“God permits us in some ways to be co-creators in the continuing act of creation. There is, however, a stumbling block: egotism. The closed-minded attitude of those who think they know it all inhibits future progress…To some extent, we are all too self-centered. We overestimate the small amount of knowledge we possess. To be humble means to admit the infinity of creation and to search for one’s place in God’s infinite plan for creation. In a humble manner we can use our talents to explore the universe to discover future trends.”
Sir John M. Templeton
The Humble Approach

Readings

“A Time for Grace: What will be needed this autumn is a new bipartisan forbearance, a kind of patriotic grace. This is a great deal to hope for. The president should ask for it, and show it….All sides in the Iraq debate need to step up, in a new way, to the characterological plate. From the pro-war forces, the surge supporters and those who supported the Iraq invasion from the beginning, what is needed is a new modesty of approach, a willingness to admit it hasn’t gone quite according to plan. A moral humility...Not only hearts and minds are invested in a particular stand. Careers are, too. Candidates are invested in a position they took; people are dug in, caught. Every member of Congress is constrained by campaign promises: ‘We’ll fight’ or ‘We’ll leave.’ The same for every opinion spouter, every pundit, columnist, talk show host, editorialist—all of whom have a base, all of who pay a price for deviating from the party line. All this freezes things. It makes immobile what should be fluid. It keeps people from thinking. What is needed is simple maturity, a vow to look to—to care about—America’s interest in the long term, a commitment to look at the facts as they are and try to come to conclusions. This may require in some cases a certain throwing off of preconceptions, previous statements and former stands. It would require the mature ability to come to agreement with those you otherwise hate, and the guts to summon the help of, and admit you need the help of, the other side. Without this, we remain divided, and our division does nothing to help Iraq, or ourselves…

It would be good to see the president calming the waters. Instead he ups the ante. Tuesday, speaking to the American Legion, he heightened his language. Withdrawing the U.S. forces will leave the Middle East overrun by ‘forces of radicalism and extremism’; the region would be ‘dramatically transformed’ in a way that could ‘imperil’ both ‘the civilized world’ and American security….His foes feel a tight-jawed bitterness. They believe it was his job not to put America in a position in which its security is imperiled; they resent his invitation to share responsibility for outcomes of decisions they opposed. And they resent it especially because he grants them nothing—no previous wisdom, no good intent—beyond a few stray words here and there. Would it help if the president were graceful, humble and asked for help. Why, yes. Would it help if he credited those who opposed him with not only good motives but actual wisdom? Yes. And if he tried it, it would make news. It would really, as his aides say, break thru the clutter. I don’t see how the president’s supporters can summon grace from others when they so rarely show it themselves. And I don’t see how anyone can think grace and generosity of spirit wouldn’t help. They would. They always do in big debates”…Peggy Noonan, President Reagan’s favorite speech writer, The Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2007

[Note: One of the first lessons every officer candidate in the armed forces is taught is to avoid the most serious mistake any immature commander can make: under-estimating the enemy, which is usually a result of proudly over-estimating your own power. Yet that is likely the mistake our commander-in-chief made before the so-called “surge” when ignoring the counsel of General Colin Powell, who had seen more than enough combat to reinforce that lesson. And it has been widely speculated, and even documented, that our commander-in-chief, who I believe is a serious Christian if unlikely to replace Mother Teresa on the short list for sainthood, made that very serious mistake largely as he thought he was on a mission from God. He then failed to nuance, which is a mature spiritual discipline, Islamic terrorists from Muslims in general. The rest of this newsletter suggests serious but immature conservative Christians in the financial sector should avoid similarly costly mistakes as religion becomes as mixed with business in future years as it has been mixed with politics during recent years.]

“History would be far different if we did not tend to hear God most clearly when we think He is telling us exactly what it is we want to hear”…former secretary of state Madeline Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty [Note: This month’s Christianity Today contains an article in which the writer repents for being so quick to follow President Bush to war in Iraq. He then describes theology that has been central to the faith of more mature religious traditions such as the Mennonites for centuries that would have encouraged a more patient approach. Of course, the Mennonites are too humble to say “We told you so.” But it was largely their mature humility that influenced me to write these words more than five years ago: “If I had to cite one true danger to your finances in the immediate future it is that very conservative Christian leaders in the West will turn Islam into the giant in the promised land that they imagined the Desert Storm conflict of the early-1990s, the federal debt of the mid-1990s and the Y2K problem of the late-1990s to be. During the early 1970s, I trained as an Army officer to fight an ideologically charged enemy doing the will of a tiny state. They didn’t mind using guerilla tactics on our Army in their land. Even after 9/11, I doubt that most Americans can imagine the horrors of fighting a theologically inspired enemy supposedly doing the will of God; one that doesn’t mind using terrorist tactics on our civilians at home” (page XII).]

