GEO Principle Blog

God provides abundantly, leaving you ready to serve others

As Christians, we know that God provides. In the GEO Principle, it is explained that the purpose of work is not to provide for self, but to grow closer to God.

People who believe that they provide for themselves are probably less likely to ever believe they have been sufficiently provided for. They judge themselves quite harshly, particularly if “the Jones’s” serve as the measuring stick. In other words, when you believe that you are getting everything entirely of your own accord, you are less likely to ever believe that you have enough because some people will always have more than you. This may prevent you from turning your attention to others. The sense that you need more may block any thinking that some of your provisions could be channeled to others.

I think it is easier to look beyond yourself if you accept that God does the providing. If you believe that God is doing His job, and that you have what you need, then you are in a pretty good position to look to others to help them. Once your own needs are satisfied, it becomes more likely that you will turn your attention to endeavors that help others, not solely yourself.

Before most people will begin to think about giving to charity, they need to feel like they have what they need. Before people will typically devote time to others, they have to feel like they have enough for themselves. That’s just human nature.

Consider two people. One believes he has to provide for himself. He has two cars. The other believes it is God who provides. This person has only one car. Now, let’s assume one of these people decides to donate $1,000 to a charity serving underprivileged children. Which one do you think would be more likely to make such a commitment? I say it is the person with only one car but with the belief that God provides. The person who believes he has to provide for himself is likely to believe he still needs a truck and a boat.

If you believe that everything you have is a gift, then I think your are more inclined to believe you have enough. If you believe you have everything as a result of your own hard work, then I think human nature dictates that you will never believe you have enough.

Micro-credit story can tell us a lot about the meaning of work

I am a big fan of the micro-credit movement. The GEO Principle points out that lending modest amounts of money (by American standards) can be a way of bringing meaning to Sabbath, for both the lender and the borrower.

Someone who really understands the importance of micro-credit is Muhammad Yunus, who founded Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, spreading the concept of micro-lending. Although Americans might think of micro-lending as a tool for Third World countries, there are applications suitable for life in America and other highly-developed places. I encourage you to read Yunus’ book “Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the battle against world poverty.” I recommend Yunus’ book as suggested reading at the end of chapter 19 in the GEO Principle.

Yunus encourages readers to consider the entrepreneurial drive in so many people. This is a drive that is alive in many Third World citizens. These are folks who could do a lot with a little, if they only had access to a little. Yunus notes that standard theories about micro-economics are incomplete. “It views individual human beings as either consumers or laborers and essentially ignores their potential as self-employed individuals,” he writes.

“This theoretical dichotomy between entrepreneurs and laborers disregards the creativity and ingenuity in each human being,and considers widespread self-employment in Third World countries as a symptom of underdevelopment.” Yunus rejects that notion, noting that self-employment is the ticket out of poverty for millions of people around the world.

Yunus explains how credit makes self-employment possible: “In reality, credit creates economic power, which quickly translates into social power,” he writes. In many places around the world, people are tired of waiting for big companies to come in, set up shop and hire them. They are willing to work right now, and if that means taking the risk of a business owner to do it, so be it.

This isn’t the kind of business ownership that Americans typically associate with profit-oriented capitalism. Micro-businesses typically spring from the basis of all work: need. Micro-entrepreneurs look around, figure out what needs to be done, and do it. Sometimes a loan of $50 or $100 is all it takes to help that person get going.

The profit generated from these kinds of ventures aren’t about returning money to shareholders, but returning a wage to the person doing the work. As Americans who typically invest for financial return, we should never forget that the real return is that our money puts someone to work. Work gives a person dignity in many ways, but primarily because it provides a way for a person to grow closer to God.

Focus on purpose, not glamor

My good friend who blogs from her southern Minnesota farmstead posted this little story recently. I like the story because it illustrates how easily many of us get distracted from our purpose.

