B (5:00)
Well, thank you, thank you, thank you for the nice introduction. He said 15 to 20 minutes for these comments, or as I like to refer to 15 to 20 minutes. An hour and a half. The beauty of modern technology. They put the QR code up. This is the first time ever that while I'm sitting here listening to myself being introduced, questions for the Q and A were already being presented to me and I was just standing on the side of the stage. Normally I have to wait till the talk is done for some Q and A, but it is pretty amazing. It's a blessing to be with you. It's a blessing to be connected to world in the way that I am. My friend Nick Eicher is going to come out in a little bit and we're going to spend some time together talking. But when I say my friend, I met Nick for the first time about an hour and 20 minutes ago and that's literally the case. And both Nick and I have not ever felt that way because we've seen each other on a screen, you know, every single week for five and a half years. And when I've had a vacation or travel or whatever, I've made it work to be on the screen. And even Nick, when he is vacationing and we've both had family things and so forth come up and we just somehow kind of made it work. And it's. Even though I do believe, you know, the deepest of friendships are done in person, it is really nice to be made a new friend via the computer screen. And the venue for doing so has been Money Beat, which I've really thoroughly enjoyed. And I assume that some of you have enjoyed it, too, or some of you hate it so much you came tonight to give me a piece of your mind. I've seen it all. Well, I don't know that there's a lot I say weekly on Money Beat that ought to cause a ton of offense, but I do know that if this book that I'm holding in my hand, that they have graciously provided for you. And just that joke about the book being free and there so I guess there is a free lunch. The other 1300 times I've heard that joke, it was equally funny. So. I do think that this book ought to cause some offense, if it's properly understood. Not. Not to all people. But there is something that is intentionally countercultural about the message of the book. And a lot of times when those of us who are Christians talk about being countercultural, we're referring to something that we as Christians are in the majority in the church and believing something, but that puts us in the minority in a secularized or unbelieving culture. And yet, unfortunately, I think this message about full time and about a truly kingdom, theologically grounded, robust view of work, I think sometimes the institution that might be getting it most wrong is the church. And my heart in writing the book, not the timing. And I'm going to explain the difference in a moment. But my heart in writing the book was for the church. Now the catalyst to the timing of when I wrote it became something different. And so I'm just gonna give you, in the very limited time we have the kind of rundown here as to why I care so much about this message and what I think it needs to mean for all of us. I essentially have spent my whole adult life caring deeply about this subject. And I think hopefully I've matured or grown in what it means to me and tried to articulate better why the message matters and what exactly the grounding I have in this is. I've evolved, let's say, in that over the years. But as a very, very young man entering adulthood, I worked very, very hard. And I was at a loss to understand why this was not well received in the church community. And I had grown up in a small Reformed church. My father, who was a Christian intellectual, had passed away right as I was entering my adult years. And he was 47 when he died and I was 20. And I'm going now out into the world. My mom was already gone. And I've told this story a million times. But the issue for me was, you can imagine as anyone who's lost a parent, you know, you're going through this traumatic event in your life. And I mourn for anyone going through any loss and any traumatic difficulty. But what was unique about it as it pertains to work was the loss was at a time in which typically a very young man would be kind of trying to answer the question of what they wanted to do with their life. And there was only one person I wanted to help answer that question for me. And he was the one who was now gone. And so I am entering my adult years with my best friend, father, pastor, and the confidant, right, that I would have about these great questions of who am I, what do I want to do in my life, you know, whether it's career path, calling all of these types of things, and now he's gone. And what I found by the grace of God, is that the traumatic event became very less traumatic for me. There was something incredibly cathartic because God used it that way, a very healthy biblical diversion from some of the pain and trauma we go through, through useful productive activity. And this became so clear to me that it was by God's design, not merely the unique circumstances of this 20 then 21, 22, 23 year old young guy trying to figure out his way in the world, but that universally all of us have an incredibly healthy venue available to us, dealing with trauma, dealing with various questions, kind of, you know, being our best selves through useful productive activity, what we often refer to as the four letter word of work. And my experience in the evangelical community and Christian church was not that this message made a great deal of sense. And in fact, all I felt I was being asked over and over again was, why do you work so hard? Why do you work so hard? Why do you work so hard? And I said, you know, as I kind of was hopefully maturing a little bit throughout my twenties and as my career began to develop more into my 30s, I said, One day I'm going to write a book I want a really Christian message out there about work. And at some point later than that, Tim Keller's book, Every Good Endeavor came out. And I thought it was a very, very good book. And I quote from it in my own book. There were