The life of the godly is justly compared to trading, for they ought naturally to exchange and barter with one another in order to maintain intercourse; and the industry with which every man discharges the office assigned him, the calling itself, the power of acting properly, and other gifts, are reckoned to be so many kinds merchandise; because the use or object which they have in view is, to promote mutual intercourse among men.
— John Calvin, Commentary On A Harmony Of The Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, And Luke, p. 443

In spite of this pleasing insight from the Reformer John Calvin, God’s love for commerce is not intuitively obvious. Indeed, there have been periods of history in which most believers were sure that God thoroughly disapproved of commerce…periods when Trading and Markets and Business were shunned. For example, medieval thought was permeated with religion…and religion was uneasy with the market. Bargains were immoral.

Church dogma often had a paralyzing effect on trade. Take the invention of the Magnetic Compass. In Columbus’ day, using the new technology of a floating needle to find North seemed like sinful magic…so a prudent captain would hide his compass in what was called a binnacle or little box, lest he be accused of trafficking with Satan.

Furthermore, progress…the idea that drives Western economies… was not attractive:

The idea of an expanding economy, a growing scale of production and increasing productivity was as foreign to the guildmaster or fair merchant as to the serf and lord. Medieval economic organization was…a means of reproducing, but not enhancing, the material well-being of the past. Its motto was perpetuation, not progress.
— Robert Heilbroner, The Making of Economic Society, p. 31

This distrust of Business is not merely a medieval peculiarity. It lingered at the end of the 18th century. Take this 1776 comment by the capitalist hero, Adam Smith:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.
— Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 84

In this, as in so many spheres, the US is thought to be different right out of the gate. Consider this impression from a prominent European visitor in the 1830s:

Business is the very soul of an American: he pursues it, not  as a means of procuring for himself and his family the necessary comforts of life, but as the fountain of all human felicity…it is as if all America were but one gigantic workshop, over the entrance of which there is the blazing inscription, “No admission here, except on business.”
— Francis J. Grund, The Americans in their Moral, Social and Political Relations, quoted in David Brooks, On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense, p. 226

A businessman is a person…

• Who lives in order to make money
• Who looks at everything in terms of profit or loss
• Who can never relax
• Who does not understand love, kindness or charity because he can’t sell them
• In an executive suit, with a mobile phone in his hand, driving his brand-new fast car
• With cold blood and a cold heart

This unpleasant stereotype is not wholly lacking in merit. The deterioration of the US business climate…especially when indexed to the stratospheric earnings of many CEOs…has shaken America’s business confidence (along with everyone else). Business ethics emerged as a growth industry in the first decade of this century, buoyed along by media scrutiny like the award-winning documentary The Corporation, which argues that firms make good people do bad things…and are thus psychopathic!

Nevertheless, I am persuaded that God is not put off by Commerce. I am convinced God is actually partial to—dare I suggest even loves—Commerce. I understand I must prove my case. I believe I can, employing three propositions that, taken together, seem to me to be persuasive.

I believe God chooses Commerce as a principle sphere of his involvement and a primary vehicle for his purposes because Commerce presents:

1. A prime opportunity to reflect the relationality of God Himself.
2. A primary channel for the Gospel to spread among the nations.
3. An expression of our mandate to live in His image, for His glory.

PROPOSITION 1

Commerce—even with the pressures and profits of the marketplace—is enduringly relational.

Commerce: Exchange of the products of nature or art…buying and selling together…exchange of merchandise…interchange… intercourse…communication.
— from Shorter Oxford Dictionary

Note how Commerce is defined as interactive…relational…connectional. Indeed, the term Commerce, several centuries ago, was used for the most interactive of all human activities, sexual intercourse!

Commerce is exchange or interchange…buying and selling together…transactions.

In a popular dot com text of the 90s, The Cluetrain Manifesto, the first point the authors make is that Markets are Conversations. They are inherently communicative.