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“Closing in on GM, Toyota is Humble: Japanese automaker, poised to take Motor City’s crown, sticks to business as usual. Steadily, relentlessly, quietly. Toyota is closing in on dethroning General Motors, the longtime king of automakers. But there are no signs of celebration here in the namesake automakers headquarters. No banners proclaiming victory, no buzz in the air, no champagne, just the quiet business-as-usual bustle”…AP story in The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, September 1, 2007. [Note: While most evangelical financial ministries lament the decline of the American auto industry, the Rev. Don Wildmon and The American Family Association are proudly claiming credit for killing Ford for marketing to gays. Apparently, the AFA isn’t concerned with manufacturers marketing to the greedy in publications like Money, Forbes, Fortune and so on. And they apparently don’t care that most advertise in Playboy and similar magazines even though Jesus clearly said looking at a woman lustfully is adultery. Perhaps Ford heirs simply remember that old Henry was proudly anti-Semitic--to the point of unwittingly evangelizing Hitler regarding racial purity--and humbly prefer love to more class warfare.]

“Spirituality in business, having quietly blossomed for decades, is an established trend that’s about to morph into a megatrend…It grows out of our desire to celebrate all of our Selves at work. And that is a serious affront to business as we have known it. We live in a world where Divine Presence is stripped from companies and work life, as if it didn’t belong there. But Spirit dwells in each of us. And if you tear the Sacred from humanity, you rip out the heart. So without a heart, how do you get the blood pumping? You provide a substitute. In the eye of many, we’ve certainly found one. Business it is said, worships the false god of money. Why else do we speak of the almighty dollar? But idolatry can trigger a lot of pain. Enron, Worldcom and the rest show us the shadow side of capitalism—the cost of barring Spirit from the boardroom and glorifying profit instead of Presence”…Megatrends 2010. “One-Size Politics Doesn’t Fit All: Evangelicals who dispute the cause of and remedy for global warming are critical of fellow evangelicals…Actually, restricting evangelicals to the narrower agenda of ‘conservative views on politics, economics, and biblical morality’ is the bigger problem. This plays into convenient mainstream stereotypes of Christians being obsessed with sexual issues or pawns of the Republican Party”…Christianity Today, May 2007 [Note: Similarly, while the most widely promoted evangelical financial newsletter claims no screens are necessary in order for investors to be “biblically responsible,” many evangelical advisors preach that very extensive screens are necessary. Apparently, the Bible agrees with both radical views.] “One of the attitudes that is tearing us [evangelical Christians] apart is the insistence that everyone else better just agree with me when I give my opinion—and if some refuse to do so, then I’ll write them off and associate exclusively with those who will. We badly need an attitude of Christian humility that affirms we don’t know it all and that we’d like to know more. We badly need an attitude of Christian appreciation, one that recognizes that other people can give us what we do not have ourselves”…John Stackhouse, Christianity Today [Almost by definition, modern evangelicalism is wide but shallow. So many evangelicals remain immature Christians, who can be more prideful than non-believers. That may be why a study by the Heritage Foundation has said immature religion, which is usually quite confused as it is cultural despite pretending to religiosity, actually causes more social problems than atheism does.]

“One of the most important things I have found is that there are two kinds of evangelicals in America today—those I call ‘populist’ evangelicals and those I call ‘cosmopolitan’ evangelicals. Populist evangelicalism is that branch of the movement that relies on large public rallies and mobilizing the masses for action. This has been the most visible part of evangelical activism, especially in politics, over the last thirty years—think of the Moral Majority, or Focus on the Family. Its leaders, who are some of the most recognized figures in American

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evangelicalism—James Dobson, Joel Osteen, and formerly, Jerry Falwell—are not just heads of evangelical organizations; they are prominent media figures that, at least in part, represent evangelicalism to wider society. But many of the leaders I spoke to tried to distance themselves from this part of the evangelical world…

Though one might expect cosmopolitan evangelicals to be less fervent than populist evangelicals, that’s not what I found. Both are committed to the same core beliefs and seek to live out their faith as best they can. But the two groups differ in strategies. Take politics, for example, whereas populist evangelicalism relies on strategies like mobilizing the rank-and–file to push for legislation, cosmopolitan evangelicalism is more likely to sponsor a year-long program for future political leaders...Though evangelicals want to change the whole culture, it is easier to succeed in politics than in most other fields. An organized minority can always triumph over a disorganized and apathetic majority. Evangelical leaders have capitalized on this.”…D. Michael Lindsey, surveyor of religion for the Gallup Organization, speaking of the attitudes of “The Evangelical Elite” for The Gathering, an organization of largely “cosmopolitian evangelical” foundations.

[A lengthy but crucial note: A prominent BRI advocate recently said I despise evangelicals. Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. Over the years, I’ve consistently quoted devout and wise “cosmopolitan evangelicals” I admire from the economics department at Wheaton College; the pages of Christianity Today and The Wall Street Journal; the productions of The Trinity Forum; and so on. Each has gracefully but pointedly disagreed with a handful of popular evangelical media celebrities about the federal debt, our economy, Y2K, responsible investing and so on, but particularly politics in general. And I’ve agreed with them. Having a degree in politics, I know why it has been well said that politics is too often organized hatred. Having read the Bible for fifty years, I know Christ was also tempted in the Desert at the beginning of his ministry to take the quick and easy way to fortune and political power. Fortunately, he chose the longer and far more difficult way of loving sacrifice.

Unfortunately, our short-sighted celebrities were not just usually gaining fame by selling political tactics but were also usually selling books and tapes for personal gain. Several financial publications took obvious pleasure in noting that Jerry Falwell may have left tens of millions in his “empire,” built up with the help of a mountain of debt that evangelical financial ministries deem unbiblical. Such culturally conflicted leaders are much like immature stock brokers prospering while selling what inexperienced investors will buy during emotional moments. Mature brokers know that is a sure recipe for killing investors and therefore your self in the long-run, as Internet stocks and junky mortgage-backed bonds have recently demonstrated. Now the political long-run has arrived. And The Economist is laying odds the divided and shaky conservative house is about to fall as America “turns left,” largely due to the moral hypocrisy of the leaders of my GOP, often cynically termed “God’s Own Party.”

Fearing the dangers of human ego, a little knowledge and state-run religion, our Founding Fathers sought to check the passions of demagogues popularizing sound-bite theology. That’s why they declined to establish direct democracy and state-run religion in favor of a representative democracy, complete with checks and balances, where cosmopolitans might show better judgment. Both political and church leaders forget such principles on occasion, particularly when enjoying “success.” Democrats likely will in coming years. Unfortunately, populist evangelical celebrities appear likely to avoid being humbled as they’re busy rationalizing why the recent stagnation in civility, morals and markets was not their fault. If so, populist evangelicals might pay more attention to cosmopolitan theologians who are humble enough to see our own sins, such as Ravi Zacharias, who cautioned about the pseudo nature of popular Christianity in his book Jesus Among Other Gods, quoted just below the following timely cartoon from the WSJ.

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“Wealth and enterprise have so woven themselves around the message of Jesus
that popular models of Christianity appear as nothing more than self and greed
at the center, with strands of Christian thought at the periphery.”
Ravi Zacharias

Reflections:

My wife enjoys exercise. That means I get to accompany her to our local Y several mornings a week. As I don’t enjoy exercise quite as much, I usually pretend to exercise a bit and then spend the rest of the hour exercising my jaw muscles with a bunch of old codgers who gather in the lobby. It’s a fascinating group. Each of them could easily write a book about their life experiences. But I’m particularly intrigued by one old fellow named Van.

Experienced, wise and graceful, Van was a top executive of one of the world’s largest insurance companies and a friend of Ronald Reagan. But I particularly enjoy bantering with him as he is our resident religious skeptic. He has traveled widely, largely to Muslim cultures. And to demonstrate his concern about the trouble that verse-quoting fundamentalists who can’t see the big picture often cause, he is fond of quoting Deuteronomy 20:16. It says: “Of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”

Van knows such verses are fairly common in the scriptures of ancient religions. (The irony is that like many fundamentalists, he’s not quite as aware that Christ told us to love our neighbors, and even enemies, unconditionally while leaving the judging to God.) And he knows those verses prompt a lot of international tension when mishandled by fundamentalists who love verses more than people. But he was a bit surprised recently when I told him such verses (see also Exodus 15:3 and Deuteronomy 32:41) can also serve as fodder for American Christian terrorists. They did exactly that for that biblically inspired group that sought to bring down the U.S. government and dump fifty gallon drums of pure cyanide into America’s water supplies (Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, 17-31.) Given Van’s skepticism about religion, I was quite surprised last week when he distributed a blog that concluded: “The only people who can hurt us are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian culture, we become just like the Europeans.” Of course, I get such opinions several times a day from Christian extremists who enjoy fame and fortune from crying “wolf” over and over. But this one was from a fellow named Herbert Meyer and was entitled “A Global Intelligence Briefing for CEO’s.” It began by noting that Mr. Meyer “was Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, where he

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managed production of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimates and other top-secret projects for the President and his national security advisors.” It added that Mr. Meyer was also “credited with being the first senior U.S. Government official to forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union, for which he was later awarded the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the intelligence community’s highest honor.” In short, he’s the kind of guy you want to listen to.
The blog outlined the “four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events” and their consequences. They are: 1) the war in Iraq, 2) the emergence of China, 3) the shifting demographics of Western civilization, and 4) the restructuring of American business, in which major companies employ fewer and fewer workers as they grow more and more profitable for shareholders. I won’t go so far as to say Mr. Meyer predicts the end of Western civilization as we’ve known it. But those who are into the “four horsemen” of the apocalyptic literature of the Bible would feast on the report, particularly as someone had noted on the first page that in a recent book of the most influential people in the world, Muhammad was ranked #1. That was particularly interesting as Mr. Meyer spent considerable time reminding us the West defeated Islam militarily during the Crusades. Yet that has apparently done little to slow its influence. That suggests our military and economic power might not prove as successful at deterring Islamic radicals as some have hoped. And that might suggest the re-moralization of our own culture might do more for the salvation of the West than all the troops we can muster.

Now, what’s all that got to do with managing your nest egg? Quite a bit actually. I’m essentially saying that mixing faith and politics but subordinating the principles of faith to the pragmatism of politics in an odd form of pseudo-Christianity has had some pretty impoverishing consequences in the political arena of late. And the true Christian tradition has never seen politics trumping morality as the root of all evil. That honor has always been accorded to money trumping morality. That means the mixing of faith and finance in the same inverted manner could prove far more costly than what we’ve seen to date in the political arena. Every soccer mom, disgruntled voter and socially responsible investor, not to mention Islamic terrorist, knows that it’s imperative that America get its priorities straight.

Unfortunately, I believe there are clear signs immature populist evangelicals may already have inverted matters in the financial arena. During the 90s, the most visible of their financial leaders actually discouraged the mixing of the Judeo-Christian ethic with investing, what Wall Street called Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). They usually argued that would cost investors money. But now that studies are virtually unanimous in suggesting that may not be true, as the cosmopolitan Sir John Templeton taught the past forty or so years, and corporate implosions due to ethical failures have proven impoverishing, the same leaders are now preaching the virtues of so-called “Biblically Responsible Investing” (BRI).

BRI is not so different from SRI, as far as it goes, with the exception of focusing on human sexuality, as conservative politicians have done in recent years. The real problem may be that BRI doesn’t go far enough. There are two dimensions of SRI. In the first, we simply avoid doing potential harm to others by avoiding the stocks of companies engaged in what we consider to be ethically questionable activities. Think of these financial principles as being like those ten moral principles of Moses that usually begin with, “Thou shalt not…” The second part of SRI however, and the one to which SRI is rapidly transitioning, is to actually do good, by cleaning the environment, lending to the needy at affordable interest rates and so on. You might think of those financial principles as those two commandments of Christ that begin, “Thou shalt love…” If SRI has matured to a more positive understanding of financial morality, one might wonder why BRI practitioners cannot join, and learn from, their fellow Christians, rather than regressing to where SRI was twenty years ago. My guess is John Stackhouse provided an explanation in Christianity

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Today, which I quoted above. Again, a lack of mature humility plays a devilish role in dividing the church. It may also divide you and your money.
An email ad for a newly organized BRI mutual fund claims the Bible is the manager’s investment guide. Guess he’s investing in sheep and goats. And to me, the Bible now seems less than “Holy” now that it’s serving as an ad for a mutual fund. But as we well know in popular religion, nothing is holy when pursuing a buck. (Yes, Sir John did an ad for a Bible society. But that’s quite different than using the Bible to market his funds.) Another ad shows a bull in a stained glass window and suggests we get bullish on our faith. Worse, a more recent email from an association of BRI practitioners promised an executive of a major brokerage firm would teach them how prayer can increase closing rates with clients.

