If you look at the Scriptures, you will find many principles and tangible examples for making life more personal and relational. Here’s a list of 10 ideas. Feel free to add more in the comments section!

1. Encourage someone. “Encourage one another and build each other up.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11) A friend of mine who is the CEO of a large company in São Paulo keeps a stack of high quality greeting cards in his desk. When he sees one of his employees doing good work, he pulls out a card and writes a note of encouragement to the person. He doesn’t just send an email; he writes the card in his own hand and delivers them personally. On a few occasions, the employee who received the card came to thank my friend with tears of gratitude in their eyes.
2. Put others first. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” (1 John 3:16) Years ago I knew of two friends who vied for the same newspaper job. One had a pregnant wife and desperately needed the job. The other man called up the newspaper’s managing editor and suggested that the newspaper award the job to his friend. The newspaper gave the job to the soon-to-be father and the other guy sat on the bench with no other leads. Three months later, the newspaper called him and said that they wanted to hire him for a new position. The two friends worked together as reporters for the next several years.

3. Eat together. Read through the New Testament and you’ll be amazed at how often Jesus ate with his disciples. The early church also spent significant times around the table eating together. There’s something about sharing good food and drink that bonds people together in friendship. So instead of using your lunch breaks to get time alone, use the time to share a meal with your colleagues.
4. Wash feet. Jesus, at his last meal with his friends, washed their feet. I don’t recommend that you do this in your office, lest you be sent home for a permanent vacation. But when Jesus washed the feet of his friends, he was only performing a typical, mundane task that no one liked to do but that had to be done. The point isn’t the feet. What’s important is to be aware of the simple needs of those around you. When you see a need—small or large—do something to help and serve. Little acts of service can mean a lot these days.
5. Pursue deep discussions. Most people are a little fearful of intimacy and transparency, but they still long to go beyond small talk. People long for meaningful and rich conversations. Jesus was a master of getting people to open up about what was happening in their hearts. One idea for creating an environment for deeper dialogue is to start a lunch-time or after-work book discussion group. Choose a book they want to read and then ask good questions.
6. Practice Hospitality. The word hospitality, obviously, comes from the word hospital. And there are a lot of broken people out there who need personal care. My wife and I have made it a point over many years to use our home as a makeshift hospital—not for medical attention, but for providing friendship. We’ve served hundreds of meals and washed countless dishes, but it’s remarkable how respected and valued people feel when you invite them into your home.
7. Use Humor. My Dad refused to let the work environment become too serious and stodgy. So he invented ways to keep the office laughing and light. And laughter helped him gain friendships. He was a master prankster. On one occasion, when I was a teen, he advertised a yard sale in the newspaper—at his colleague’s home address. He then rented a moving van and together we filled it with all sorts of junk, everything from manikins to old lawn mowers to a grocery store sunglasses rack. At 2 a.m. on the day of the advertised yard sale, we quietly deposited all the junk on his friend’s lawn. By 8 a.m., crowds of people started showing up and ringing his doorbell. He spent his Sunday selling or giving away the junk. My Dad’s friend got some revenge however, because he made about $300 from the sale.
8. Listen. Many people think that they have to talk a lot to develop a friendship. Not true. Jesus spoke to the crowds from time-to-time, but read through the four Gospels and watch for all the ways that Jesus listened to people. He would ask them significant questions and then listen. (See the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, for example. John 4.) There’s nothing more personal than asking sincere questions about another person and then listening carefully to them.
9. Seek collaboration. I get the impression that Jesus wasn’t much of a classroom teacher. He seemed to enjoy helping people learn through experience. So he went out an invited a bunch of guys to follow him and work with him. Although conflict can emerge, working together toward a common goal and adventure is a great way to build friendship. J.R.R. Tolkien portrays this beautifully in his Lord of the Rings trilogy.
10. Say you’re sorry. One manager I know, at a time of severe stress and pressure at work, lost his temper and blew up in the office. He stood up and railed against a fellow employee, bringing a terrible silence over the entire office. The next day the manager went back to the office and apologized to the person, who accepted the apology but said, “I’ve never had anyone say they were sorry to me. Thank you.” A deeper friendship was born and the manager gained reputation for being a humble person. The moral of the story is that when we are humble and admit our errors, we reduce the pride that causes conflict and tension in workplace relationships.