some additional things I wanted to say. And he was writing it with a particular pastoral context. But I don't mean to suggest that there's never been a good book written on the subject. But I had something from my heart and experience with my voice that I wanted to say about the subject, but I did. I kind of sandbagged it, like, one day I'll write this. And I kept working, doing my thing and so forth. And I turned 50 last year. And the catalyst of the book coming out last year was not me turning 50, it was a few years earlier than that. And this sort of coincides with the timing of when I began doing Money Beat with World. And when I met Nick, Iker and so forth is the COVID moment. And there was an expression that became really kind of embedded into our society, frequently used, and it's a figure speech that I utterly loathe. And it essentially catalyzed me to write the book. Then, like the timing of this became my feeling that this was no longer something for my own people, meaning the church community. Now this was a broader message throughout the society that I thought America, its unique DNA, its unique ethos about work, felt to me like we were losing it a little. And that was embedded in what I think is one of the most offensive nomenclatures of the COVID moment, non essential worker. I hate even saying it, but I will tell you right now, pandemic or no pandemic, good economy, bad economy, whatever the political environment, cultural, whatever the situation is going on at that point in time, the amount of people that are non essential workers is always and forever zero. Because God made every single one of us to be workers. God made every one of us in his kingdom design before the fall, before sin, polluted things and before we have now begun this process of grace restoring nature. God made every one of us to be workers, to be useful, productive members of his created community who he desires to be in communion with. This incredible design for our lives should give us all hope in periods of trauma. But it also gives us is connected to the entire thing we believe about being Christians. We believe that there was sin, we believe that there was the pollutant effects of sin and that we are being redeemed because of the separation between us and God. The sin represented, we're being redeemed to God through the work of Jesus. What we have to remember is what God made us for and what we're being restored to. And I think this is profoundly important theologically. Now, Kevin in the introduction said that one of the things he appreciates about me is that I approach economics, I approach this subject from a theological standpoint. And that's the good news is because I do very much try to do that. But the bad news is so does everybody else. It's just some of their theology is really, really bad. The most atheistic, secularistic, humanistic economist, the most pop culture understanding of work written about in the Atlantic or in the New Yorker is done from a theological standpoint. They can't escape their worldview any more than I can escape mine. I try to be more self conscious about it. I try to be more self aware about it and consider consistent to a biblical worldview. And as we're going to talk about here for a moment, to a biblical anthropology and what I mean by that is a biblical understanding of the human person. The 20 year old David Bonson who lost his dad was not unique in that I found purpose in being useful and productive. That was God's created design for all of mankind from the garden. And this profound message not only ought to give us comfort, not only ought to give us focus, but it also ought to give us an incredible sense of joy in waking up every single day that we can then go be productive in whatever that particular venue may be. Now, in 15 minutes, I don't get to give full career advice as to what that means for every person in every particular setting. In the course of the book, I tried to address certain culturally relevant aspects. What I think about the retirement mentality, what I think about the phraseology of work life balance. And I do basically make the point in the book, and I'll be very honest with you, I don't like people who write or speak for shock value. I understand it can be effective rhetorically at times. I'm not suggesting it never has any place. It's just not my particular style. And I think part of it is I tried it so much when I was much younger and less sanctified and now I'm trying to live past that, be better. I don't say what I'm about to say for shock value, but I believe that the very language of work life balance is offensive and is used for no other reason than to diminish work. Now someone could say, are you suggesting work should be the entirety of our lives? Of course I'm not. But that's not what that expression means. Work, life, balance means you're trying to balance work and life. Well, that means these two things are at odds with one another, but they're not at odds with one another. And you say, well, yeah, but you can't be working all the time. You have other priorities. And I certainly agree with that. And if all we were talking about was, let's come up with some phraseology to capture the limitations or the tensions that exist because we're finite human beings. We're limited by time and space. The fact that I'm here right now in Houston with my wife. Where is my beautiful wife Jolene, by the way? She's in the back. The fact that I'm here with Jolene right now means we're not with our kids or I'm not in my office. And sometimes when you're at your office, it means you're not at a kid's soccer game. I'm completely aware of the fact that we are limited by being finite human beings. But if that's all we were getting at, why has there never been another expression to capture that tension besides work, life, balance? And so people go, I'm not sure if I agree with that. And then I ask this question, and then I end up always winning the argument. Husband's in the room. Please raise your hand if you have ever gone home after work and your wife