In college, when we start thinking about a career, we focus on professions that offer something we believe is important to the world. People want to be teachers because they believe in the importance of education; people what to become attorneys because they believe in justice; people want to become nurses, doctors and health care specialists because they want to help people. I became a journalist because I wanted to tell stories that I thought the world needed to hear.

After devoting years to these professions, it gets easy to forget why we got into them in the first place. Money inevitably becomes more important. Promotions and advancement become the goal. The professional focus shifts from doing to getting.

And it is easy to understand why. Getting is glamorous. It's exciting to make more money. Nothing feels better than a promotion. Work, on the other hand, can become routine. We in the workplace can become just like those people in the story who forgot about the coffee and got all distracted with the coffee cup.

Even if you are living the GEO Principle, this is an easy trap to fall in to. Even if you understand that the purpose of work is to grow closer to God, it is easy to become distracted with the glitz that accompanies professional advancement.

Certainly, it is nicer to drink coffee out of a ceramic mug than a plastic foam cup, and it is better to get a raise at work than to be passed over for advancement, but if we are lucky enough to benefit from these blessings, let's not forget the source of the blessings. Let's not forget the reason we are at work in the first place. Do your best work everyday and offer it up to God. Don't let glitzy distractions pull you away from your purpose.

The audacity of The GEO Principle

The GEO Principle posits that the purpose of work is to grow closer to God. What an audacious statement! I want to encourage you to take a little time to consider what that means. It is an easy thing to say, but it would be truly an awesome thing if people believed it and actually behaved accordingly.

Think of the beauty of a commercial world where everyone knows God. Honesty and openness would lead to greater levels of trust between colleagues. Greater levels of trust mean less required supervision, which could lead to fewer layers of management and, ultimately, greater levels of work satisfaction, lower costs, better prices for customers and higher returns for shareholders. Workers who respect the dignity of their colleagues don’t discriminate or sexually harass. Employees who take pride in their work produce better products and provide better service. This could result in safer goods and happier customers. Auditors and regulators would have little to do. The business section of our nation’s newspapers would be filled with success stories rather than chronicles of corporate scandal. Living your faith at work is not only good for you, but it also is good for your company and the world.

Let me share a small example from my own experience. I think I am a better magazine publisher since I started taking my faith seriously on the job. I have been publishing niche magazines for a living since the early 1990s. Most of my energy goes into the company's lead magazine, a regional business trade journal. In the early days, I used to devote a lot of attention to the competition. Every time a competing magazine would come in the mail, I would rifle through its pages, counting advertisements. If I saw a company advertising in the competition instead of my magazine, I became upset. I'd rip the page out of the magazine and hand it to me sales manager. "Find out why these guys aren't spending any money with us!" I'd say.

And then I would look at the articles. If I saw one of our regular freelance contributors also contributing to the competition, I would talk to them about it. I would force them to make a decision: "Either work for me or the other guy." And the thing that would make me more upset than anything was when the competition would get a story we didn't get, especially if it happened in our geographic area. It would bother me to no end when a competing magazine published out of St. Louis or Chicago would get a story about a company in Minneapolis that we didn't already have. We beat the competition plenty of times, but I forgot that when the competition beat us.

Well, something happened when I started trying to bring God to work. I began to calm down. I began to worry less about the competition. One of the ways that I told myself that I am going to try to be serious about my faith is, I canceled my subscriptions to the competing magazines. Those magazines stopped coming into the office every month. At first I wondered what was in those magazines I was missing, but eventually I stopped worrying. All that energy that I used to pour into tracking my competitors went toward producing a better product out of our own office. Over time, it has made a big difference. Our editorial is sharper. No longer is it ever a reaction to things that have appeared in other magazines. We take original angles on stories. My blood pressure is down, my colleagues say I am easier to work with, and I think the magazine is stronger than ever.

As this blog unfolds, we will look more at what it means specifically to bring God to work. One thing is for sure, the results of such an effort can be remarkable.