As I read each of these, I was reminded that C.S. Lewis had that old devil Screwtape counsel his protégé that: “Once you have made the World an end, and faith the means, you have almost won your man.” Yet when I finally challenged the commercialization of faith in the financial arena, a friend replied I had simply misunderstood. When I checked my understanding with the Dean of the Financial Seminary, he reminded me of John Kenneth Galbraith’s counsel: “Forced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, nearly everyone gets busy on the proof.” Still, I’d feel more hopeful that our political leadership is changing its mind had a religious leader simply confessed to making a possible mistake. So my point is that like cynical voters around our world, the last thing cynical investors need right now is for planners and mutual funds to believe they’re inerrant as they believe the Bible is.
Of course, the Bible is quite clear that it’s not my job to judge my fellow financial professionals. But the Bible is just as clear that it is definitely all our jobs to be discerning. Christ told us to “beware every form of greed” and to “beware the yeast of the Pharisees,” or religious pride, in particular. As the old saying goes, sin is simply using that which should be loved, like the Bible, and loving that which should be used, like money. And the Pharisees were simply religious leaders who famously loved status and money and were quite willing to use their religion to obtain it. So frankly, I believe it’s quite biblical to be as skeptical of some BRI leaders’ sudden interest in ethics as they are skeptical of some Democratic candidates’ sudden interest in faith.

Yet just as there have always been devout Democrats, there are BRI brokers and mutual fund managers who know the Christian ethic is far more than a new strategy for making money from both investments and financial practices. So how do we discern the wheat from the chaff? During nearly thirty years of trying to find wise people to manage my clients’ money after I have helped with the asset allocation, I have grown to believe humility may be the most reliable indicator of true integrity, regardless of whether that manager calls himself or herself a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim or even agnostic.

Numbers 12:3 says the Jewish “Moses was a humble man, more humble than anyone else on earth.” Even Christ prayed “not my will but Thine be done.” Both founders of Judeo-Christianity clearly understood the human ego is an enormous challenge to seeing things as our Creator does, which is what we call the Judeo-Christian worldview, rather than as we might like things to be, which is humanism and/or wishful thinking. That clearer way of seeing reality of course is the first step, as Sir John taught us at the beginning of this newsletter, in discerning what our Creator is up to. That, in turn, helps us to discern what God wants us to do with our resources, rather than simply doing what we want while rationalizing that God wanted it all along. That just won’t work any better in our personal finances than it has in national politics and international diplomacy.

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That is why I was so discouraged recently when a leader of the BRI movement proudly defined BRI as “investing as Jesus would.” Jesus never wanted a portfolio. Neither did the disciples, Desert Fathers, St. Francis or Mother Teresa, who all embraced poverty. The fact I do largely attests to how little faith I have in God to provide for my family. My lack of faith is why I attend the old Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It is one of those churches often criticized by modern mega-churches for not growing, even though growth for its own sake is precisely the philosophy of the cancer cell and there is little evidence that larger numbers are correlated with larger souls. Luther was anything but popular in his day. He knew how totally dependent on God’s grace all we humans are. He also knew “investing as Jesus would” is Pelagian.

The protestant churches Luther sparked are called “liturgical churches,” partially meaning they adhere to a schedule of Bible readings that are repeated every three years. As that schedule was determined a long time ago, it forces us to read Bible passages that might make our money culture uncomfortable. For example, this week’s reading ended with Jesus saying: “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (Luke 14:33). Other passages nuance that somewhat but as we were leaving, I jokingly asked my pastor why he hadn’t touched on that verse for our affluent congregation. He replied “No way!” 99% of Lutheran pastors would prefer to avoid such passages too. But at least in the liturgical churches, the congregations know the Bible contains such difficult financial teachings. That may not be the case in non-liturgical evangelical churches where pastors pick the Bible readings each week. So social and political conservatives may not know how financially liberal they are by biblical standards.