This is just a short list of ways that you can improve the relational quality of your office. What might you add to this list?

That’s hopefully a rare occurrence, but nevertheless, around our house in Brazil we hope that no one will need hospital care until the World Cup is over. When the Brazilian national soccer team plays in a World Cup, everything stops—maybe even the IV drips.

Traffic evaporates from busy streets. Businesses release employees from their responsibilities. Banks close. Petrobras stops pumping oil. The shipping ports halt. Combine harvesters sit idle in soybean fields. Schools let kids go home early. It’s almost as if the only people working are the engineers who keep the hydroelectric dams running and bartenders. After all, without the peak performance of those plants, all the TVs would go dark.

Halting the national economy during Brazil’s World Cup matches is not met with resistance either. Who cares if stock market trading pauses when Kaká and Robinho are trying to score goals? According to Bloomberg and Businessweek, trading in Brazil dropped to its lowest level this year during the World Cup. The lowest levels of trading coincided precisely with the days that Brazil played North Korea, Portugal, Chile and then, most recently, the Netherlands.[1] Now that the Netherlands team has eliminated Brazil, economists expect that the Brazilian market will return to a normal pulse soon. In the meantime, I haven’t heard any complaints about lost profits.

All this has generated a serious debate in Brazil. Should passion for a sport justify the complete shut-down of work and commerce? Some Brazilians I know say that putting the nation in neutral is entirely justified. After all, the World Cup is not just a sport—it’s part of the Brazilian soul and culture. The World Cup only happens once every four years, so why not allow people to enjoy the event to the hilt?

But others think that shutting the nation down to watch soccer is ludicrous and irresponsible. It’s only a game, they say. There is no real substance under all the emotional froth that’s whipped up by the media. The fact that soccer has become such an important part of the Brazilian DNA is precisely the problem, they argue. Why base so much of the national identity on something that they deem to be so superficial? These people are generally glad that Brazil has been eliminated; now, they say, everyone can set the beer aside and get back to work!

Frankly, I’m in favor of allowing people to take time off work to watch the games, except for the cardiologists needed to treat women with chest pains. But perhaps both sides of the debate are missing the deeper meaning in this story.

I recently read some writings by scientist and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), who is considered to be the grandfather of the computer for inventing a calculating machine. Pascal, who was a Christian, wrote a still-relevant essay in the mid-1600s about the human tendency to pursue busyness as a means of avoiding thoughts about our human condition. The problem, he says, is not taking time off to have fun and enjoy life; the problem arises when we believe that entertaining diversions will actually satisfy our souls.

“If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from it,” he wrote. But because we fail to find true inner joy, “The only good thing for men, therefore, is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion which keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short by what is called diversion. . . .  Thus men who are naturally conscious of what they are shun nothing so much as rest; they would do anything to be disturbed.”

Pascal recognized the fallacy of such an approach to life, but he did not write judgmentally. “. . . It is wrong then to blame [people]; they are not wrong to want excitement . . . The trouble is that they want it as though, once they had the things they seek, they could not fail to be truly happy.” [2]

What Pascal wrote about 400 years ago still rings true today. We moderns and post-moderns have not changed much. We have invented so many diversions that we need diversions from our diversions. And yet we are still unsettled, discontent, and restless.

Soon after the last whistle blew at the end of Brazil’s match against the Netherlands, a whistle that sealed Brazil’s elimination from the World Cup, there was a deathly silence in my city, as if it had become a ghost town. The bubble of excitement and hope had popped, and there didn’t seem to be much of anything else to sustain the people here. Then, within an hour, the streets filled with cars and motorcycles, and employees returned to their jobs, all trying to press on in life.
I wondered if anyone was finding true satisfaction for their souls. And I thought about Jesus, who said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” With that kind of life in the storehouse, the World Cup is even more enjoyable—even when Brazil loses.

[1] Alexander Ragir, “Brazil Stock Trading to Climb Following World Cup Elimination,” Bloomberg Businessweek, July 3, 2010. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-03/brazil-stock-trading-to-climb-following-world-cup-elimination.html

[2] Blaise Pascal. From Pensées, reprinted in The Journey: Our Quest for Faith and Meaning, by Os Guiness, (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001), p. 46-48.