Another look at the purpose of work

Christians refer to God as Father, and that is why I like to use parent/child analogies to help understand the relationship between God and us. The point I made in the last post is so foundational to the GEO Principle, that I want to devote at least one more post to it.

Several years ago, I had a huge clean-up to conduct in my yard. It was fall so there were leaves everywhere, and rain had packed the leaves down so raking was a real chore. There was also pruning and trimming do be done. It was Saturday and I went to work right after breakfast.

About an hour into the job, I asked my 5-year-old son to help. He eagerly joined me. He grabbed a kid-sized rake we had and began stroking the ground. The leaves were so damp and packed-down, that even after 45 minutes of work, my son's little arms had accomplished very little. Most of the rest of the day, he stood and watched, and talked to me. He did help a little more, providing a useful third hand when I was stuffing lawn debris into a leaf bag.

At dinner that evening, my boy declares "I cleaned up the yard!" After a moment, he added, "Dad helped." I laughed. My boy was taking credit for doing most of the work, but of course, I had done nearly all of it. But that was okay; I got what I really wanted out of the day. When I asked him to help me, it wasn't because I needed his help. It was because I wanted to spend the day with him. I wanted us to have the experience of working on a big project together, even if I would end up doing most of the work. Although we did clean up the yard together, the experience wasn't so much about yard work as it was about precious father/son time.

As I recalled that day years later, it occurred to me that this story about me and my son also describes the relationship between God and me. God provides, but he asks us to help, just like I asked my son to help me that Saturday morning. And sure, I respond by really working, but my work is minimal compared to what God is doing. So, at the end of the day, I can say I worked for my food and rent -- the same way my boy could honestly claim to have cleaned the yard -- but it is really God who provides, just like it was really me who cleaned up the yard.

And just like I didn't ask my boy to help me because I needed the help, God doesn't ask us to work because he needs help. He gives us work as an opportunity to grow closer to him, the same way I was seeking a closer relationship with my son.

If you have worked at a job for a long time with a colleague, you know how working together can be a great way to build a friendship. Many good relationships are built on the job between colleagues, especially if they have been through ups and downs together.

It was okay for my son to say that he cleaned the yard, recalling my role only as an afterthought. But as adults, we should know better. God provides. At best, we can claim to co-provide. It is certainly fair for us to acknowledge our own role, but it is best for us to honor God's role. The real purpose of work grows more apparent when we accurately acknowledge God's role and our role in it.  God wants a relationship with us and he give us work to develop that relationship.

The purpose of work

Visits to the Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant in my neighborhood helped me to figure out the purpose of work. If you have small children, you know about Chuck E. Cheese’s -– the restaurant with the obnoxious interior that kids love. This is not a restaurant you frequent for the food. They serve pizza but their fame is the atmosphere, defined by numerous arcade games and rides.

When you place your food order at Chuck E. Cheese’s, you also purchase tokens for playing the games. On a busy evening hundreds of kids will be playing, banging on buttons, hitting flippers and tossing balls. Generally a step or two behind each child is a weary parent.

At the conclusion of each game, a machine spits out tickets which represent the child’s winnings. I am not sure whether there is any relationship between the performance of the child during the game and the amount of tickets awarded because it seems like every performance yields a wad of tickets. At the end of your visit, parent and child go to a counter where the tickets can be exchanged for a prize of the child’s choosing.

It took me several visits to Chuck E. Cheese’s to figure this place out. When I first saw the prizes on display and I saw how the kids were instantly attracted to them, I thought: “Why not simply let us buy a prize and give it to our kid? Why make us buy tokens and go through the process of playing all these games?”

It certainly would have been more efficient for the restaurant to simply sell prizes. Chuck E. Cheese’s could save a lot of space if they didn’t have to devote so much room for the basketball machine, the virtual surfing machine, the skill ball machine and every other kind of fair game you can think of. And the place would certainly be a lot quieter so people who did accidentally come to Chuck E. Cheese’s for the food could at least eat in peace.

