How to share the gospel through business

I've been busy working on tumblon, and haven't made time to keep blogging here. However tonight I participated in Redeemer's Entrepreneurship Fellowship, which was a great prompt to get me writing again. The theme of the night was "sharing our faith through our work," and prompted some excellent discussion.

Several outstanding questions emerged:

1. How are Christians different from other ethical persons in the marketplace?
2. How do Christians act in such a way as to not limit their dealings to other Christians?

I love having a context in which to listen to others who are asking these questions, and seeking to live out the answers!

An inevitable conflict

As I work on tumblon, I'm intensely aware of the public/private and fact/value division that Lesslie Newbigin describes as the central feature of the modern scientific world view. He captures that tension well in this passage:

Of course, if religion is construed in essentially mystical terms -that is terms for which the idea of purpose is not central - then there is no clash. The modern scientific world view coexists peacefully and naturally with that kind of religion. But if we are talking as the Bible talks about God, who is Creator and Governor of all things, who acts in specific ways, and whose purpose is the criterion for everything human, whether in the public or the private sectors, then there is an inevitable conflict. Is it or is it not the case that every human being exists for the joy of eternal fellowship with God and must face the possibility of missing that mark, forfeiting that prize? If it is the case, it ought to be part of the core curriculum in every school. It will not do to say that the determination of character by the structure of the DNA molecule is a fact that any child must learn to understand, but that the determination of all proper human purposes for the glory of God is an opinion that anyone is free to accept or reject. The question of which world is real simply cannot be permanently evaded. There can be no genuinely missionary encounter of the gospel with our culture unless we face these questions. (Foolishness to the Greeks p67)

That question, Which world is real? is the question that parents must answer for their children. To answer that the material world must be understood by school children, but not the God who made it is simply to say that God is not the really real. That is precisely the message that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of school children have internalized from their parents answers and actions.

I am coming to realize that the conflict is inevitable. It can be hidden or dismissed; but it is inevitable. From this conflict flow two questions:

1. How do we demonstrate integrity to children in teaching them the truth about God and the world?
2. How do we demonstrate integrity in conflict with the dominant world-view in a way that is confessional and not isolationist, and in ways that are humble and not arrogant?

Those questions need working out every day.

Love your neighbor as yourself

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

One of the reasons that I am passionate about gospel entrepreneurship is because this dual mandate is at its core. When we create meaningful work that allows and calls us to love God with all our heart, and our neighbors as ourselves, we can work with joyful abandon. There need be no conflict between our vocation and mission, because vocation can fulfill our mission.

That's why I love working on tumblon. I am convinced that loving my neighbor means doing what is best for that person in the long haul. And I am further convinced that equipping parents to fulfill (and enjoy) their responsibilities is the most powerful mechanism of love . . . and justice.

The first five years set the trajectory of a child's life. It is during these years that her character, personality and abilities are most definitively shaped. She can learn a strong sense of integrity, truth and justice - or learn to treat these with contempt. Take, for example, Ruby Bridges. As a six year old, she was "integrated" into a white school. Her parents' love and care for her during those critical first years of life bore fruit, by the Holy Spirit , in love and justice. She loved and prayed for the people who hated her; she was courageous when surrounded by cowards. By God's grace, she was an instrument of love and justice in our society. Equipping parents to love like that is what I aim to do.

Here is the logic:

1. Love does what is best in the long haul.
2. Parents are the most important figures in a child's life.
3. Equipping parents promotes:
1. Character formation, which results in good citizens.
2. Personality shaping, which results in healthy relationships.
3. Ability development, which results in contributions to society.

Love treats people (both parents and children) as responsible agents, not as mere objects of pity or contempt. As such, it calls them to responsible behavior, and provides what is needed to fulfill that call.

That is precisely where the gospel speaks. I know no better instructor in humility than parenting. We discover more darkness in our hearts in impatience and selfishness, and feel equally powerful desires for good for our children. The answer to both of those feelings - our need, and desire - is Christ.

I have much to learn yet about how to faithfully do what I do; but I honestly can't imagine a better vocation than daily learning how to call people to Christ, and equip them to love their children.

The language of testimony

It is rare to find Christians articulating statements of faith in the public square. We tend to treat them as 'internal' documents within the Church that differentiate us one from another. This is but another example that we have accepted the unexamined assumption of our culture that these things belong to the private realm of belief and taste, and not to the public world of knowledge and truth.

Lesslie Newbigin expresses brilliantly what a public confession of faith looks like in engagement with the world.

As a member of the Christian church and from within its fellowship, I believe and testify (and the shift to the first person singular is, of course, deliberate) that in the body of literature we call the Bible, continuously reinterpreted in the actual missionary experience of the church through the centuries and among the nations, there is a true rendering of the character and purpose of the Creator and Sustainer of all nature, and that it is this character and purpose that determines what is good. Because I so believe and testify, I reject the division of human experience into a private world, where the "good" is a matter of personal taste, and a public world, where "facts" are regarded as operative apart from any reference to the good. (Foolishness to the Greeks p88-89)

This is a creed that I can, and must, confess.

Looking forward to the heavenly city

There is, if I am not mistaken, a gulf that typically separates two approaches to Christian action. One reads the following:

"For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God" (Hebrews 11:10)

and concludes that since we are awaiting a kingdom that cannot be shaken, we are to draw apart from the world. The other camp tends to read salvation history as being much more immanent, and looks for the establishment of the Kingdom on earth, not descending from heaven.

This division is tragic, since what is needed is a marriage of the two: looking for the heavenly city, while engaging in the earthly city; expecting manifestations of the Kingdom now without triumphalist illusions.

Not surprisingly, I have found the language of Lesslie Newbigin to be most helpful in understanding this paradigm. He consistently speaks of the church being a sign, instrument and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. As a sign it points away from itself (and pushes off the triumphalist illusions); as an instrument it brings the reign of God to bear now in this world in real ways; and as a foretaste it gives this broken world a small taste of what it is to live under the righteous rule of Christ.

May this generation live as sign, instrument and foretaste!

The gospel of the Kingdom

No state can be completely secular in the sense that those who exercise power have no beliefs about what is true and no commitments to what they believe to be right. It is the duty of the church to ask what those beliefs and commitments are and to expose them in the light of the gospel. There is no genuinely missionary encounter of the gospel with our culture unless this happens. Here we must face frankly the distortion of the gospel that is perpetrated in a great deal that passes for missionary encounter. A preaching of the gospel that calls men and women to accept Jesus as Savior but does not make it clear that discipleship means commitment to a vision of society radically different from that which controls our public life today must be condemned as false. (Foolishness to the Greeks p132, emphasis mine)

Preaching the gospel means preaching the kingdom of God, which is 'a vision of society radically different from what controls our public life today.'

The REAL missionary encounter

In his call for 'the energetic fostering of a declericalized, lay theology', Lesslie Newbigin states:

"And we need to create, above all, possibilities in every congregation for laypeople to share with one another the actual experience of their weekday work and to seek illumination from the gospel for their daily secular duty. Only thus shall we begin to bring together what our culture has divided - the private and the public. Only thus will the church fulfill its proper missionary role. For while there are occasions when it is proper for the church, through its synods and hierarchies, to make pronouncements on public issues, it is much more important that all its lay members be prepared and equipped to think out the relationship of their faith to their secular work. Here is where the real missionary encounter takes place. (Foolishness to the Greeks p143, emphasis mine)

I long and labor to see that sharing, and that missionary encounter take place.