Therefore, discerning investors encountering BRI advisors might remember that a key biblical principle says, “there is none righteous, no not one.” So when you come across a money manager who compares his or her investing to that of Jesus Christ, a bit of skepticism is quite prudent. If that money manager never lends to those in need without expecting anything in return, which was the only actual investment Jesus ever directly asked us to make (see the Sermon on the Mount), then you know that advisor is likely engaged in creating “man made rules” as the Pharisees did. That is a very old problem theologians call “legalism.” Rarely, if ever, does it result in the more abundant life that Christ promised if we’d only love one another. That is why he spent so much time fighting with the Pharisees, however devout and well-intentioned they might have been.

The intelligent seem particularly gifted at creating such rules. And the spiritually immature particularly like 1-2-3 religion, as Moses knew so well. So the rest of us should always remember that Christ and the Pharisees read the very same scriptures. They just read them with very different eyes: an all seeing eye unclouded by self-interest and human eyes looking for money, status and power. So it’s not surprising that even church financial leaders often debate: “Is the tithe based on gross income or net income?” and “Isn’t debt unbiblical, as taught by conservative financial ministries?” Over the years, I’ve grown to understand Christ very rarely answered such legalistic questions as he knew they were attempts to rationalize away the spirit of love. If we truly love God, we’d love money less. If we financial advisors truly loved our needy neighbors, we’d want them to have access to some of that capital we raise for corporate America.
Creating our own rules is one thing. Denying the laws of God is quite another. Yet BRI advocates have recently made several rules about what constitutes “biblical” investing that actually seem to clearly contradict key biblical concepts. For example, most have an apparent willingness to spend an unlimited amount of money on the military despite Moses clearly saying to limit the number of horses in the king’s army (Deuteronomy 17:15). That is not surprising given populist evangelicals’ tendency to confuse conservative politics for biblical faith. The more mature mainline traditions know that true Judeo-Christian theology regarding war has fluctuated between pacifism, or no war period, to “just war,” which says a few wars are unavoidable due to the

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reality of evil yet even they should be conducted only after patiently exhausting all other avenues to peace. Yet cultural and politicized religion has still been rather expensive lately.

Political screens also caused the BRI advocate to write the election of a “liberal” president will prove to be a “nightmare” for ethical investors. Of course, that’s precisely what many evangelical financial advisors fear-mongered when Governor Clinton was running in the early nineties. Their politicized worldview caused them to see the federal debt as a giant in the promised land. (Worse, they cried wolf about debt so long that people paid little attention once variable rate mortgages in the sub-prime sector became a genuine concern a couple years back.) Worse, the same advisors thought it was clear sailing when President Bush was then elected. That hasn’t kept many investors in a balance of the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq from losing considerable money during his presidency. In short, politicized worldview is simply another form of pride: my party is better than your party is as blinding as my understanding of Christianity is better than your understanding of Christianity; my politicized form of responsible investing is better than your politicized form of responsible investing, and so on. Again, such pride never helps us to see reality more clearly; which means we rarely see developing trends; which means we rarely prosper from such trends.

Worse, our blindly claiming to be biblical while ignoring what the Bible actually says will likely continue the pseudo-Christianity that will deny the salvation of Western culture. Unfortunately, other rules of BRI also seem to simply reflect conservative social thought rather than the Bible. For example, most BRI advocates speak of economic “justice,” which is mandated for all sinful humans in the Bible, while also singling homosexuals out of all sinners in the workplace to be denied benefits. Yet the Bible clearly says workers are worthy of their hire, and it doesn’t add “if you agree with their sexual orientation.” That is a huge financial issue for the relatively small number of homosexuals in the workplace as benefits now constitute a significant percentage of our compensation. Denying them a just wage will do little to encourage their productivity, or their attention to the merits of our faith. Yes, I know BRI advocates feel they’re “encouraging a non-biblical lifestyle” by paying such wages. But again, wouldn’t we significantly lower the divorce rate if we denied workplace benefits to divorced and remarried couples? Or to greedy people?

