Spending or investing?

In common use, English speakers often say that they spend time. "I spent the past week with my in-laws." It is indeed monetary language, which acknowledges that time is precious. To use time is to spend it. And how we use our time is eminently important, because no person has more time than any other. To each person is allotted the same 24 hours in each day.

Not long ago, I was describing to a friend my time at home with my daughter during my wife's pediatric residency. It occurred to me that it was much more true to say that I had invested three years in nurturing and raising my daughter, than to say I had spent that time.

That realization caused me to ponder: how do we invest our time? Where are we looking for interest and dividends? A great many people invest an inordinate amount of time in work. So it is fair to ask them: Do you expect to still be part this company or organization in 20 years? Compare that to your relationships. Are you married? Do you expect to be married in 20 years? Do you have children? Do you expect to still be in relationship with them in 20 years?

Where are you investing your time?

Gross National Virtue

We need a new language for a new economy. For too long we have measured economies in terms of goods produced rather than good done. And it is quite understandable; goods are far more easily quantified than good. Yet it is a fatal flaw.

The primary measure of an economy is justice, not productivity. As we are witnessing, productivity can very quickly ebb and flow. Justice however, forms the condition under which humanity can flourish. Whether the market is up or down, and the GNP is skyrocketing or tanking, the most important measure is the justice of the economy.

We need to begin to assess our gross national virtue instead of our gross national product. When we do, we will be ashamed of where we are, but will be in the only point from which a healthy economy can be established: from confession and repentance.

Concentration of Risk

When I talk with people about the economy, I often end up saying the same thing: Concentration of control or capital is concentration of risk. I take that as a basic assumption about economics of scale.

I was pleased to see that Peter Bregman from the Harvard Business Review agrees. In Why Small Companies Will Win in this Economy, Bregman points back to the fundamentals:

Small companies with low overhead, reliable owners, a small number of committed employees, personal client relationships, and sustainable business models that drive a reasonable profit are the great opportunity of our time.

Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage.

The fact is that these are not just the great opportunity of our time; they are the fundamentals of any time. Small businesses allow for a level of trust and personal connection - among employees, and between employees and clients - that are difficult, if not impossible, for large entities to match.

Why is this so? The gospel tells us that we were made for true relatedness - with God and one another. The only way that trust and true mutual relatedness grow is in real relationships. And these thrive, not in big groups, but small. This is one of the many ways that gospel entrepreneurs can embody and offer hope in a famine of hope.

Evil in the economy

Yesterday I saw this headline in Business Week: Wall Street's Economic Crimes Against Humanity. In the article, Shoshana Zuboff assails the moral judgment of the suit and tie folks who work on Wall Street in the 'banality of evil' in which they indulged. In shocking terms for a major article in Business Week, she pounds and the personal responsibility of those involved, and not merely of the gigantic entities for which they worked. For the first time in a long time, the word evil has entered the vocabulary of capitalism. It recalled to me this insightful section from Lesslie Newbigin:

"But to say that capitalism requires a certain kind of moral foundation is to say that capitalism cannot survive permanently in a purely secular society. To quote a recent writer, 'The disinterested devotion which was vital to the creation of the capitalist world order and to the public life of industrial nations and which rested on a religious idea-system appears to be a type of moral capital debt which is no longer being serviced.' but this means that capitalism cannot be a self-sustaining system. It depends on the moral-cultural system and cannot be separated from it. But moral imperatives cannot operate merely as useful props for a profitable economic order. If they are not rooted in some belief about how the universe is in fact ordered, they collapse; and if they are so rooted, then the economic order cannot be isolated from their jurisdiction. If capitalism depends on the insights of a moral conscience, then that conscience has to have authority over the working of capitalist economics. (Foolishness to the Greeks p112).

Why is it that those whom Zuboff condemns so strongly were unaware of their banal evil? It certainly has to do with the mediation which Zuboff identifies in shielding them from those whom they exploited. But far more profoundly, the story that they had embraced - the story of limitless growth - was separated from the moral-cultural system which it rejected.

If there is to be real reform now, moral imperatives cannot be used merely as 'props for a profitable economic order.' They must be rooted in reality - which is precisely why Christians must engage in the public discourse about the purpose of society and economies. We testify to the One for whom, and by whom all things exist.

