Peter Thiel's brilliant interview question

Peter Thiel has a question that he likes to ask in interview settings: Tell me something that is true that very few people agree with you on. He explains:

The business version of this question is what great business is nobody building? And these questions turn out to be quite hard to answer for two somewhat different reasons. One of them is it's always hard to come up with new truths that people have not yet understood. Secondly, it also requires a bit of courage because you often have to go against social convention in pursuing certain lines of business. People discourage you from doing things that are strange and new.

It turns out that what defines entrepreneurial brilliance is also the mark of true Christians. What do we hold to be true that very few people agree on? Jesus is Lord.

Sure, we're allowed to have that as a "personal religious belief," but not to believe that it is actually true, and true for everyone (whether they know or accept it or not) and that He is actually making all things new. That is the scandal and the glory of Christian faith.

Thiel is absolutely right. It takes courage to affirm unaccepted truth in public. It takes wisdom and perseverance to act on that truth when very few others can see it. This is true in entrepreneurship. Steve Wozniak believed that a personal computers could be useful and ubiquitous. It is true at the leading edge of science. Copernicus made claims that contradicted what had been the established scientific consensus for centuries.

Contrary to the conventions of our culture since the Enlightenment, religious faith is not a distinct and inferior class of knowledge. It too, makes public claims of truth that contradict prevailing assumptions. It is news. It is good news.

So consider this scenario. You're a bright young entrepreneur, invited to visit Peter Thiel, who is interested in investing in you and your venture. And he asks you: Tell me something that is true that very few people agree with you on. Do you have the courage and confidence to say to one of the most clever and accomplished entrepreneurs and investors, "Jesus is Lord"?

Honestly, it is a whole lot easier for me to come up with a half dozen heretical business ideas. Thiel's question has forced me to look squarely at the truth of the Gospel and the courage it takes to affirm it in public.

Thank you, Peter.

Gospel entrepreneurship as Christian formation

I have the bad habit of reading too many books at once - and therefore not reading very quickly at all. At present, I'm reading Lesslie Newbigin's A Word in Season, James Hunter's Death of Character, Michael Hyatt's Platform, and (as of today) Desiring the Kingdom by James Smith.

One of the things that slows me down is finding so much wisdom and insight with which to interact. For example, today I came across this paragraph in Desiring the Kingdom:

“Because our hearts are oriented primarily by desire, by what we love, and because those desires are shaped and molded by the habit-forming practices in which we participate, it is the rituals and practices of the mall - the liturgies of mall and market - that shape our imaginations and how we orient ourselves to the world. Embedded in them is a common set of assumptions about the shape of human flourishing, which becomes an implicit telos, or goal, of our own desires and actions. That is, the visions of the good life embedded in these practices become surreptitiously embedded in us through our participation in the rituals and rhythms of these institutions. These quasi-liturgies effect an education of desire, a pedagogy of the heart. But if the church is complicit with this sort of formation, where could we look for an alternative education of desire?”

Smith's word 'complicit' jumped out at me in describing the 'habit-forming practices' of the market that 'shape our imaginations and how we orient ourselves to the world.' He's saying that we're doing something wrong, and that we need to 'look for an alternative education of desire.' I think that there is an even more exciting possibility.

Given the habit-forming power of the practices of participation in human culture to shape our vision of the good life and human flourishing, we need to lean into them, not away from them.

Let me explain why. Over the past two months, I have been meeting regularly with a young gospel entrepreneur who is prayerfully, thoughtfully, actively moving into "the market." He is scheming good for his neighbors in ways that proclaim and embody the gospel. Our work together has has a formative impact on me and my family. Our brainstorming sessions in my living room in which my daughter doodles in crayon on the block paper where we're mapping neighborhood assets and needs is formative.

This rhythm of life of gathering to pray, dream, and work together to create a new business that is a sign, instrument and foretaste of the kingdom is shaping our desires. It is forming in our children the assumption that the impulse of Christian participation in public life is love, not covetousness. They're learning that the fact that the market and the mall are disfigured is precisely why they need redeeming.Our formative practices of leaning into the broken world of commerce in obedience and faith is the enacted prayer, "Hallowed be your name; Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This, I hope and trust, will shape my children's imaginations to see all the glorious possibilities of God's redemptive work in us - and in that a tiny foretaste of the consummation of redemption.

Why won't you buy this?

My eight year old daughter loves to make things. And now she wants to sell them. Her motives are great. She wants to give money to the Rehoboth Children's Home in India (which is supported by the gifts of our church). But she's baffled that people aren't leaping at the chance to pay for her pieces of art.

She is stumbling onto something really important that she'll need to wrestle with for the rest of her life. In order to participate in value exchanges, you have to provide something that people value. At this stage, her work doesn't yet meet their criteria of fine art.

The critical question for her is not Why won't you buy this? but What can I offer that solves a problem for you? At this stage in life, she is a fantastic "mother's helper," who can take competently care of younger children (while an adult is present in the home) so that the parent can get other things done - like read a book! At $3/hour, that feels like a tremendous amount of money for my daughter, and a bargain for our friends who need a breather.