was talking to you and you said, I'm sorry, honey, I can't talk right now. I'm trying to do marriage, life, balance. I do not need to look up to know that there are zero hands raised at this moment. Nobody would ever talk that way because it would be offensive to our spouses. And it isn't a kind of phraseology we're used to. But we do it with work for one reason, because we can. Not only do we do it because we can. It's almost something that we're celebrated by doing. We feel good about suggesting. I am so committed to these other various priorities that I'm willing to talk about work, life balance. And yet I would suggest that it is a somewhat manipulative way of getting to a lower, more diminished view of work. So what I attempted to do in the book, and what I really feel strongly about as an ongoing message, is that we have to root our theology of work, as I think about where the church's priorities are on the subject and the prophetic voice the church will have. When I think about the cultural moment we're in coming out of that Non essential worker terminology and where we're going to be going forward, whether it's in public policy or just in terms of the kind of theological commitment we have to being excellent in our work. I believe that we have to start in Genesis chapter one. And I think that's true of an awful lot of things in the Christian life theologically that we can never go wrong by going back to the very beginning. And when I see why God made us and how God made us, I get the framework for biblical anthropology. What I believe about the human person is that God made us very good. And he defined our very goodness, our superiority, our elevation above the the mountains, the oceans, the sun, moon and stars, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, this incredible, beautiful, powerful created world that was good and good and good and good. And he made us very good and defined that very goodness in the context of us being imago Dei made in his image. And in Genesis chapter one, verses 26 to 28, it repeats four times that we are made in the image and likeness of God. And I think almost every Christian I've ever known would answer, hey, are you made in the image of God? They'd say, yes, of course. And I have used the expression in my 51 years on planet Earth many, many times. But I am not sure that enough Christians fully appreciate what it means. I do think we know what it doesn't mean. We know that being made in the image of God did not make us God. We cannot be omniscient and omnipotent as God is. And in fact, the original sin was man trying to play the role of God. There are always going to be the things that separate, that make God God and us, not God. But what verses 26:27 do is define what it meant to be made in his image and likeness. And it was our particular calling and purpose. Purpose to rule the earth, to subdue it, to fill it, and specifically to go multiply and fill the earth. This was an economic growth commandment given before sin entered the world. And going into the early part of Genesis chapter two again before the fall, we are talking, we are seeing vivid instructions to Adam and Eve to care for the garden, to steward it. But God's plans to build a communion of mankind that the Emmanuel principle that God would be with us. This was his vision for us. And it was a vision for us as active image bearers of him who became co creators with Him. God did not make the world finished. And every time I'm sitting in a setting like this, we're in a Building that has been built with technology that has been developed. I'm holding a phone, as most of you are, that has more computing power in this tiny little device than the whole world had about 40 years ago. And every single thing, from the buildings to the architecture, technology to the devices are all a byproduct of mankind's work from the raw materials that existed thousands of years ago. There's nothing in this building or in the miracles of modern agriculture, technology, industry, commerce, marketplace. And even in this iPhone, the most successful consumer product of all time. There's nothing in it that didn't exist at the Garden of Eden. The raw materials were there. What existed that started before we got around to the iPhone. We had to baby step this thing. So they had to learn how to start a fire. They had to make a wheel. I've always thought about how fun it would be. You can see now these early meetings of when Musk was sitting around talking about starting Tesla or Steve Jobs was sitting around in the famous Silicon Valley garage scene starting Apple. I want to be there with these guys who are building a wheel thousands of years ago, because that was a pretty insightful thing to come up with. The fact of the matter is that's what God made us to do, to create, produce and innovate. And the most important thing, and I'll end with this comment, he didn't do it merely for the 20 year old David Bonson. He didn't do it merely for the incredibly successful producers, inventors of our generation, these Elon Musk and Steve Jobs types. He didn't do it for 50% of creation that happens to be really productive, leaving by default a 50% of creation to be merely consumptive. That roughly half of who we created is really good at making things, building things, doing things, and then the rest of us are just to kind of consume the goods and services that the other side produced. That is the vision of secular economics that about half of us are meant to be productive and half of us are meant to consume. And lo and behold, that number, those percentages move the wrong direction over time. Marx was at least consistent enough to say that not only do you start with this percentage, but that it is also abhorrent. And our job is to get more and more out of the bondage of work. And I believe our message needs to be to get more and more out of the bondage of idleness and into the blessing of work so that we can live the lives of joy and dignity that all people made in the image of God were created to live. Thank you very much.