Exposing assumptions

Today I received an email from Avaaz, an activist organization, calling on me to petition the Pope to change his position on condoms:

This week, on his first visit to Africa, Pope Benedict said that "[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

The Pope's statement is at odds with the research on AIDS prevention, and a setback to decades of hard work on AIDS education and awareness. With powerful moral influence over more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and 22 million HIV positive Africans, these words could dramatically affect the AIDS pandemic and put millions of lives at risk. Worldwide concern is starting to show results and a willingness by the Vatican to revise the statement - sign our urgent petition asking the Pope to take care not to undermine proven AIDS prevention strategies:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/pope_benedict_petition

The personal beliefs of Catholics and all people should be respected, and the Pope does advocate for other AIDS prevention methods such as abstinence and fidelity that can be effective when combined with condom use. The Catholic Church engages in a vast amount of social service work, including the care of those living with AIDS. But the Pope's claim that condom distribution is not an effective AIDS prevention mechanism is not supported by research. It's untrue, and if it diminishes condom use, it will be deadly.

To expose assumptions, it is helpful to use Andy Crouch's questions:

1. What does this email assume about the way the world is?
   It assumes that the "personal beliefs" of Catholics and all people should be treated as private beliefs. It further assumes that the Pope's support for abstinence and fidelity is ineffective without condom use.
2. What does this email assume about the way the world should be?
   It assumes that people should be able to have sexual intercourse without accepting the consequences of those actions.

Why does this matter for gospel entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurs are those who see a social problem and address it in a way that creates wealth and opportunity. HIV/AIDS is clearly a social problem. And there are hundreds of organizations devoted to addressing the problem.

How is gospel entrepreneurship here different from social entrepreneurship?
The good news of Christ says that the baseline state of humanity is rebellion against the one true God, who made us for Himself. The good news does not offer freedom for license, but forgiveness through Christ and freedom to live in the way we were created to live.

What the Pope is doing is simply restating the injunction of Hebrews 13:4, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled . . ."

Consider for a moment what would happen if these two rules were upheld. First, the primary means of HIV transmission (promiscuous sexual activity) would be eradicated. Second, the single best predictor of child poverty (being born out of wedlock) would be eliminated. The impact for education and healthcare is similarly staggering.

So why is Avaaz up in arms? It comes down to the assumptions defined above. Christians have good reason for heeding the first half of Hebrews 13:4, because the second half reads, " . . . for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." Our convictions are grounded in a view of reality that is fundamentally different from Avaaz. Avaaz cares deeply about current human suffering, but does not see a connection between human responsibility and current - and final, eternal - suffering.

What to do?
Emails like this provide the occasion for meaningful interaction about assumptions - and about the gospel. We can easily become distracted by discussing conclusions: whether or not we should encourage condom use. But the reason we arrive at different conclusions is because we start in fundamentally different places. The pope, and Christians everywhere, now have a great opportunity to share the hope that we have - the gospel that is our starting place. Christian organizations that engage these issues need not be ashamed of their position, but have ample opportunity to explain their assumptions.

Investing time

It is often said that the one thing of which everyone has an equal amount is time. The rich have no more than the poor in a day. On this footing, at least, we are equal.

Jesus often told stories that emphasized our role as stewards, those who care for something that belongs to one greater than us. So it is worth considering our stewardship of time. Each of us is given the same amount with which to honor the Master. Do we invest that time? Or hoard it? Or squander it?

Not long ago I was writing a blurb for a piece on Tumblon explaining my decision to leave teaching in order to provide full-time care to my daughter while my wife completed her pediatric residency. I discovered that the most helpful expression to describe what I had done was this: I took a child care leave to invest three years in my relationship with my daughter. It was a calculated investment. The return on that time spent loving and nurturing my child was far greater than what I could have "earned" as a teacher.

That experience has led me to ask more often: How am I investing my time?

Measuring our economy

I haven't posted here in a really long time because I've been hard at work on tumblon. However, I think this is probably still the ideal context to reflect on gospel entrepreneurship, however fitfully.

In working on tumblon, I came to this realization: I yearn for the day when we measure our economy not by the goods it produces, but by the good it does. Then, and only then, will "growth" find its rightful place in economics.