He’s not suffering because he doesn’t understand the language or culture. To the contrary, he’s fluent in English and was an All-American basketball player for Oklahoma Baptist University in years past. He also loves his in-laws. The problem is that he’s a Brazilian soccer fan stuck in Arnett, Oklahoma during the World Cup!

While his friends in Brazil are gathered together in huge, noisy groups around plasma TVs to cheer on Brazil’s national team toward its sixth World Cup victory, my friend is sitting alone in Arnett, a place where most people like soccer about as much as they like cow manure.

I spent a little time chatting with him on Skype recently and he said that watching the games in Arnett is terrible. It’s too quiet, he said. ESPN is doing a good job of showing all the games, but he said that the Irish and British play-by-play announcers are “so cold.” They have none of the Brazilian spunk and vibrancy. They are tactically knowledgeable, but soulless.

If you watch the World Cup games in Brazil and a team scores a goal, you’ll here the announcer yell, GOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLL (add about 30 seconds to that scream). Fireworks will fly from high apartment windows and explode, rattling windows throughout city centers. If there’s a victory, the streets fill with revelers wearing flip-flops and Brazil’s green and yellow national jersey, and they will party on the street until the next day. If Brazil’s games happen during business hours, all the businesses will close and let employees go home early. The nation stops.

My poor Brazilian friend, sitting alone in a recliner in Arnett, switches to the Mexican channel Univision so that he can soak up a little Latin emotion during the games. But when his loving in-laws come into the room, he switches back to ESPN because they can’t understand Spanish. So there he sits, on a farm, wishing he was back home in Brazil where soccer is life and life is soccer.

What we see in my friend’s struggle is the inescapable power of culture. You can move a person from one culture to another, but something inside the person won’t fit properly in the different environment.

That concept of “cultural diversity” has been distorted and misrepresented in political debates about education and immigration, but what I’m talking about is the fact that there are huge cultural differences between nations that God made and enjoys. If you don’t believe me, just read Genesis 10, which depicts God’s formation of a vast array of ethnic groups.

And if you still don’t believe me, read Genesis 11, the story of the tower of Babel. There, prideful men bent on making a name for themselves tried to homogenize the world under one language. In other words, they wanted to undo the diversity God had created for the purpose of human glory and power. What did God do? He mixed up all the languages and restored the diversity that he had originally created!

And if you still don’t believe me, take a look at way the apostle Paul struggled to protect the Gentile believers from being overtaken by Jewish traditions (see Acts 15 and his letter to the Galatians, for example).

Think about the spread of “corporate culture” around the world. On one level business people have become a distinct, worldwide, transnational ethnic group unto themselves. They say that it doesn’t matter if a businessperson is Chinese, Indonesian, American, Italian, or Brazilian; if they work for a corporation they will wear the same clothing, speak the same language (English), use the same software, use the same corporate jargon, have the same life values, operate their business under the same ISO standards, think in terms of the same “best practices,” read the same management books, use the same Blackberries and iPhones, drive the same car, and have the same MBA as any other businessperson in the world.

Perhaps those in business around the world have been blended into one cultural sauce. There is, at least, a strong undertow pulling them into conformity with the rest of the world. After living in Brazil for the past fifteen years, I can tell you that transnational corporate culture is alive and well here. It has dramatically changed the nation and its business leaders.

But I can also tell you that corporate culture only affects the surface of the Brazilian soul, and my guess is that the same is true elsewhere in the world. Brazilians go to work and wear corporate culture with style and finesse. They are brilliant and adept at business and management. But on the weekends, or when a World Cup game is showing on TV, all that goes out the window. At these times, the real Brazilian emerges and he drinks caipirinhas (the national drink made with sugar cane alcohol and limes), eats rice and black beans, wears a green and yellow jersey, and yells GOOOOOOLLLLLL while dancing a samba with thousands of people in the street.

Knowing about this beautiful Brazilian trait, it has always surprised me that Brazil has so few vibrant civic and commercial associations—organizations designed to improve communities or just promote a common interest. There are community associations in Brazil, of course, but not nearly to the degree that one finds in the U.S. And the ones that exist are often not very influential.

Churches fill some of the gap here. Many provide help for the poor and individual encouragement. But they generally don’t play a direct role in impacting commercial and industrial development—which is the backbone of mainstream culture.

As a result, Brazilian citizens typically have a much harder time making the systemic changes needed to improve the quality of life. When the government fails to provide dependable public services, and when corruption undermines the social fabric, people have no real recourse other than to complain to each other at a weekend barbeque. Without strong associations, each person is isolated and powerless.

For this reason, the good, old-fashioned business association is of vital importance in Brazil. They are among the relatively few entities in Brazil that effectively draw community and business leaders together in order to improve the community as a whole.

With a strong representation of educated and influential business leaders, they are able to play a stronger role in promoting commerce as a means to improve a city’s infrastructure. They work to develop long-range economic plans for a region, and even to organize against government corruption when necessary.

According to Marcelo Cassa, president of the Londrina Commerce and Industry Association (ACIL), there are about 3,000 business associations in Brazil. In the state of Paraná, where Londrina is located, about 75 percent of the state’s 400 cities and towns have a business association. These associations play an enormous role in the life and development of each town.

The members and directors of business associations in Brazil are volunteers. For this reason they draw in “people who want to serve with good motives,” Cassa said.

“The worst place to earn money is at ACIL,” Cassa said about the volunteer spirit in Londrina’s association. “The salary is what you learn.”

One of the primary objectives of the Londrina business association has been to provide business owners with courses, consulting, education, guest lectures, and relational connections to other entrepreneurs in Brazil and around the world. They learn the value of relationships, Cassa said. They learn to think about their business as a community service, rather than only as a means of personal profit. By drawing people together, they can work to influence local politics in ways that benefit not only commerce, but the city as a whole.

The Londrina association was born in 1937, just a few years after the city was founded. The association bonded the first pioneers together; giving them the optimism needed to start the first businesses, bring in a railroad, and set up a few schools. Over the past 75 years, the association has supported most of the commercial activity in Londrina, which now has about 500,000 residents.

In recent years, the Londrina association has helped hundreds of local and regional business owners learn how to export products internationally. A former president of ACIL, George Hiraiwa, led an effort to create a local credit cooperative designed to provide loans to business entrepreneurs. Local business owners provided the initial capital and within four years the cooperative administered about $40 million, using the funds to provide low-interest loans for local business development.

In 1999 and 2000, ACIL played a major role in deposing a mayor accused of a massive corruption scandal. A popular movement to impeach the mayor was born from ACIL’s downtown offices. By enabling this collective effort, the townspeople succeeded in removing the mayor from office. Everyone agrees that without the business association, that never would have happened.

The association in Londrina has also helped businesses cope with rampant crime, a problem that often forces stores to close or at least to increase spending on private security.

Today, with about 2000 members, ACIL is working to help business owners to understand and compete in the global economy. Cassa said that globalization increases the need for strong local business associations. And they are working to attract national and international industries to the region

Beyond just thinking about the local needs of each city, the Londrina association is working to promote the entire region of northern Paraná, working together with other business associations in the area and even forging a strong relationship with the Jacksonville, Florida business association.

“To compete in the world, we will need to bond together,” he said.

It’s important to remember that the role of associations—not just business associations—played a prominent if not the principle role in the success of the American experiment. According to the American Society of Association Executives, there are 1.8 million associations in the U.S. today. (Imagine that: an association for executives of associations!)

Although largely forgotten today, this strong cultural trait in the U.S. is rooted in Christian theology—a theology that values individual worth in the context of a community spirit. The first century church modeled this beautifully. The early settlers formed guilds in order to address community needs. French statesman and author Alexis de Tocqueville recognized that America was succeeding because Americans were so actively forming and working in associations.

Perhaps more Christians should get out of the pews and into a community business association.

This trend is certainly true in Brazil. A recent study titled the “National Study of Household Samples,” or PNAD in Portuguese, found the number of Brazilian men age 25 to 34 who still live with their parents has doubled since 1986. Today 24.2 percent of all Brazilian men in this age group still live with their parents. The percentage of adult women living with parents increased from about 13 percent to 18 percent since 1986.[1]

Statistics for the U.S. show a similar trend. A 2010 Pew Research Survey based on Census data found that, in 2008, 20 percent of all Americans age 25 to 34 lived at home with their parents and/or grandparents. Back in 1980, that number was just 11 percent.[2]

There’s no question that economic conditions affect when young adults decide to leave home, get married, and have children. But the recent recession, although a factor, doesn’t seem to have been the primary driver for this trend; only one percent of the same age group said they moved back home because of the recession, according to the Pew study. This indicates that there are deeper, long-term economic and cultural changes taking place.

As for economic factors, it typically takes much longer in developing nations like Brazil for young people to become economically independent. An additional factor in Brazil is the extremely low salary levels, even for professional jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or higher. Those who are employed in their first jobs after college rarely earn enough to support themselves and a family.

According to Jose Pastore, professor of work relations at the University of São Paulo, even young people with degrees from top Brazilian universities still have a hard time finding work. He believes this is caused in part by the onerous taxes that businesses must pay to hire each employee. To hire one person, a Brazilian company will pay 102 percent over and above that person’s salary to the government. It costs the same to hire an experienced worker as it does to hire a recent graduate. So, logically, companies hire more experienced people, leaving young students in a difficult catch-22: no experience, no work; no work, no experience.[3]

Pastore suggests that the Brazilian government should reduce the taxes required for hiring younger workers, thus creating an incentive for companies to hire them. This, he says, would dramatically improve Brazil’s qualified workforce in the long-term, by increasing the hands-on experience and training for young workers. And it would also enable young Brazilians to gain financial independence sooner, reducing the amount of time they live with their parents. (What this idea would do to the hiring trends for older workers, however, is disconcerting.)

But economic limitations might not be the primary factor in the decision to stay home with parents longer, especially in Brazil. Many Brazilian adults who still live with their parents are highly educated, well-paid professionals. Researchers here have found that even many Brazilians with post-graduate degrees prefer to stay in their parents’ home because it’s so difficult to find a committed spouse; they would rather have the company of their parents than live alone. Some stay with parents long-term to continue advanced degrees while they work. Some could easily afford to move out, but choose to stick close to home to save money for the future. And others stay home because it’s simply more convenient to have meals, cleaning, and laundry managed by household maids.

In other words, what we see in both the U.S. and Brazil is a difference of cultural values. Traditional white Americans have placed a high value on living independently at an early age, similar to what one finds in Scandinavian countries. Economic conditions, even in times of recession, have made it possible for the vast majority of young Americans to leave home. However, in Brazil and other cultures with Latin roots, greater value is given to interdependence within the family.

This cultural factor is affecting the U.S. The Pew study noted that with the dramatic increase in immigrants from Latin America and Asia in the past 30 years is a driving force behind the percentage of adults who live at home:

Another factor has been the big wave of immigration, dominated by Latin Americans and Asians, which began around 1970. Like their European counterparts from earlier centuries, these modern immigrants are far more inclined than native-born Americans to live in multi-generational households.[4]

Here at InsideWork, we have frequently written about the Biblical notion of the oikos, which is the Greek word for the early church/extended family. It’s also the root word for “economy,” leading us to conclude that the family and financial progress should go hand-in-hand. Clearly, the Bible gives high value to the family and its role in the creation and preservation of wealth.

But as I think about the economic and cultural changes taking place around the world, some compelling and difficult questions come to mind:

• At what point does it become unhealthy for a young adult to be living at home?
• What is the balance between personal independence and family interdependence?
• What limits should parents put on adult children who might want to live at home?

Let us know what you think about these trends and questions.

[2] Paul Taylor, et al., “Return of the Multi-Generational Family Household.” Pew Research Center, March 18, 2010, p. 7.

[3] Jose Pastore, “A Frustração dos Jovens.” Estado de São Paulo, April 13, 2010, p. B2.

[4] Taylor, et al., p. 5

Glenn McMahan is InsideWork’s man in Brazil.  Glenn is the author, with David Russ and Jim Petersen of More Than Me: The 4 Essentials of Relational Wholeness.

Seven hours later, I woke up at a small hotel, ate breakfast, and then realized that I didn’t have my card. I soon learned that, in less than an hour, sophisticated thieves had managed to siphon a couple of grand from my account. How they obtained my PIN and rigged the machine to hold my card is still a mystery.

My card’s fraud department said that I should make a formal report at the nearest police station. I had been feeling sorry for myself until I arrived at the station inside the airport. But my attitude changed as I spent the next two hours watching about 20 police officers perform dreary, lifeless work.

The station was in a back corner of the airport. Two private security guards were sitting on metal chairs without cushions and smoking cigarettes, half asleep. Stale fluorescent lighting illuminated the smoke-filled room. The walls were painted a drab, neutral gray. A small painting of a Greek villa overlooking the ocean was the only decoration; it seemed like a cruel reminder of life beyond the windowless police station.

Although each officer had a sidearm and heavy black boots, their actual work only involved stapling documents, shuffling paper from one file to another, rubber stamping official forms, and entering data on old computers. This movement was salted by officers singing little ditties in Spanish, telling jokes about the new woman in the office, and smoking.

After two hours of waiting, the officer who had typed out my denuncia couldn’t get the printer to work. In fact, none of the printers at the station were working. After 30 minutes of failed attempts, he took a pen drive to another location in the airport, borrowed a computer, and finally came back with the official document for my case. As we both signed the papers, he apologized for the problems. I smiled, told him not to worry, and thanked him for his perseverance. He still seemed embarrassed, saying “This is Argentina, you know.”

His daily struggle with mundane work, of course, is not limited to his country. Argentina is a vibrant, culturally rich nation with an amazing history. It’s possible that more people in developing countries have to endure mundane work than people in wealthier nations, but the problem has deeper roots than just the economics of a nation. Mundane, banal work is the result of a spiritual breakdown. Underneath the surface, I think those police officers realized that they were designed for more fulfilling and meaningful work.

That, of course, is what the Bible tells us about our existence: We were created by a personal, creative, working God who is motivated through-and-through by love. Being made in his image, we have the same desires in our own souls. That’s part of our original design.

But the soulless work in that airport police station seemed to be an example of how God’s design has been distorted. We have created a culture—including a work culture—that often leaves us discontent and empty.

But the very fact that we feel misplaced is an indication of our God-given design. A fish does not complain about the water in which it swims, but for some reason humans are often in conflict with the worldly circumstances that we have invented. This conflict is most apparent when those circumstances are misaligned with the image of God in our souls.

Thankfully, Jesus is bent on injecting hope and meaning back into our lives. This is a huge topic, one that can best be considered by reading InsideWork’s Scriptural Roots of Commerce series. (You can order it on this site.) But for now, consider a few thoughts.

It’s clear from the New Testament that God desires to restore a culture of meaningful work. Believers are called to participate in that effort, creating businesses and work cultures that enable people to thrive. Business is ministry.

Dig a little deeper in the Bible and we find that even when work conditions are dismal and they can’t easily be improved, God can still bring meaning to a person’s life.

To the slaves who worked in the most miserable conditions under the brutal weight of the Roman Empire, Paul wrote: “Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman.” (1 Cor. 7:21-22)  Paul realized that slavery was terrible, but given that the system would not change for centuries, he reminds the slaves that Jesus could fill the emptiness with meaning.

To every worker, Paul says, “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:58)  The promise is that God will turn the futility of our work, when offered to Christ, into a meaningful reward. God does not overlook a man’s labor, no matter what type of work it might be.

I’m not sure what those police officers in Buenos Aires think about their work. I hope they are thankful to have the ability to provide for their families; that in itself is a noble existence. It also seemed as though they found enjoyment in being together on the job, even though the work itself provided no joy. Overhearing some of the conversations, I know they all looked forward to the end of their shift when they could go out for a beer with friends. All of that, in this world and for the time being, is meaningful.

The grand promise, the one on which we should all fix our eyes, is that one day all our longings for creative, fulfilling work will be the permanent reality. We will work in heaven, but it will be aligned with our God-given nature and individual identities.

Glenn McMahan is InsideWork’s man in Brazil.  Glenn is the author, with David Russ and Jim Petersen of More Than Me: The 4 Essentials of Relational Wholeness.

Now, along comes the remarkable sociologist Rodney Stark, acclaimed historian of religion and science, and author of numerous books that, among other things, aim to demonstrate that the above storyline is nonsense. Were there problems, religious conflict, and sickness in medieval times? Sure, but to say that the “Dark Ages” were dark is a historical lie, says Stark.

He pulls no punches and minces no words as he labors to restore the truth to a story that has been wrongly revised to promote an atheistic view. Here’s what he writes about those who invented the Enlightenment concept: “I show it to have been conceived initially as a propaganda ploy by militant atheists and humanists who attempted to claim credit for the rise of science,” he wrote in his book For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton University Press, 2003, p. 123).

Stark is open and honest about problems within Christian history, but he thoroughly documents how the so-called “Dark Ages” boomed with technological invention, the establishment of the first universities, the rise of true science, and the beginnings of major economic advances. All this, he says, would not have happened had it not been for the dominance of the Christian world view in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.

One of Stark’s boldest books, about the history of business and capitalism, is titled The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005). In this book, Stark shows us how capitalism (not just simple commerce) blossomed from a Christian perspective and the work of devout Christians beginning about the ninth century.

The word “capitalism” today has many different connotations. It is often equated with greed, avarice, ecological destruction, and corruption. But Stark shows that early Christian-based capitalism aimed to improve life for people through the ethical use of capital. It did not always succeed, but the overarching ethos was that wealth should produce long-term and ongoing benefits to society with a hired workforce, and relatively little state control. It was more than simple day-to-day commercial transactions and it was inspired by the Christian ethic of love for one’s neighbor. It did not aim to limit the growth of wealth, but rather reinvest wealth to bring about additional social benefits. At the same time, it sought to limit corruption and greed, and to promote the value of work and frugality (long before Puritans and the Protestant Reformation).

Surprisingly, the rise of this type of capitalism started with the monastics. We normally think of monks as people who disengage from the material world to meditate and chant. The monastics did their fair share of that, but Stark shows this to be an incomplete portrait.

After Constantine, asceticism in the church diminished. As agricultural techniques advanced, the monastic estates were no longer limited to subsistence farming. Soon they had surplus products that they could sell for a profit. The monastics began to reinvest these profits to increase productive capacity.

“As their incomes began to mount, this led many monasteries to become banks, lending to the nobility,” writes Stark. (p. 58). This growth gradually established the economic foundation for the emergence of new towns and cities. As the cities popped up, trade between the cities increased, which in turn gave rise to specialized management strategies and the shift from bartering to a cash economy. Such was the life of many medieval monks! They were in fact profitable business leaders who gave birth to a flourishing European economy.

“In this way, the medieval monasteries came to resemble remarkably modern firms—well administered and quick to adopt the latest technological advances,” writes Stark (p. 61).

At the core, says Stark, the dramatic progress achieved during the medieval age happened because of what Christians believed about God and the origins of the world. “Because (in the Christian perspective) God is a rational being and the universe is his personal creation, it necessarily has a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting increased human comprehension,” he writes. “This was the key to many intellectual undertakings, among them the rise of science” (p. 12).

For Christians, this emphasis on a reasonable world created by a reasonable God meant it was possible for people to make real strides forward in every area of life—knowledge of the natural world, moral understanding, economic activity, and the general quality of life. Reason was not seen as a substitute for God, but an integral component of faith.

This emphasis on reason within the context of a moral ethic of love for one’s neighbor, says Stark, was the groundwork for the rise of religious capitalism in medieval times.

Unfortunately, many contemporary Christian views about money have lost touch with the historical roots of capitalism portrayed by Stark, not to mention the essence of what the Scriptures teach about capital and wealth.

The December 2009 cover story in The Atlantic Monthly is titled “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?” Hanna Rosin’s article in fact deals not with Christianity as a whole, but with how one prominent and unfortunate theological strain known as “prosperity theology” bonded with America’s widespread hyper-consumerism to feed the recent economic crisis. It is a well-written and fair appraisal of how far some preachers and churches have strayed from solid, historical biblical thinking about money and wealth. I’m glad the magazine published the article.

However, it is important to read and remember what Rodney Stark researched and wrote about Christianity’s positive influence on Western economies. The capitalism that “crashed” in the past couple of years is largely an Enlightenment capitalism that needs to regain the moral framework the early monks sought to establish in the ninth century.

Glenn McMahan is InsideWork’s man in Brazil. Glenn is the author, with David Russ and Jim Petersen, of More Than Me: The 4 Essentials of Relational Wholeness.