Incidentally, the relational origins of our commercial vocabulary are fascinating in other ways. Two examples:

1. The word company comes from two Latin roots: com and panis, “together” and “bread.” Hence, it meant associates or companions close enough to share meals together.
2. The word corporation comes from the Latin root for a body. Hence, it meant persons authorized to act as one body. It reminds us of Paul’s metaphor of the Corpus Christi or Body of Christ.

Commerce is an opportunity to reflect the relationality of God himself because it is ordered to the high model of the Trinity: Commerce is essentially relational—interactive…social…communicative. We experience relationality as the core of divine reality. Our doctrine of the Trinity is simply an account of the internal love of God.

A century ago, G. K. Chesterton celebrated this Trinitarian conception of the cooperative and compassionate God in contrast with the Unitarian conception.

Unitarians (a sect never to be mentioned without a special respect for their distinguished intellectual dignity and high intellectual honour) are often reformers by the accident that throws so many small sects into such an attitude. But there is nothing in the least liberal or akin to reform in the substitution of pure monotheism for the Trinity. The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet.  The god who is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. The heart of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea “it is not well for man to be alone.” The social instinct asserted itself everywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled by the Western idea of monks. So even asceticism became brotherly; and the Trappists were sociable even when they were silent. If this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)—to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart….
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 250-251

Before the beginning of time, we glimpse the Trinity as a planning group.

Then, starting with the Big Launch in Genesis 1, we see the Trinity as a working group:

The Spirit is active… “hovering over the waters” — Genesis 1:2.

The Son is active… “through whom God made the universe” — Hebrews 1:2

The Father is active…orchestrating the whole project, speaking reality into existence and evaluating the results. “And God said…” — Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26…

Human beings are to be creatures in relationship…persons. God is already in relationship…Father, Son and Holy Spirit…and deeply desires to be in relationship to the beings he has created. Without cultivating our relationships with God and with each another, we are less than fully human. We are less than true images of God.

I believe God favors Commerce because it is a marvelous theater for us to express and pursue relationships. It links people synergistically. It connects and fosters community.

I struggled with this as a teenager. So introverted was I that I hoped for a career as a lighthouse keeper, protected from the social pressures of relationships yet doing something useful. I was a talented individual but a dysfunctional person. In keeping with an old saying: I believe God loved me then exactly as I was…and far too much to leave me that way.

PROPOSITION 2

Commerce is a primary channel for the Gospel to spread among the nations.

The apostle Paul traveled on the ships of Commerce. He was “constantly on the move” — Corinthians 11:26. Indeed, the early Gospel spread along trade routes.

“The fullness of time” into which God sent His Son Jesus contained a unique convergence of conditions that allowed the Gospel to flow easily:

1. Peace…The Pax Romana surrounding what they called Our Sea.
2. Superb Roads…standard rail gauge…two Roman horses.
3. Postal System…not made better until end of 18th century.
4. Common Language…koine Greek.
5. Legal Framework…updated in the 6th century in the Code of Justinian.

And they had Money. Coinage. The first coins were minted in the city of Sardis in what is now Turkey around 650 BC, where precious ivory from Africa was traded with grain. They took electrum nuggets, beaten into a standard weight, from the local river and stamped them with an official design. Coins! Immediately, trade boomed…and the kings of Sardis promptly invented the retail marketplace, lined with small shops…the ancestor of today’s shopping mall. Soon the people of Sardis had a King named Croesus, whose trading wealth has passed into legend.

Incidentally, our word money came from an incident several centuries later. One dark night, in 269 BC, Gauls from the North attacked the city of Rome…but the Romans were warned by the honking of geese around the temple of the goddess Juno…who thus became celebrated as Juno Moneta, Juno the Warner. That same year, the Romans introduced a new coin, the Denarius, manufactured in Juno’s Temple…and carrying her new name Moneta. Hence comes our word money, from the honking of geese!

