The Call of Stewardship: Seeing the Unseen

We are called to be stewards of God’s creation. The dominion we are given by God is powerful. We exercise this dominion through our work (Genesis 2:15). To do our work to the utmost glory of God, we need a sound institutional setting that encourages creativity, productivity and innovation while minimizing poor decision-making. To do this, we must learn to not only take advantage of existing opportunities, but we must also pay attention to the consequences, or the secondary effects, of an action.

It is easy to count consequences when they are obvious and immediate. Racing through a red light can pose significant, personal costs upon us and others. We don’t take that decision lightly. There are powerful incentives at work that force us to count the costs of that action.

Why might we ignore unseen consequences?

• Long-term consequences are easier to deflect.
• The costs may not be directly applicable to us personally.

In the public square we make decisions in large groups. Often one smaller group benefits at the expense of a widespread, larger group. In these instances, we may choose to ignore the very real long-term consequences of our decision-making.

This is the difference between the seen and the unseen. As Christians given the power of stewardship, we don’t have the luxury of ignoring the unseen. We must think carefully about all the impacts of our decisions, public and private.

Christians are people of hope. We are called to bring about flourishing. It is one thing to pray that good can come out of tragic events and circumstances. It is another to completely ignore the massive damage that can occur to others because of the choices or decisions we make today for our immediate benefit or even greed.

Over the past 200 years, the Western world has experienced capital accumulation and wealth creation unprecedented in human history. There is now more hope than ever that we can eliminate abject poverty across the globe in the coming decades.

We got here because we live in an institutional setting that encourages our God-given creativity. As Christians, we must encourage sound institutions that foster our creativity and mitigate our greed. Making efforts to see the unseen is the call of stewardship.

 

[Excerpts from Dr. Anne Bradley’s April 23, 2013 IFWE Blog page at: http://blog.tifwe.org/the-call-of-stewardship-seeing-the-unseen/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=810088&utm_campaign=0]

Should Christians Care About Incentives? An Economic Perspective – By Dr. Annd Bradley

What exactly are incentives, and why should they be important to Christians?

Yesterday we began answering this question by looking at how the Bible treats incentives. Today we’ll look at incentives from an economic perspective stemming from what the Bible says about reality and human nature.

As we’ll see, incentives can be a powerful tool in encouraging human flourishing and living out the whole-life stewardship we’ve talked so much about.

Incentives in Everyday Life

Each one of us engages with incentives, whether we realize it or not.

We all usually assess the payoff before engaging in a specific activity. If the cost of an activity goes up, we tend to see the quantity of that activity go down, all else equal.

For example:

• When it snows outside, you might decide to work from home if possible.

• If your daycare provider charges you for being late, you’ll try to drop you children off on time.

• A class held the day before an exam will have a high attendance rate.

In each of these examples, you are responding to an incentive or a perceived change in cost. It is costlier to drive in the snow, given the higher chance of accidents, so you might choose not to do it. If someone charges you for being late, you will try to be on time to avoid the charge.

Prices: Incentives for Stewardship

In a free economy, incentives are usually in the form of prices and property. These forms are critical not just for encouraging “good behavior,” but for overall flourishing resulting from wise, whole-life stewardship.

Prices help ration scarce resources and direct them towards their highest value use. When the price of something goes up, we tend to conserve that resource.

The price hike relays a signal to us: that good or service just grew scarcer – use it conservatively.

Gwartney, Stroup, and Lee, in their book Common Sense Economics, use the example of the record-high gas prices in 2008 to illustrate this concept. When gas prices skyrocketed, we conserved gas. I remember not using air conditioning in my car and eliminating gratuitous trips. I was trying to conserve a resource that had become more scarce.

We might not want prices to go up, but as participants in a free economy, we need prices, i.e. incentives, to be nimble. They convey information about relative scarcities that we would otherwise never have known.

The good news about a price increase like the increase in gas prices is that an increase sends an important signal to other producers: sell more of the commodity in question, get into this business. The price increase actually moves entrepreneurs in more productive directions so that eventually, the rest of us can have that particular good or service at lower prices.

