Occupy Wall Street the Window of Opportunity

At the 2004 summer Olympics, Paul Hamm took home gold in all around men's gymnastics - amidst controversy. It turns out that Hamm got the gold because of a clerical error. Yang Tae-young from North Korea, the second place finisher, was unfairly docked a tenth of a point. If it hadn't been for that mistake, Tae-young would have taken home the gold, and Hamm would have had silver.

In the events surrounding this error, in which Hamm was awarded a gold medal that he shouldn't have won, he had a golden window of opportunity. When presented with the accounting mistake, he could have graciously given the gold to Tae-young. Better than having a chunk of gold that sits on a pedestal, he would have won the respect and honor of his countrymen and his competitors. But Hamm missed his golden window of opportunity. He insisted that he had won the gold not because his rival's claim was untrue, but because it was not submitted in a timely way. So Paul Hamm still has the gold medal; but he lost the admiration of his countrymen and competitors.

Not unlike Hamm's moment, there is now a golden window of opportunity for the gospel entrepreneur on Wall Street. Over the past month, protesters have occupied Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan decrying greed and corruption in a movement dubbed Occupy Wall Street. 


What is striking is that Occupy Wall Street is creating a business opportunity. Good entrepreneurship is simply solving painful problems. Occupy Wall Street is a painful problem in several ways:

1. It points out the greed and corruption endemic on the Street.
2. It is a cost to the City of New York in policing and sanitation.
3. At least so far, it is producing more complaints than solutions.

If you solve that rat's nest of problems, you're a hero:

1. To the financial sector, in dragging them out of the mud.
2. To the protestors, in bringing real, meaningful change.
3. To the City, by reforming and renewing a sector that is more than a third of its tax base, and by getting them out of the business of managing street protests.

However, time is of the essence. If you reform only because you're bludgeoned into it by policy reform, you're no one's hero. (That's the 'Paul Hamm being stripped of the gold' scenario.) If you insist that this is the only way that the system can work, you may be a hero in your own eyes, but you certainly won't be anyone else's hero. (That's the 'Paul Hamm keeps the gold after the international inquiry' scenario.) No, the real business opportunity here is for a bank or investment firm to make a such a clever and radical course correction that stuns both the Occupiers and the Street so that everyone says, "That is what it is supposed to look like."


Why is this a golden window of opportunity for a gospel entrepreneur? 

1. Love, not greed, is our motive in creating wealth.
2. We value human persons as created in the image of God, not merely as widgets to be used in our businesses.
3. We seek the welfare of our neighbor and the shalom of our cities in our work, and not merely with the profits made thereby.
4. Our posture of repentance is a sign that points away from ourselves and to the One who justifies the ungodly.
5. In our dealings, our clients, investors, shareholders, employees and community experience a foretaste of the kingdom of God - a place where Jesus reigns.

There is a window of opportunity. And I am praying for someone to step forward with that kind of courageous, innovative entrepreneurship.

Lesslie Newbigin Reading List

Recently, Michael Goheen reflected on The Lasting Legacy of Lesslie Newbigin for Q. The next day a friend emailed me and asked for a recommendation on what Newbigin book to read in a book study with others. It struck me that constructing a prioritized Lesslie Newbigin reading list could be valuable for a lot of people. Secondly, it would force me to clearly state what the major contribution of each of his works is. And finally, it would give me a great excuse to finish reading the Newbigin corpus.

The list that you see below is a work in progress. I will add summaries of each of his works, along with explanations of their importance. If I miss something, please feel free to add out-of-print or other less-known works in the Comments. And if I don't nail the value of the book, chime in with your insight on Newbigin's contribution.

1. Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
   If anyone asks me where to begin with Newbigin, I invariably point them to Foolishness because in it Newbigin distills:
1. The contours of "modern western culture." Newbigin has the perspective of an outsider (from 40 years of life in India) and the language of an insider (educated at Cambridge University). He has the unique ability to help "Westerners" become aware of the lenses through which they see the world.
2. The Gospel. Newbigin candidly admits that there is no "pure" or "culture-free" gospel. Indeed, the message of the gospel is that the Word became flesh. The question is not how we strip away culture (including modern western culture) to get to the pure gospel, but rather how the gospel becomes the new starting place that calls every culture into question and announces the Lordship of Christ over every sphere of life.
3. The missionary encounter. Newbigin's insight on western culture and the nature of the gospel are sufficient reason to read, and re-read the book. (I've read it cover-to-cover six times.) However, that is not the point of the book. His central question is, "What would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and modern western culture?" He answers this question with respect to politics and science and concludes with The Call to Be the Church. That final chapter is Newbigin's clarion call not just to understand, but to be the hermeneutic of the gospel - by which the good news of Christ is rendered present to the world.
2. Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History
3. Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth
4. Gospel in a Pluralist Society
5. Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship
6. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission
7. Honest Religion for Secular Man
8. A Walk Through the Bible
9. The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel
10. Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian
11. The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church
12. Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography