How does a business create blessing? After all, isn’t business all about making money? Isn’t it about getting rich? Some would have us think so, however, when we go back to the beginning, we see a different story. The beginning is Genesis.

Creating

God creates something…out of nothing…and He calls it good. Each day he adds to the blessing he is creating and finally creates Man – and woman – and takes a day of rest. When God says, “it is good” you can feel His pleasure in what He has created.

Business is about creating something. We are made in His image, so we are also creative. Michelangelo said that the statue was in the stone and he was just freeing it. I believe business can be like that. We see something that we can do that is creative and it gives us great joy to do it. But is that a business?

No, not yet. We need a customer. Someone has to be willing to pay us for what we create in order for it to be a business. And they have to pay us a bit more than it cost us to create the product or service. So there has to be an element of monetary exchange to balance the creativeness in the business. In the parable of the talents, the master expected a profit from the workers. Profit is Godly.

Working

So then, what makes it a blessing? Lets go back to Genesis and think about work. From Adam on we were given work to do. Work was given before the fall of man. Doing work wasn’t originally part of the curse. Most people we read about in the Bible have work to do. We read about David, Moses and others who are Shepherds, Joseph and Daniel were skilled managers, Abraham knew how to make a profit by arbitraging money. Even women are included: Ruth gleaned grain to provide food for her and her mother in law, the Proverbs 31 woman manufactured things to sell, Lydia sold purple cloth rich people. Isn’t it amazing that these people who walked closely with God were identified by their work?

So working is not the curse that we hope to end when we retire. We work because we are made in God’s image. Work itself is a blessing, the curse made work harder.

What isn’t a blessing is not having any meaningful work to do.

I’ve seen people who have no work, no job, and no way to take care of their families. It breaks your heart. They begin to do all sorts of crazy things. They fall into depression, commit suicide, steal, sell drugs, join ISIS. What we are seeing in the worldwide movement of people is partly war and lack of basic survival, but partly that people have no jobs, no hope of caring for their families. This creates a curse, not a blessing. People who have meaningful work are different. They know they are blessed even if they don’t know God like we do. I’ve seen this too. Working in China I did a research project with factory managers at Intel. I found that factory managers who have an influence in their community and work group, feel blessed. Even if they didn’t share our faith or express it like we do. They enjoyed what they did and found ways to bless others.

Blessing Others

That leads me to believe the business is really made (by God) to bless people. We are the ones who have corrupted it to be just about making a profit. We’re the ones who have made people cogs in the wheel of commerce. God means business to provide a blessing.

So what makes business a blessing to its workers? People are treated in the way God meant for them to be treated. Their creativeness is encouraged and respected. They can feel God’s love in the business.

Of course it is more complicated than just the people perspective – the workers. There is discipline as well: the discipline of how we set up the work, how we treat our suppliers and competitors. We use a 3-circle model to express this process. If you would like to learn more, go to the B4B website, Better Business, Free Resources Theology of Business, or click: https://b4blessing.com/resources/theologyofbusiness.php You can download the document and learn more about doing business so that it is a blessing.

Changing the common understanding of the purpose of business is part of what B4B is all about. Helping people create businesses that are a blessing is the other part. We have many resources on the B4B website and are continually responding to requests for additional resources. Watch our next newsletters to see the new resources we’ve added.