“The first tension,” says Donald See, “is why even go to work?” And he doesn’t buy the most popular answer.

“From a Biblical perspective, you don’t go to work to make money,” he says. Which is an interesting declaration for a man whose business is estate planning, where the stock-in-trade is money.

Alright then; if not money, then what…? Satisfaction? Success?

According to Donald See, “You go to work because you are representing Christ in the lives of the people you meet.”

He believes this realization is a personal tipping point for business-folk. As long as they’re fixed on working for money, it’s difficult to look beyond vacations, boats, a succession of escalating mortgages—whatever it is they think money buys.

Helping clients and employees find their place in a bigger picture means deconstructing deeply held—but largely unexamined—assumptions. “One of the primary topics to break through,” he says, “to get into a business person’s thinking, is Why go to work?

“If you finally figure out that you’re not working to make money; that it’s what you do with the money that comes about when you work with excellence and diligence and do everything unto the Lord—because it probably will; it may not; He controls the outcome, but if it does—then you have a whole set of challenges that the church calls stewardship.”

For Donald See, “It goes back to how we look at money.” And looking at money, it turns out, requires finesse. Donald See understands that tension as a responsibility that transcends cash-on-hand. “The world teaches you that employees are commodities to be maximized for profit and gain. Therefore, you should analyze their behavior and your relationship with them in light of their productivity, their suitability, and their contribution to the bottom line. I’m often asked, ‘How do you fire an employee Biblically?’ A better question is ‘How do you view your employees as a Christian?’ I think, Biblically, having employees is a responsibility of discipleship, by which someone either draws nearer to entering into a relationship with Christ or grows in that relationship.”

If you think that sounds unconventional, you’ll get no argument from Donald See. “Nobody talks about how you deal with employees, and I really spend a lot of time thinking about that. It really messes up your management skills,” he says, “Because everything you’re taught is pretty much useless.”

He lives with the tension because that’s what it takes to practice what he preaches. See built a national clientele by designing and funding business succession and estate plans for closely held companies. Over the years he’s looked across the table at quite a few owners as they came to realize they hadn’t yet developed competent leaders to take the business forward in the next iteration—the proverbial wake-up call.

For Donald See, serving people inside the business means honoring the fact that they bear the image of God. “Ministry is defined as investing your life in the lives of other people in the name of Christ. I’ve tried to implement a system where at every juncture the question is not ‘What are they doing for me?’ ‘Are they measuring up?’ ‘Am I paying them in light of that?’ but, ‘Is this the right place for them to be?’ ‘Are they growing personally, professionally and scripturally?’ And, ‘Am I dealing with that relationship in a way that’s honoring to Christ?’ The byproduct of that service is a more fully realized set of gifts and skills in the next generation of business leaders.

“That’s the model I use for estate planning,” he says. “Since you don’t take it with you, then estate planning is the process by which you determine who takes over the responsibility when you don’t have it any more.”

For a deep look at the relationship between work and money check out the Scriptural Roots of Commerce Module 6: More than Money.