With that experience under her belt (and the referrals that flow from doing a good job) she'll be ready to take on "real" babysitting jobs when she's old enough to do that. In the process she will have learned that she doesn't have to twist people's arm into buying something they don't want. She simply has to ask what she can do or provide that others will gladly pay for. After all, that's what most artists do while they refine their craft such that people gladly want to pay for their art.

Why spotlight this nonprofit?

In response to my recent Cardus essay on Value, Values and Valuation, one reader challenged one of my examples:

Perhaps Charlottesville Investment Collaborative is not the example you are looking for. I find the website indicates the cooperative concentrates on training, and is willing to lend money.  How effective the cooperative actually is will depend on the successes of the values created by the participants. Nothing on the website is dedicated to explaining and expounding the new found values, [but rather to] providing 'free advertising' for the participants.

Why did I choose CIC as an example if it has these apparent shortcomings?

1. Value Creation: CIC is creating value by doing something that no-one else in our community is doing by enabling the marginalized to start new businesses. Training and lending IS the value provided. The participants have no other access to such opportunity or resources, and therefore could not otherwise start new enterprises.
2. Participant Success: The reader is right that success hinges on the entrepreneurs/participants' value creation and values. The proof will be in their flourishing.
3. Free advertising? Providing 'free advertising' for participants is also value creation. The poor - by definition - don't have the social networks we do. Getting the word out about the value that they're creating is mission critical for their success and the flourishing of our city.
4. What values? The reader is also right that "nothing on the website is dedicated to explaining and expounding the new found values." CIC is not a Christian organization. I have the privilege of collaborating with my non-Christian neighbors who, by common grace, are doing good and creating value for their neighbors. Into that good work I speak these words. Indeed, I think that is precisely the value that we as Christians need to bring to the table - the embodied and spoken values of the Kingdom. That, I truly hope, is public theology for the common good.

The return of gospel entrepreneurship

For a time, I actively blogged here. For quite some time, this blog has been inactive. The time has come for a revival.

Yesterday Cardus published my essay on Value, Values and Valuation. The confluence of writing that piece, and being involved in a couple of exciting social ventures have convinced me that it is time to renew this blog.

I should make a connection between Cardus and value. Cardus' magazine Comment and the Economist are the only two print magazines I consistently read. Both continue to create consistent value within their spheres. While other magazines are faltering, these two are leading.

So, check out the Comment essay, and subscribe to the rss for many connected strands of thought.

Humility and Self-Promotion

Today I had lunch with a very capable Christian writer who said, offhandedly, "I guess it is that writer's shyness. I don't want to engage in self-promotion." He's right. We shouldn't want to engage in self-promotion, because that's ugly and disfiguring. So what is a Christian entrepreneur (whether writer or otherwise) to do? Creating Value The foundation of all entrepreneurship is the creation or provision of value. We solve a problem in a novel way. That solution may be a book, or a product, or a service. Whatever it is, it must add value. If it doesn't, it isn't entrepreneurship; it is hoodwinking. The Christian who creates value ought not to be ashamed of this good! If what is created and offered truly adds value, then offering it (whether a book, patent, product, service, or whatever) can be love, not self-promotion. Indeed, clearly understanding the value that one is creating and offering is the best protection against self-promotion. It has to be good for others, and not merely for oneself, in order to add value. Love Creates Value This gets to the heart of gospel entrepreneurship. Love creates value for the good of others. Love is the heartbeat of gospel entrepreneurship. Its aim is not profit, but value. Profit is the proper adjunct of value creation, not its purpose. I have used my friend Joshua as an example before, and here again he is a great example. Joshua is a pharmaseutical salesman. He goes office to office to encourage doctors to prescribe the drugs his company develops and produces. On the surface, it would seem like it is in Joshua's interest to tell everyone to prescribe his drugs. But it isn't, and Joshua knows it. He is more concerned with adding value than selling his drug. So when a doctor describes a case for which the drug isn't a good fit, Joshua says, "My drug is not appropriate for that." If that sounds like the worst think a drug rep, who makes a living based on sales, could say, you need to think in terms of value. Joshua just added value by telling the truth. So doctors trust him more than the reps who "sell, sell, sell." And Joshua is consistently one of the most profitable salesmen in his region. Profit is the adjunct of value. By caring for his clients and telling the truth, Joshua adds value. I encouraged my Christian writer friend, "You have written this book to add value. You don't need to be ashamed of that. It isn't self-promotion to share value with others." I didn't say it then, but I should have concluded, "It is LOVE to share value with others. The fact that you created that value is an expression of that love."

