Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Work & Wealth

by Douglas Wilson

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.

So if technology is wealth, then we are all surrounded with astounding amounts of it. This is what I refer to as tangible grace. If you have a smartphone, you have more wealth in your pocket than Nebuchadnezzar accumulated over the course of his lifetime. 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.

In order to evaluate a tool, we have to account for the telos, the end, the purpose. Hammers are used to build both brothels and barns.

In a famous 1958 essay, I Pencil, Leonard Read showed that no man on earth knows how to make a pencil. No one man can accomplish all the things that need to be accomplished for this to happen, but pencils are manufactured anyway, and they are made because hundreds of men do the things, things near to them, that they can do. They all do things that are within their reach. But not one of them can make a pencil.

As Mark Twain supposedly said, a classic is a book that nobody wants to read but everybody wants to have read.

This is the sinful pattern. God gives wealth, and man takes credit for it himself. If someone else comes along later and blames man for creating all this wealth and demands that we have ourselves a little “social justice” around here, he is just creating an extra layer of sedimentary silliness. And by this point, we don’t need any extra layers of silliness.

The lordship of Christ is honored when a people turns to Christ, and His authority is extended over them. The Great Commission says that we are to disciple the nations. The verb is disciple and the direct object of that verb is nations, the ethnoi. We disciple them by baptizing them, and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded. His authority extends over all of life.

Another way of thinking about this is that we are not conducting a presidential campaign, trying to get as many people as possible to vote for Jesus, so that if we are successful, then He can assume a position of authority. No, His position is already one of a conquering monarch, and He is already on the throne. He has been seated on the throne of a cosmic empire, and our task is to announce this already accomplished coronation to all the people in the outlying villages.