of the poor. We reflect to the world His righteousness and mercy when we lend to the poor, who may not be able to repay.

It is at precisely this point that our citizenship in the Kingdom of heaven is manifest in the world, and the Kingdom of heaven itself comes to bear on the world. We lend to the poor not because the laws of the land require it, but because our King has commanded it. As such, by our commerce, we show forth the foolishness of the gospel and the righteousness, wisdom and mercy of our King in a way that does not destroy cultures but renews them through the Gospel.

Prayer

Since I work from home and have very flexible work arrangements, I often end up doing work in the evenings. After a recent evening of research on a start-up, I realized just how often I can pour great time and effort into a task, and yet hardly pray at all about it - even if I believe that what I am doing honors God. After wrestling for hours one evening with a glitch in a tool that I had designed, I was shamed to realize that I never labor that way in prayer. I don't spend hours waiting, pressing and seeking for an answer. I content myself with a few minutes, and go back to work.

If the gospel is really to permeate my life and work, there is going to have to be a radical shift in the ways that I approach God through prayer - and in the perseverance with which I pray.

Mercenary mentality

The New York Times Magazine ran an article in January on Faith at Work. Randy Cohen began the article this way:

I answered an ad for a job as a data-entry clerk at a faith-based charity, but I stopped filling out the application when it said I could not work there unless I signed a ''statement of faith,'' affirming that I had evangelical Christian beliefs. Isn't this religious discrimination?

What struck me was not that this charity asked its employees to sign a statement of faith, but that this Mr. Cohen has an overwhelmingly mercenary mentality quite without realizing it. For the reality is, that whether one signs a 'statement of faith' or not, in entering the employment of any organization, one is aligning oneself with their mission, values and goals. Doing data entry is supporting the cause of the organization. If one was doing data entry for Osama bin Laden, there is a tacit commitment of oneself to the purposes that he represents.

Doing data entry for bin Laden is different from doing it for a Christian charity. They serve different ends. That the charity asks its employees to make that commitment explicit only serves to focus attention on the fact that to hire oneself out to an organization is to support it.

It is precisely at this point that I believe that Christians need to demonstrate more faithfulness to the message of the gospel. I think hardly a person would willingly enter the employment of al Queda, but do we realize that our employment represents an allegiance? We do not simply work to take home a paycheck; rather we are compensated for advancing the cause of our employer. Therefore a Christian must ask: How can I advance the cause of my employer while being entirely faithful to Christ? My sense is that when we ask ourselves that (or at least when I ask myself that), we'll find that the gospel rubs against the mission of the mass of employers.

Consequently, we have two alternatives:

1. Maintain our first allegiance to Christ, and allow the gospel to define our actions in the workplace, or
2. Start new organizations that (in every righteous sector, not just the non-profit world!) submit to Christ.

In the first, we will be against the world for the world, and in the second, for the world against the world.

Unmasking the powers

The subtitle of this blog is "Unmasking the powers of the age through the Gospel." In engaging in entrepreneurship through the Gospel, I believe that one of the primary outcomes will be to unmask the powers of the age. What does that mean? I know no one more helpful than Lesslie Newbigin. I quote him at length here because a Biblical exposition of 'the powers' is first required in order to understand what is entailed in their unmasking:

I refer to the whole mass of teaching in St Paul's letters about what are variously called principalities, powers, dominions, thrones, authorities, rulers, angels, and other names (38) . . . They refer to something behind these individuals, to the offices, the powers, the authority which is represented from time to time by this or that individual (39). . . If one can summarize all these as referring to the structural elements of human life, one brings them into relation with the language about the stoicheia [elements]. All human life is lived and has to believed within limits which are set by certain structural features, both of the natural world and of the world of human society. . . [O]ur life in society is structured by law, custom and tradition (42) . . . These structural elements are necessary to guide and protect human life. They serve God's purpose. . . But they can come to usurp the place to which they have no right, the place which belongs to Christ and to him alone (43). [For example] Money, which is a useful means for facilitating exchange, has become a power in itself, so that we do not measure human wealth in terms of real goodness and happiness but in terms of cash. Money has truly become a fetish, a power which demands and receives absolute devotion (44).