Hallowed be your Name

The litmus test of authentic Christian action in the world is whether it is the enacted prayer, "Hallowed be your Name." There is much good that can be done and is done without reference to the Name. But being born again means being reoriented to the Name. The Christian who rises in the morning to pray, "Hallowed be your Name," is - or ought to be - asking: In all of my public and private actions, bring honor to your Name. It is not, "Let me seek the common good." No, the good we seek has been radically redefined by the One who says, "No one is good except God alone" (Mk 10:18). It is, therefore, His good that we seek in the world. We know by experience that the honor of His Name IS good - and we therefore must seek it in prayer and in public action in the world.

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
    

Too little to live for

"The trouble is, as modern people, we have too much to live with and too little to live for . . . in the midst of material plenty, we have spiritual poverty." (Entrepreneurs of Life p16)

Science is meaningless

"Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important to us, 'what shall we do and how shall we live?'" (Leo Tolstoy, quoted in Entrepreneurs of Life p17)

An idea for which to live and die

"The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." Soren Kirkegaard (Entrepreneurs of Life p15)

Getting all A's - and failing

"You can get all A's and still flunk life." Walter Percy (Entrepreneurs of Life p15)

To live for something definite

"For the secret of man's being is not only to live . . . but to live for something definite. Without a firm notion of what he is living for, man will not accept life and will rather destroy himself than remain on earth." Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Entrepreneurs of Life p14)

Man without purpose

"The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - a waif, a nothing, a no-man."

Thomas Carlyle (Entrepreneurs of Life p14)

Aligning interests

How do you know to what extent it is right to ask God to bless the work of your hands? This prayer is the measure:

To the degree that my work brings You glory, pour out Your blessing.

Aligning Interests
Praying like this aligns our interests. It says, "Inasmuch as I am seeking first your kingdom and righteousness, would you add all these other things that you've promised?" And implicitly it acknowledges that if our work does not glorify Him, that we dare not ask for blessing.

Any good business aligns the interests of the involved parties. For example, when I worked in the financial services, there was a major shift from commission revenue to fee-based revenue. The concept was simple. The broker should be paid for adding value - not for moving money around. When the investment grows, the broker gets paid more; he doesn't just get paid for buying and selling.

I would suggest that gospel entrepreneurship is simply that venture of creating value in the world that not only aligns the client/vendor/employee/owner relationships, but also aligns itself with the interests of the King and His Kingdom.

The duty to ask

"It is the duty of the church to ask what those beliefs and commitments [of the 'secular' state] are and to expose them to the light of the gospel. There is no genuinely missionary encounter of the gospel with our culture unless this happens." (Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks p132)

I just wrote a post on closing the achievement gap that attempts to call precisely this question. As I wrote it, I realized just how often this needs to happen in our public discourse, and not just in conversations with those who already share our assumptions.

What is repentance?

In Peter's famous Pentecost sermon, the crowds were cut to the heart and asked him, "What shall we do?" and he replied, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins . . ." (Acts 3:38). From that time forward, the Church has called all people everywhere to repentance, faith and baptism. Yet the question must be asked, What is repentance?

John Piper, in a recent post, answered it well in a single sentence:

There is no clear dividing line between biblical repentance and Christ-exalting civic engagement.

In other words, the repentance required is to be lived out in the daily realities of families, vocation, communities and nations. It entails supreme allegiance to Jesus as King, not just as a theological doctrine, but in practical obedience. Hence Jesus' command, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," and John the Baptist's eminently practical counsel to those who asked what it meant to bear fruit in keeping with repentance:

And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.” (Luke 3:10-14)

For those of us who have inherited a 'separation of church and state' mentality, this is itself a call to repentance. An essential step in repentance is to recognize and repent of this assumption that the gospel is a private, personal, inward matter of faith in Christ, and not a public repentance in our civic engagement.

The way gospel entrepreneurs spread hope

At the Entrepreurship Forum this year I saw the relationship between hope, glory, and entrepreneurship in a way that I had never seen it before. Two texts came together in a remarkable way. First, Romans 5:2,

". . . we rejoice in hope of the glory of God."

That sounds very spiritual and otherworldly. It doesn't sound like the kind of thing that calls us to engage diligently in the daily responsibilities of life. How does that translate into life here and now?

"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor 3:18).

Our business as entrepreneurs is to gaze on the glory of God in the face of Christ day after day, such that we rejoice in the hope of its fullness, we reflect to the world in our countenance the glory of God, and we sustain no illusions that what we see here is all there is.

A radically different vision

The power of a human mind to think rationally is only developed in a tradition which itself depends on the experience of previous generations. This is obviously true of the vast edifice of modern science sustained by the scientific community. The definition of what is reasonable and what is not will be conditioned by the tradition within which the matter is being discussed. . .

It is no secret, indeed it has been affirmed from the beginning, that the gospel gives rise to a new plausibility structure, a radically different vision of things from those that shape all human cultures apart from the gospel. The Church, therefore, as the bearer of the gospel, inhabits a plausibility structure that is at variance with, and which calls in question, those that govern all human cultures without exception. (Gospel in a Pluralist Society p9)

The business of gospel entrepreneurship is to create ventures that embody this vision, and call into question the cultures around them.