Buying and Selling are richly human activities, whether by barter or for money. Trade diffuses the fruit of the earth and the work of our hands…and nourishes culture. Free trade will stimulate the good side of globalization.

In today’s world, I see three great Transnational Systems:

• Government
• Commerce
• Religion

Each is pervasive…each contributes to globalization…each has entry fees and elites and concepts of success.

THREE TRANSNATIONAL SYSTEMS

(It is worth noting that the sign Pontius Pilate fastened to the Cross, labeling Jesus as King of the Jews, was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek (John 19:20). These were respectively the languages of Religion and Government and Commerce. Could Pilate have had an inkling that the kingdom of God Jesus proclaimed extends over all three systems?)

Of these three Transnational Systems, I believe Commerce is the most ripe for God’s use. Leaders of Commerce cross all borders and find a welcome everywhere. Business people, more than religious leaders or politicians, have access to every culture, every nation without regard to spirituality and creed.

PROPOSITION 3

Commerce is an expression of our mandate to live in God’s image, for God’s glory.

Does this make your restless? Do I sound too idealistic? After all, I’ve not even mentioned the bad news: We crashed.

The Fall in the original Garden radically damaged our relationships and turned much of our work into toil. We live in a disordered world.

The Fall was a reversal of the purposeful ordering of creation: the universe became abnormal.

From order back to chaos

From obedience back to disobedience

We lost innocence…intimacy…initiative.

We acquired division…drudgery…death.

We now live in such a setting…yet the coming of Jesus Christ redignified work and brought fresh significance to us as workers.

Because we are committed to Christ, we are also committed to work with a purpose…knowing that soon enough, “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” — Romans 8:21.

Work which is done in faith, hope and love is what continues the work of Christ Himself. This is captured in Paul’s words at the start of 1 Thessalonians:

We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
— 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

We cannot deny the drudgery, but we can transform it into redemptive service…through the rejuvenating power of God within us.

We are to work in His image, for His glory.

We need not so much to “do church” as to “live Jesus” in the marketplace. We are called to be outposts of the kingdom of God in daily contexts where, if we withdraw, we leave Satan to run rampant.

Let me offer from my side of the Atlantic two marketplace leaders who brought shalom to their contexts through the way they made and sold their products:

Arthur Guinness…the Brewer

Jesse Boot…the retail pharmacist

• Arthur Guinness believed he was led by God to adopt the mission: “make a drink that men will drink that will be good for them.” He gave it his own name. One used to be able to get it from the National Health Service in Britain. It is almost impossible to get drunk on Guinness because it is so heavy. Guinness used his business as a way of reducing alcoholism on the streets of Ireland. He also financed much of Hudson Taylor’s missionary work in China and accomplished significant changes in the British legal system.

• Jesse Boot…Boots being the oldest chain of retail shops in Britain. He set about making medicines as cheaply as possible for the poor people who really needed them…he saw that people needed a better diet and did not know how to cook. Progressively, he added food to the medicines, sold pots and pans, added lending libraries, sold children’s clothes. It was a holistic approach to business…a business that was a mission. As a child, I recall borrowing a book a week from Boots.

Which of us is tackling his or her business like Guinness or Boot? Commercially successful. Living out God’s glory in the marketplace:

Hallowed be thy name in industry:

God be in my hands and in my making

Hallowed be thy name in commerce:

God be at my desk and in my trading

Holy, Holy, Holy; Lord God of Hosts;

Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.

— The Coventry Cathedral Prayer

Designing and Producing and Selling and Servicing things, in the marketplace, is good in itself…when pursued for God’s glory. This is why we can pray, with Moses, “…establish the work of our hands for us” — Psalm 90:17 — “Yes, establish the work of our hands.

Donald McGilchrist, InsideWork’s history maven, lives and works in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Donald is a presenter at the More Than Money conference, July 17-19, 2009 in San Franciso.