Property Rights: Incentives for Flourishing

Property rights are another form of incentives, and an important aspect of attaining both wise behavior and human flourishing.

When you own something, you have a natural incentive to care for it and make it better. Think of how you treat your home or your car.

Without property rights, we don’t have the the natural incentive to care for something or to grow our resources. Someone has to have ownership to care for the resource.

In his book Money, Greed, and God, Jay Richards applies this concept to the plight of poor coffee farmers in developing countries:

Many farmers don’t have solid titles to their land, so they’re neither willing nor able to make long-term investments in it…

Further making the point that property rights serve as an incentive to flourish, Economist Hernando de Soto argues in his book The Mystery of Capital that the poor possess resources to prosper, but

They [the poor] hold these resources in defective forms: houses built on land whose ownership rights are not adequately recorded, unincorporated business with undefined liability…

Property rights and prices are just two examples of incentives and their importance in society.

So should Christians care about incentives? Yes.

When we better understand incentives, we allow economic thinking to help us become better stewards. By allowing prices to be as nimble as possible, and by defining and protecting private property – be it land, ideas, or capital – we have a chance at flourishing, especially the least among us.

[Copied from IFWE’s 1/9/2013 blog at: http://blog.tifwe.org/christians-incentives-economic-incentives/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=810088&utm_campaign=0]

The Twelve Days of Significance_Stewardship With a Capital S!

Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. – I Peter 4:10

The Institute for Faith, Work and Economics (IFWE) is kicking off the Twelve Days of Significance by exploring the concept of biblical stewardship, what we call “Stewardship With A Capital ‘S‘.”

This article by Hugh Whelchel is an IFWE article being shared by Life Journey Ministries.

Living a life of purpose and significance begins with understanding the foundational principles of biblical stewardship. It is within this larger vision of stewardship that we find the intersection of faith, work and economics. The following ideas define “Stewardship with a Capital ‘S’.”

1.   God owns everything:

Paul writes in Colossians 1:16:

For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.

2.  Everything we have is a gift from God:

Everything you have, eat, drink, breathe, wear, or in any way use belongs somehow to God’s creation. We must echo Job’s declaration from Job 1:21:

Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.

3.  God has given man authority over all the earthly creation: 

The biblical term for this idea is “stewardship.” God the creator, owner of everything, gives human beings provisional rule and ownership in this earthly realm. We see this first in the opening chapters of the Bible in what is called the Cultural Mandate (Genesis 1:28).

4.  Man’s private property rights are established by God:

The biblical idea of Christian stewardship firmly establishes the right to private property as we clearly read in both the Old and New Testaments. At first this might seem like a contradiction. If God owns the cattle of a thousand hills, how can I put my brand on one of those cows?

But consider this: if God gives you stewardship over a house and other property, that property, although a gift from God, becomes yours in a concrete, definite way. Only you have the responsibility to watch over and care for it. Those rights and responsibilities do not belong to the government, to the community, or to your neighbor.

5.  The work of our hands matters:

This provisional stewardship provides us with incentives to be productive and strive toward the flourishing – the peace and prosperity of our cities – to which God desires for us. Property rights are one tool that can help us live out this stewardship.

In economics, we think about property rights as crucial aspects in a market and opportunity-based society. Property rights put parameters around that for which we have accountability and responsibility. They are not just windfall gains that we get to then use however we wish; rather, God has gifted us with skills and talents to actually create more out of what we are given.

This is what happens in the Parable of the Talents – the master gives resources to his servants, with the expectation that they will increase his investment.

6.  We will be held accountable:

Only you have the call to steward the gifts that God has given you. It is only in this concept of biblical stewardship that we find the beautiful balance between God’s gifts and man’s obligations.  It is by requiring stewardship of a man that God sets up a wall of protection around what man possesses. And at some point man will have to give an account to God for the way in which he exercises that stewardship.

As Christians, our faith requires us to live out an understanding that ownership of property is a God-given right, and the stewardship of that same property is a God-given responsibility.

Economists often talk about something called the “tragedy of the commons,” a story that demonstrates how we can lose accountability when we don’t own the property we are using and use too much of it. No one assumes responsibility for the commons, for its maintenance or its growth. As a result, its common resources are depleted.

But if resources are held privately, that is, if someone owns the resource, they will have an incentive to tend to it, nurture it, and make it more productive. Without property rights, we cannot get the flourishing that God so dearly wants for us.

“Stewardship with a Capital S” requires rethinking stewardship as accountability over all of our choices, decisions, and resources. This type of stewardship is all-inclusive, touching every area of life, including our time and talent as well as our treasure. It is faithfully using whatever God gives us (opportunities, interests, skills, employment, family, talents, spiritual gifts, land, money, etc.) for his glory, to serve the common good and to further His Kingdom.

This is not only biblical. It helps us not just to want to do good, but to actually do the good we hope to carry out.

The Twelve Days of Significance: Living a More Purposeful Life

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it – I Corinthians 12:27

WHY ARE WE HERE?

Joseph Brodsky, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet and essayist, once claimed in his essay collection, On Grief and Reason, that the most valuable lesson in life was “the lesson of your utter insignificance.”

Sadly, many people believe this “lesson,” and live as if it were true. It’s gotten to the point where even young adults experience a “quarter-life crisis.” Participants in a focus group IFWE surveyed last spring told us that some of their biggest fears are:

• Not making a measurable difference.

• Doing no actual good in the world.

These fears are widespread. This past summer, USA Today reported on a study of Millennials that revealed the following statistics about this generation:

• 56% feel anxious.

• 33% feel depressed.

• 65% said that “this time of my life is full of uncertainty.”

Anxiety. Fear. Depression. All these are elements that comprise the mindsets of young adults, and probably a good number of other age groups, too. The fear of insignificance is an equal-opportunity employer.

The quarter-life crisis and fear of insignificance are the result of not understanding the biblical doctrine of work and its implications for work, vocation, success, and fulfillment.

At IFWE, we’re passionate about inspiring Christians to live out a life of significance. We believe that understanding the biblical doctrine of work and the principles of economics God has woven into the fabric of creation will help us all understand how to live more purposeful, fruitful lives.

Day-to-day life has incredibly rich value in the Kingdom of God. What is this day-to-day life all about, though, while we wait for Christ to come back? Another way to view significance is in light of stewardship, or “Stewardship with a capital ‘S’,” as Hugh Whelchel referred to it in a recent post.

Whelchel points out that the Disciple’s Study Bible defines stewardship as,

… a way of living that involves one’s daily activities, values and goals for life, and the use of all possessions. It begins with God and His plans for creation and purposes for humankind. The steward is God’s responsible representative and manager of all creation.

The reason Whelchel – and IFWE – describe stewardship with a capital “S” is because while Christians understand stewardship in regard to personal finances, there is a need to rediscover “whole-life stewardship,” or “Stewardship” that wisely uses the time, gifts, talents, and resources God has given us.

As Paul points out in the verses above from 1 Corinthians 12, we are given unique gifts and unique roles to play in the body of Christ and in the world. The body of Christ gives context to our significance, and a holistic understanding of Stewardship can help us use our unique talents more wisely and effectively for the sake of the Kingdom.

This is why we’re launching a new series, The 12 Days of Significance.

Over the next twelve days, we’ll be working to articulate twelve foundational principles of work and economics that we hope help us all better understand significance, stewardship, and the role we play in God’s plan “for creation and purposes for humankind”:

1. Stewardship

2. The Four Chapter Gospel

3. The Image of God and the Dignity of Human Beings

4. Creativity and the Cultural Mandate

5. Calling and Purpose

6. Trade and the Call to Community

7. Scarcity and Choice

8. Self-Interest vs. Greed

9. Wealth and Poverty

10. Markets, Freedom, and Creativity

11. The Kingdom of God

12. Reweaving Shalom: Seeking the Peace and Prosperity of Our Cities

This article is courtesy of Greg Ayres and the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics. Copied from their 12.6.2012 article