But then it dawned on me: the prizes are not the point! The point of all those games is to give children and parents an opportunity to build their relationship. The games give the kids and parents a reason to spent time together; it gives them something fun to do together. Chuck E. Cheese’s is about parents and children building their relationship. Sure, the kids get a prize, but the real prize is that the parent and child just spent 45 minutes together strengthening their relationship.

So it is with work. Of course we get paid when we do work in the commercial world, and the compensation is important, but that is secondary. The primary purpose of working is to build a relationship with God, just like the prize is secondary at Chuck E Cheese’s and the time spent with mom and dad is primary.

Because working people spend so much time on the job, this is where they are chiefly defining their relationship with God. Work time is our best opportunity to grow closer to God.

Think again about Matthew 25 where we find the story of the master who went away and gave three servants an opportunity to manage his money in his absence. The two who worked were rewarded with a deeper relationship with the master; the one who did not work was cut off from the master.

Since God provides for us, as the master did for those servants, the purpose of work isn’t so much about earning money to pay the rent or feed the family; it is about growing closer to Him. When you consider how important paying the rent and feeding your family is, you get a sense for how important growing closer to God must be. The primary purpose of work is much more important than its secondary purpose.

The GEO Principle proposes that the purpose of work is to grow closer to God. We will consider the meaning of that purpose in future posts.

Work and compensation

Knowing that we are supposed to work is not the same as knowing where we are supposed to work, or what we are supposed to do. As people sort these questions out for themselves, they often think first about compensation. If one job is as good as the next, then you may at least get one that pays well. These are the kinds of jobs people go for if they want to make money.

The more you think about it, however, the more tenuous becomes the link between compensation and work. Oh sure, there are jobs that pay very well, but there also are very important jobs that don't pay a thing. I'm thinking parent. Most of the stay-at-home parents I know work harder than many of the people I know who go to work some place. I also know people who embark on full-time volunteer work upon retirement. Some say the volunteer work is more demanding than the work they were getting paid for.

Clouding the picture further is the fact that many people work long hours for little pay, while others working those same hours make great pay. The receptionist and the executive's assistant might work the same hours at the same firm but the latter is likely to make three times what the former makes. A barber in a busy location may work harder than an attorny, yet the barber makes $40,000 a year compared to the lawyer who makes $120,000.

Even the same person doing the same work can see vast swings in compensation from year to year. Think of the salesman who is at the mercy of the economic climate. In a good year, he will make a lot of money; in a recession, he will make a lot less even though he may actually work harder.

This discussion doesn't even get into the questions of pay inequity in the work world -- questions such as: Why do some athletes and movie starts make outrageous amounts of money while teachers and public servants make only enough to get by?

My point is, the link between compensation and work is merky. This fact further makes the point that the primary purpose of work is not to make money. If it were, the differences in pay would be far too outrageous for any civilized society to accept. While work certainly can bring a person money, the real purpose of work must be something else.

Are we supposed to work?

Some people don't want to work. We live in a service economy but it is readily apparent that many of the people hired to provide serves really don't want to. Think of the folks typically encountered at a fast food restaurant, retail store, or the Department of Motor Vehicles. Many of us spend our 9-to-5 work time thinking about what we are going to do on our evenings and on the weekend. Others are eagerly counting the years down to retirement.

This aversion to work is not a matter of laziness. Many people pour enormous amounts of energy into their leisure. If people don't want to work, it is due to something other than laziness.

Since we know God provides, we know that providing is not the purpose of work. And, it seems like you could make a pretty good case that at least some people don't want to work. So that raises an even more fundamental question than the purpose of work: Are we supposed to work? The assumption that work has a purpose is based on the idea that we are supposed to work, in the first place. Is that a fair assumption?

