Business, profit and the glory of God

Wayne Grudem, author of the now ubiquitous "Systematic Theology" and its various slimmer offspring has recently written another volume - this time a very small book (90 pages) entitled Business to the Glory of God. It's a precursor to a longer tome that he is working on around the issue of Christians and business.

Christian churches in the UK have, historically, quite a mixed view of business. I think it would be fair to say that the Church of England, having strong roots in the landed classes, has probably historically thought that business is a bit vulgar and I suspect that view still holds in some quarters. The Brethren, by contrast, have produced many men of business - the result of the application of a protestant work ethic by intelligent men who often didn't have the then necessary social background to go to university.

Independent evangelical churches, I suspect, have probably for the most part thought that business isn't really spiritual enough and certainly doesn't compare to "ministry" or "the professions" for spiritual kudos.

Business to the Glory of God is a welcome break from such attitudes with Grudem commending ownership of property, productivity, employment, money, inequality of possessions, competition, borrowing, and lending as all being commendable in God's sight - and also, in each case, as capable of abuse and the possibility of sin.

For my money (ha ha!) though, it is the chapter of profit that is most interesting. Grudem argues that profit is good, demonstrating, I think helpfully, that the efficient use of resources to produce things that people need or want is best achieved through allowing individuals to make a profit on good or services they make and sell.

The place where his argument is inconclusive (at best) is when he talks about whether systems of profit are fair. Grudem acknowledges that great disparity in power of knowledge between the seller and the buyer can lead to the seller taking advantage of that and cheating someone.

But, he notes: "If profit is made in a system of voluntary exchange not distorted by monopoly power or dishonesty or greatly unequal knowledge, then when I earn a profit I also help you."

I think I agree with that - as far as it goes. The question is whether the systems of profit that we currently see operating in the western world actually ever meet those criteria. The sprawling global world of massive corporations and the huge banks and governments that work with them surely means that, to all intents and purposes, there is always massive disparity between seller and buyer?

It has turned out that in the world's biggest banks even most of the senior board members didn't have enough knowledge to stop themselves being exploited by people carrying out crazy transactions with credit default swaps. What hope for the rest of us?

It seems that the only people who have made a profit out of banks in the last few years are not shareholders, customers or staff but a very small number of senior managers and directors. I suspect that when I get my pension return this year I will discover that the only people who have made any money investing my money are the pension company staff investing it (and losing quite a lot of it)! These people know so much more than the rest of us that they can (largely) arrange things so that all the reward goes to them and all the risk remains with regular citizens.

Of course if I was a banker I'd probably be just the same - because the problem that they have is the same as my problem - a sinful, selfish heart.

It will be interesting to see how Grudem develops his thesis in the bigger volume when it arrives. But at present I can't help feeling that his conclusions show he believes that structural evil is more likely to reside in governments than in companys - and I can't accept that because I think the hearts of the people who make profits are just the same as the hearts of the people who pass legislation.