In the cross Christ has disarmed the powers. He has unmasked them. . . . The death of Christ was the unmasking of the powers - Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate were not uniquely wicked men; they were acting out their roles as guardians of the political and moral and religious order. They acted as representatives of what the New Testament calls the world, this present age. When God raised the crucified Jesus, this present age and its structures was exposed, illuminated, unmasked - but not destroyed. Cross and resurrection seen together mean both judgment and grace, both wrath and endless patience. God still upholds the structures; without them the world would collapse and human life would be unthinkable. But the structures lose their pretended absoluteness. Nothing now is absolute except God as he is known in Jesus Christ; everything else is relativized. That is the bottom line for Christian thinking and the starting point for Christian action in the affairs of the world. What does it imply in practice? (45)

Let me begin with some negatives. It does not mean anarchy. It does not mean an attack on structures as such. . . . human life is impossible without them, and God in his mercy preserves them in order to give time for the Church to fulfill its calling to make manifest to them the wisdom of God. Our relation to the structures has to contain both the judgment that is inevitable in the searing light of the cross, and also the patience that is required of us as witnesses to the resurrection. We are not conservatives who regard the structures as part of the unalterable order of creation, as part of the world of what we call 'hard facts' beyond the range of the gospel and who therefore suppose that the gospel is only relevant to the issues of personal and private life. Nor are we anarchists who seek to destroy the structures. We are rather patient revolutionaries who know that the whole creation, with all its given structures, is groaning in the travail of a new birth, and that we share this groaning and travail, this struggling and wrestling, but do so in hope because we have already receive in the Spirit, the firstfruit of the new world (Rom 8:19-25). (45-46) . .

What are we talking about when we speak of confronting the institutions of state and market economy and culture with the gospel? We are not fighting against the individuals who perform their roles within these institutions . . . Those who call for a Christian assault on the worlds of politics and economics often make it clear that the attack belongs to the same order of being as the enemy to be attacked. The aim of the attack is to seize the levers of power and take control. We have seen many such successful revolutions, and we know that in most cases what has happened is simply that the oppressor and the oppressed have exchanged roles. The structure is unchanged. The throne is unshaken, only there is a different person occupying it. How is the throne itself to be shaken? How is the power to be disarmed and placed in the service of Christ? Only by the power of the gospel itself, announced in word and embodied in deed. As Walter Wink reminds us, the victory of the Church over the demonic power which was embodied in the Roman imperial system was not won by seizing the levers of power: it was won when the victims knelt down in the Colosseum and prayed in the name of Jesus for the Emperor. The soldiers in Christ's victorious army were not armed with the weapons of this age; they were martyrs whose robes were washed in blood. It was not that a particular Emperor was discredited or displaced; it was that the entire mystique of the Empire, its spiritual power, was unmasked, disarmed, and rendered powerless. A conversion of individuals which failed to identify, unmask, and reject that spiritual, ideological power would have been as futile as an attempt by Christians to wrest that power from its holders. Evangelism which is politically and ideologically naive, and social action which does not recognize the need for conversion from false gods to the living God, both fall short of what is required (Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian 46-47).

The power of capitalism is unmasked when its pretended absoluteness is displayed in exactly the way Newbigin describes: "Only by the power of the gospel itself, announced in word and embodied in deed." When money is dethroned as the reigning god, and the Church submits to Christ her King as her true and great Sovereign, then through the power of the gospel, announced in word, and embodied in deed, the mystique of capitalism may be disarmed and rendered powerless just as was the Roman empire.

Gospel entrepreneurship is not seeking to wrest the power of commerce from evil oppressive businesses by outperforming them in the marketplace. Rather, it is the work of patient revolutionaries, announcing the good news in word and deed, in all sectors, in hope [in the Romans 8 sense of that word] that through the Church, the Spirit will use this to display the manifold wisdom of God in dethroning and disarming the powers.

Power to get wealth

As an entrepreneur, I am keenly aware of opportunities to create wealth. I see them everywhere. There are opportunities to do good, meet needs in a just way, and create wealth for those who work. For people like me God has recorded these words in Scripture:

Beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the Lord your God, for it he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. (Deuteronomy 8:17-18)

These are words that I need on my head and on my heart, and on the door frames of my house.

Walking in the way, we wait

There is, I believe, an inherent tension in participating in gospel entrepreneurship. We believe that we are called to engage in commerce in ways that are informed and transformed by the gospel and that this has redemptive effects within human society. At the same time, we have no illusion that our small obedience will bring about what we desire. Our desire is much greater than the influence that one, or even many, gospel-centered businesses can accomplish. We crave times of awakening and revival in which human society is transformed swiftly and deeply through the gospel.

Isaiah captured well how we live with this tension:

Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts. (Isaiah 26:8)

The way of waiting for, and pleading for the outpourings of the Spirit that we desperately need is not to sit idly. Rather, walking in the way of His laws, we wait. We are engaged in the business of bringing the Gospel to bear on all of human society. Yet we do this with a spirit of waiting, mindful that unless the Spirit creates repentance, any societal change is going to be superficial. Truly, His name and renown, and not the works of our hands, are the desire of our hearts.