The GEO Principle is based on the idea that it is a fair assumption; we are supposed to work. If you accept the idea that God put us here, then work seems inevitable. At the most basic level, we need food, shelter and clothing. God could have made us so that we never need to eat, or so that we don't need shelter, or so that we are always perfectly comfortable, but he didn't. He gave us a world where we can get what we need, but we have to go out and get it. He gave us eyes and ears, arms and legs, and a brain to help us.

The great evangelist Paul sums it up at 2 Thessalonians 3:10 where he says: "if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat." That sounds incredibly harsh in a culture where we have a highly developed social safety net to protect people who can't work, due to disability or other difficult circumstance. But even Paul knows his statement doesn't apply to everyone. He doesn't expect new-born babies to go out and work for their food. The statement is a generality, and I think in general, it is valid.

For me, however, it is another scripture story that convinces me of the need to work. Matthew tells the story in chapter 25, verses 14-30. This is where we find the story about the wealthy man who prepares to go on a journey by giving three servants some money. He gives one five coins, another two coins and a third, he gives one coin. The man leaves and comes back some time later. During that absence, the servant with five coins invested it and doubled his master's funds. The servant with two coins did the same. The third servant did nothing with his coin. When the news was shared upon the man's return, he was very happy with the first two servants and very disappointed with the third.

I can think of God as the man and I can think of myself as one of those three servants. Clearly, the man expects all three servants to go out and work. And, this story shows that work is not about providing for yourself. The man gave each of the servants money. They did not have to go out and get it on their own. They had what they needed; the story is all about what they did with what they were given. Two did something, one did nothing. The question for anyone reading this story is: Which servant are you going to be? Of course, you want to be one of the servants who does something.

So, of course, we are supposed to work. Aversions to work do not come from a sense that we are not supposed to work; they have others sources, which will be explored as this dialogue develops.

Who provides?

If you are the breadwinner in your household, you understand the importance of providing for your family. It costs a lot of money to feed your children, pay a mortgage, keep a car fueled with gas near $4 a gallon, pay insurance and taxes, not to mention paying for luxuries like vacations and internet access.

The government tries to give us some sense for what all this cost. Every other year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a report called Expenditures on Children by Families. Click here to take a look at the 2007 report. There are a lot of problems with this report, but for the sake of a discussion about the serious costs that go along with raising a family, it is adequate.

I first looked at this report in 2005; it said that a family like mine -- four kids under the age of 14, wife and husband living in the Midwest -- spend $41,830 per year raising our kids. According the the Ag Department, we will spend $1,017,840 raising our four kids from birth to age 18. That doesn't include any expenses for private schooling, nor does it include setting aside money for college.

So, yeah, providing for the family is a big deal. It used to make me really nervous. I used to think that it was all up to me. Sure, I know my wife helps, but I am the main source of income in our household. This self-understanding as provider affected the way I approached my work. It was all about money. I was working because I had to come up with that $41,830 per year to raise the kids. I have to raise more than a million dollars as the kids grow up!

But this kind of thinking was ruining my work experience. I was way too focused on the compensation; I didn't think nearly enough about what I was actually doing. Fortunately, before too much of my career slipped by, I remembered a foundational truth of my faith: God provides. Hmmmmm.

A friend pointed me to Matthew 6:31-33, where it says "Do not worry and say 'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?' ... Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God ... and all these things will be given you besides." There is a similar verse in Luke (12:28-31). It says, "If God so clothes the grass in the field that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you...? As for you, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not worry anymore... Your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these other things will be given you besides."

Yes, God provides. While I understood what that meant, it took me quite some time to really grow to the point where I could say I believe it. I mean, it still seemed like providing was up to me. At 6:30 in the morning on a school day when there's no milk in the refrigerator, I'm the one who has to run down to the corner store and get it so my kids have something to put on their cereal. And what does it mean to "seek the kingdom of God," anyway?

Let's work through those questions in the next few posts.