The Implications of the Creation Mandate on Investing

Transcript

Amy Sherman: The Christian financial advisor ought to be making folks aware what is happening when you make an investment. What is that making possible in the world? And is it making possible something good in the world or something not so good in the world?

Tim Weinhold: It really ties back to something that you also talked about in what you wrote for us. And that is God’s original, what is sometimes referred to as the cultural or the creation mandate.

Amy Sherman: God has called human beings to collaborate with him in the ongoing creation and development of this beautiful world that God initiates. And in the garden, the first human beings are called to both tend or keep the garden, but also to work the garden or to develop it. So for example, taking grain through human ingenuity and labor and producing bread or taking grapes and producing wine. What would it look like to both tend and work this garden that we are in? And so it is suggestive that the work of the investor is to find those business ventures, that with the infusion of that extra capital will be able to flourish even more.

If investing is supposed to be about developing, creating value, adding value and it’s done in a context where I realize my flourishing is very much tied up with your flourishing, then as the investor, my primary focus ought to not be on how much investment earning is coming back to me. But my primary focus ought to be on how much value is the recipient of my investment now having capacity to develop. Now there’s resources to repeat the process and to keep revolving that credit going back and back and back and back to bring about more and more and more flourishing.