Business as an Avenue to Fulfil the Great Commandments

I admit that I was sceptical regarding the potential good to be done in business when I embarked on my journey to become a logistics and supply chain professor. However, I landed in my chosen field under the assumption that everyone needs to have products like food, clothing and shelter made available to them in their local markets through some mode of delivery. Maybe I could do some good by teaching good business practices to meet demand in the marketplace with the right supply. Along the way, I’d do the real Christian work as a volunteer with my church or in the community.

I began my research career as a graduate assistant on a project funded by the US government to explore the best practices in green and lean strategies driving the top global supply chains of Fortune 500 companies. As we began talking about lean strategies (a quality management system that originated with Toyota Production), executives discussed the satisfaction that comes from inviting employees, from leaders to frontline shift workers, to have ownership in problem solving. Lean strategies provided a way to humanize work and to invite employees to bring ideas to work that was historically considered unskilled labour. It dignified their work. On the topic of green strategies, executives spoke of utilizing resources to preserve the earth for their children, grandchildren and coming generations. A vocabulary of responsibility and stewardship emerged as the conversations progressed. I was struck that these best practices of leading companies seemed to be driven by ethical and personal convictions, but the impact of the strategies was to reduce cost to increase revenue through customer satisfaction. In fact, they were doing the right thing and it was a blessing … in business. I was convicted that many of the principles were in fact biblical. God’s truths (biblical principles) seemed to bring blessing whether applied by a Christian or an ethical secular leader in business.

Across Christendom, I think we are fairly familiar with the call to love God and to love our neighbour. According to Jesus, these two commandments sum up all the law and the prophets.¹ The context of Leviticus 19 around the call to love our neighbour may be less well known. I think many Christians would agree that this call to love your neighbour means to be kind, compassionate, and generous to others. However, I think this call to love others has adapted to a Western trend to separate public and private life, work and home life, the business arena from the neighbourhood, leaving us with a vague notion on what it means to love our neighbour. Nonetheless, the passage in Leviticus 19 is not a call to love in a society that has separate spheres of work, family and life. The passage is replete with guidance on righteous behaviour in the agrarian economy of the day including: sharing crops with immigrants and sojourners; when to pay workers their wages; and how to price products fairly. Interestingly, loving our neighbour is a deeper reflection of the call to love God with all of our heart, soul, and strength (literally, resources) in Deuteronomy 6:5.

While it’s easy to skim through the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, placing them in the distant ancient Near East history that lead up to the coming of Jesus, Jesus himself re-emphasized these two calls to love throughout the gospels. In Luke, the good Samaritan exemplifies the person who loves their neighbour by sharing his resources – he shares his donkey, his oil, his time and his finances as he takes time out of his journey to care for a man left robbed and abandoned along the route of his journey. Finally, in Jesus’ final teaching to the disciples about the kingdom of God, he teaches them that the kingdom of God is like the vigilant bridesmaids that know how to monitor their supply of oil as they wait for the coming bridegroom; that the faithful servants are those who steward what they are entrusted with, multiplying the return for their master; and finally, that those invited in to the kingdom of heaven are those who care for the least of these. By loving the least of these, a neighbour who will likely never return the favour, we are expressing love for God himself. Our care for the least of these² is explicitly tied to our willingness to share our resources, our clothing, food, water, shelter, time, healthcare and hospitality.

Interestingly, the context for this type of love in the ancient Near East would have been in the agrarian economy of ancient Israel. The book of Ruth demonstrates this love in action through the occupation of Boaz. His management of his fields allows for him to have overseers and many workers in his fields. He is able to provide shelter during the harvest, food for workers, safety for the sojourners like Ruth who were gleaning in his fields. He spent time riding through the fields, getting to know the workers he hired and the poor (like Ruth) who came to glean the waste of the harvest. His business provided a context to express love to his local neighbours and his national neighbours since travellers could also stop and gather food.

While, I think we can express love to our neighbours in our communities, our nations, and society at large in lots of different ways, the past years’ research exploring the impact of faith and ethics in business has taught me that we can endeavour to fulfil the great commandments of Scripture no matter what avenue of work we are called to. I don’t believe that Scripture is indicating that business is the avenue through which we can love God and neighbours, but it is certainly an avenue through which we can express our care for others. The secular world recognizes many biblical principles that drive profit and business success as best practice; how much more should we as Christians follow the teachings of Scripture motivated by a desire to love God and our neighbour so that all forms of blessing may follow?

Dr. Hannah Stolze is an author, teacher, speaker and academic with a focus on sustainable supply chain management and the intersection of faith and business strategy. She is the inaugural William E. Crenshaw Endowed Chair in Supply Chain Management in the Department of Management in Baylor University’s nationally ranked Hankamer School of Business.