Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Work & Wealth

by Douglas Wilson

finishing at least a book a week for at least the last forty years.

But one of the most impressive things I can say about him is that he has never been too busy for his kids. When we were growing up, he always had a book in his hand—but whenever we wandered out and said, “Hey Dad . . .” he would always immediately set his book down and give us his full attention. When we now crash his evenings on a regular basis for a chat, he always sets aside whatever it is he’s working on and will pick it up again after we leave.

Unless we do it this way, we run an extreme risk of failing to distinguish between efficiency and effectiveness. As Peter Drucker said, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

But do you want to be efficient like a machine, or fruitful like a tree?

Now, what we call technology is simply an array of tools laid out on the bench for us. Technology is therefore a form of wealth. The reason this is important is because the Bible says very little about technology as such, but it gives us a great deal of blunt and pointed teaching on the subject of wealth. If we learn how to deal with wealth scripturally, then we will have learned how to deal with technology.

If you have a smartphone, you have more wealth in your pocket than Nebuchadnezzar accumulated over the course of his lifetime.

Wow, so true.

We have a responsibility to turn a profit on these astounding resources—and that is what is meant by productivity. We have a responsibility to do this methodically, deliberately, and intentionally. This is what I mean by ploductivity. This is deliberate faithfulness: working in the same direction over an extended period of time. Our electronic servants may be super fast, but we should be as deliberate as ever.

The Scriptures speak to our condition, and because we are wealthy, they speak to it very directly.

But God gave the cultural mandate to mankind, a mandate which involved an enormous amount of work, before the entrance of sin.

If we want to get it right, we therefore need a theology of work, a theology of tools, and a theology of productivity.

“Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men” (Prov. 22:29). Solomon is saying that first-rate work is going to be recognized.

This understanding collides with a common Christian misconception of grace and works. Because we are saved by grace—and we are—we sometimes assume that the world is God’s welfare state, and that all the other Christians owe us ecclesiastical food stamps. When we don’t get them, there are “hurt Christian feelings.”

We must learn to draw the lines of solidarity in the right places. Shared honesty across professions is a sound basis of solidarity. A shared profession, with some who are honest and others who are scoundrels, is not.

People who do not want public evaluation of the quality of their work are people who have no business being in business. They should just buy a shovel and dig where they are told to.

First, work is a good thing, and the hard way is actually the easy way. As a general rule, the difficult parts should be moved to the front of the project. There is a way of avoiding work that multiplies work, and there is a way of embracingwork that saves work in the long run. “The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns: But the way of the righteous is made plain” (Prov. 15:19). As the saying goes, if you don’t have time to do it right, then how will you have time to do it over?

Workers are generous. Loafers are not.

Professionalism begins in the heart, but it does not remain there: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: But the hand of the diligent maketh rich. He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: But he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame” (Prov. 10:4–5). Put another way, the lazy son is not being lazy in his heart. He is being lazy in the harvest.

Work is not a curse. The curse affects work, but work remains a gift from a gracious God. We were created for work, and we were created for work in an astoundingly fruitful world.

As we consider this, we ought not to limit the phrase “good works” to helping little old ladies across the street or volunteering at soup kitchens. Those are included, certainly, but good works also include good work.

In this fallen world, wealth does have a bias towards self-sufficiency rather than to dependence on God. But this is not something the wealth does to us, but rather something we do with the wealth.

Wealth—monetary, technological, or otherwise—is simply and solely a good thing, a gift of God.

men and women have a bias when we look at them in relationship with the wealth around them.

And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth,

They say in their blinded conceit that their own hand was the source of their wealth. Here lies the fundamental mistake, the fundamental problem.

Wealth is not the locus of the sin, but the presence of the wealth is the locus of the temptation.

He tells them to enjoy what they have, and then tells them to be active in doing good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and eager to share.

We are not only tempted by wealth, we are tempted to blame wealth. It can be a sin to misunderstand the nature of sin. In other words, we are tempted to locate the sin in the stuff, and then we try to solve the problem (when and if we do try to solve it) by putting some kind of respectable distance between us and the stuff.

It is a physical thing out there, and so it appears that we can distance ourselves from it. But if the problem is in our hearts, always in our hearts, whatever shall we do?

A man with tools is not being an artificial man. My argument is that a man cannot be an authentic man without tools.

And so we should define a tool in this way: something that is not part of a man’s body which makes something that the man wants to do possible or easier.

Tools are technology, and technology is a form of wealth.

we should regard our tools the same way we regard our money—with grateful suspicion. Or perhaps, on alternating weeks, with suspicious gratitude. This has to do with the nature of creational goods in a fallen world.

But when we see that tools are a subset of media, and that media were obviously a gift from God, given to us through the mere fact of creation, we should become much more comfortable with the idea of tools as essential to our humanity.

This means that when we make tools, whether plows and shovels, smoke signals or iPhones, we are not violating our essential humanity. Rather we are expressing it.

Enjoy your life, the one Christ has given you. And it is not possible to do this without enjoying Christ Himself.

A statement like that hits us sideways because we are accustomed to think about the world in quasi-Deistic terms.

But the biblical doctrine is actually one of creation and ongoing providence. All of it is personal.

If slipshod work is allowed to fail, then quality work will remain. The external pressures of the free market with ensure that. But for Christians who want to be faithful in their work, their internal motivation will also contribute to the quality of the work.

We are to put our hand to the work, doing the best we can with it, and we are to keep our hands off the future.

Notice how this works. What happens in the future—the standing before kings part—is in the hands of God.

So my responsibility is, so to speak, whatever is in front of me, there on my workbench or desk or counter. I should do a first-rate job with that, and other things will fall into place. And as they fall into place, it will not be the impersonal doing of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Every blessing a Christian ever receives is from a pierced hand.

What you do with wealth will either keep it a compounding blessing, or it will wreck everything. But when it is first poured out on you, it is a blessing.

Wealth is a function of accumulated man hours. And in another way, wealth is the ability to command the labor of another—the ability to tap into some portion of those available man hours.

the person in possession of that wealth has to have the ability to know how to do it.

Imagine a person of modest means who wins some kind of intergalactic lottery, and inherits a mansion the size of Rhode Island, staffed with ten thousand servants. Things are not going to run well automatically. His new wealth must be managed. Servants must be supervised. Workers must be given direction. In other words, wealth brings a great deal of responsibility to the wealthy.

Now, if you have a smartphone in your pocket, one of the things you also have in your pocket is nine thousand servants sitting on the veranda.

He would have needed at least ten thousand servants. Let me use the example of just a few of the apps that are sitting there on my phone right this minute. I have a program to tutor me in French. I have a guitar tuner. I have a church directory. I have a calculator. I have someone to read me books in a British accent. I have access to libraries all around the world. I have a camera. And on and on and on. And to be honest, I have a handful of reliable servants that I go to again and again. But most of my servants, well over nine thousand, are sitting around on their butts. And even the programs that I do use are operating at about five percent of their capacity. In short, I am not nearly as good a boss as I ought to be.

So let us emphasize this yet again: Technology is a form of wealth; progress is a form of wealth. This helps us get our bearings as Christians, because we should now know what to watch out for.

The Bible does teach us what our orientation toward wealth should be—that of glad suspicion, or maybe, on our gloomy days, suspicious gladness.

Because it is a form of wealth, the bias contained within technological advancements is toward forgetting God. Because it is a form of wealth, cultural progress does veer toward disobedience.