Frankly, I’ve had some close friends in both ministry and business “come out of the closet” over the years. Some were even clergy. They’ve known I’ve thought homosexuality to be biblically challenged. Yet they’ve also known I’ve struggled with greed, particularly defined from a biblical perspective when the average human lived on $500 per year, every day of my career. So we’ve maintained graceful and even loving relationships as fellow sinners. So just as Sir John had to work at loving Joseph Stalin to be biblical in loving his enemies as Christ commanded, perhaps BRI advocates would mature spiritually if they would work at loving a homosexual. It could sure enrich the workplace. I’ve never heard a BRI advocate suggest that greedy workers be denied workplace benefits. Nor have I heard a “family values” champion seeking the White House suggest those benefits be denied to divorced and remarried workers, even though Christ clearly called that adultery. In fact, that would get into a lot of their own pockets, which is another indicator the almighty dollar might be trumping moral principles these days. Yet Christ spoke of those sins, which are as close to my family as most American families, far more often in far more direct manners than he did homosexuality, which he only addressed in a most indirect manner.

Such selective biblical ethics have huge implications for the more religious workplace of the future. It threatens to create far more conflict than we’ve seen in the political arena recently. For example, Megatrends 2010 notes: “A former Hewlett Packard employee, fired for repeatedly posting biblical verses condemning homosexuality, sued HP. But the judge ruled that the ex-employee had violated HP’s anti-harassment policy. Cox Communication fired an evangelical

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Christian for criticizing a lesbian’s sexual orientation during a performance review. Again, the company won and the fired employee was cited for violating company anti-harassment policy.”

Apparently, the first employee couldn’t find one of the far more numerous verses about greed being the root of all evil to post. Nor did that employee notice that Mother Teresa may be honored as the closest thing to Christ we’ve seen for a while but she rarely, if ever, quoted Bible verses, preferring to preach the Gospel continuously, using words only when necessary, as Saint Francis advised. That saintly nuance between simply loving a perfect Book and loving imperfect people will be huge in the workplace of the future where verse-quoting populist evangelicals most often encounter non-Christians, and even cosmopolitan evangelicals, including myself, who are embarrassed, no alienated, by their spiritual immaturity. For even we watch to see how many populists risk sacrificing his or her own benefits by questioning the CEO about his obsession with increasing earnings each quarter. And as Peter Drucker’s Post-Capitalist Society boldly did ten years ago, and Megatrends 2010 does today, more of us could have done far more good by challenging more CEO’s to act with more ethical and spiritual values.

Perhaps losses are still the only way for us humans to learn, as biblical accounts and subsequent history suggest. Again, that just seems to be a reality of human existence. But of course, the smartest among us will think about it real hard and conclude none of it was our fault, as the cartoon said. And the cycle will repeat over and over, creating economic cycles over and over.

So what should we do in the future? I suggest pretty much the same thing that stewards have been asked to do since the days of wise old Solomon. But let’s continue being especially prudent. Let’s invest in the real economy of Main Street rather than the speculation of Wall Street. And let’s remain diversified in the broadest possible ways where we can do good for others around our world, particularly for those in greater need.

Most importantly, let’s humbly understand that no one, including us, knows what is going on in financial circles these days. While I’m usually quite skeptical of opinion polls, I do believe the American people are quite correct in saying our country is on the wrong track, even if most of us aren’t sure why we feel that way. Future trends in our political-economy might grow much clearer if we carefully observe whether more Christian financial advisors, and then perhaps politicians in turn, grow more biblically humble.

Readings & Reflections is an email publication of The Financial Seminary, a non-profit whose sole interest is to encourage the reintegration of spirit and ethics into political economy and personal finances. While R&R is written by an investment professional who gladly submits this newsletter to officials trained in the intricacies of securities regulations, nothing in it should be construed as counsel to consider any particular investment opportunity. R&R is also posted on www.financialseminary.org, along with other articles and speeches by Gary Moore, the Seminary’s founder, and other contributors .Gary Moore offers securities through NPC of America (NPCOA), Member FINRA/SIPC. Gary Moore & Company, The Financial Seminary and NPCOA are separate and unrelated companies. The political, religious and ethical opinions contained are not endorsed by NPCOA. Opinions are not intended to provide specific investment advice and should not be construed as recommendations for any individual. To determine which investments and investment strategies may be appropriate for you, consult your financial, tax or legal professional. Please remember that investment decisions should be based on an individual’s objectives, goals, time horizon, and tolerance for risk. Furthermore, any listing of a vendor or product does not constitute an endorsement or warranty of the vendor or product by NPCOA. NPCOA is not to be held responsible for, and not be held liable for, the adequacy of the information contained herein.

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