Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Work & Wealth

by Douglas Wilson

Patience—with a bomb shot of ambition, or possibly ambition that is ruled and tempered by patience—is the surprisingly powerful combination that has made his work so unbelievably fruitful.

“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?

Plenty of sin accompanies technology, just as plenty of sin accompanies lack of technology.

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.

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 serv...

The Scriptures speak to our condition, and because we are wealthy, they speak to it very directly. But we have to be prepared to listen.

One of the first things we must recognize is that work does not exist in the world because of the Fall. Work got a lot more difficult because of our sin, and we do labor under the ramifications of a curse. But God gave the cultural mandate to mankind, a mandate which involved an enormous amount of work, before the entrance of sin.

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

The ESV renders it this way: “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 means that work over time matters, and no work over time matters.

This is why the Scriptures say, “He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster” (Prov. 18:9). Laziness is a destroyer. But how can it be, when it didn’t touch anything, when it didn’t consume anything? The problem is that it did consume something—it burned a lot of daylight.

Christians are involved in building community, which means that we do business with one another.

True Christian fellowship and camaraderie should exist between an outstanding web designer and an outstanding architect, in a way that does not exist between a great architect and a lazy one. This is because cream rises. 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.

Honest members of a Christian community must learn that job evaluation is not gossip. It is part of the cost of doing business, and so we have to learn how to provide honest feedback without quarreling, and that feedback must not be fanatically over-precise, and neither may it inflict a terrible craftsman on the next unsuspecting saint.

People who do not want public evaluation of the quality of their work are people who have no business being in business.

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?

Not having a job means that he can think about that flat screen television that he wants so much, and he can think about it all day long. “The desire of the slothful killeth him; For his hands refuse to labour. He coveteth greedily all the day long: But the righteous giveth and spareth not” (Prov. 21:25–26). Workers are generous. Loafers are not.

Lazy men are good talkers. “In all labour there is profit: But the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury” (Prov. 14:23).

The issue here, rather, is what salvation looks like. We are saved by grace, but grace works. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–13, esv).We are not saved by good works (Eph. 2:8–9), but we are saved to good works (Eph. 2:10).

Where does the bad come from then? Moses warns the wealthy about their heart being lifted up. He tells them that they are in danger of forgetting the Lord their God.

The arrogant human heart is the source of the sin concerning wealth, and the arrogant human heart sins this way in the proximity of wealth. Wealth is not the locus of the sin, but the presence of the wealth is the locus of the temptation.

First, when Paul says “all evil,” we should keep in mind that the Greek word pas (all), when linked to a noun can be accurately translated as “all kinds of,” as the ESV does in this place: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

Second, and more importantly, look closely at what Paul tells these rich people to do. He tells them to not be snobs, and not to trust in their wealth, but rather in the living God. And how is the living God described here? As the one “who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (v. 17). 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. If people sin with alcohol, tobacco and firearms, and they do, then we think we must regulate the substances (or the tools) themselves.

A right theology of wealth will equip us to handle tools rightly, doing everything we do to the glory of God.

Adam could not exercise dominion over a hedge without tools, and God told him to exercise dominion over the whole globe and all the animals in it.

But guns don’t kill people, people do. Blocks of stone don’t build ziggurats, people do. Gopher wood doesn’t build arks, people do.

When we sin with a material object, or in near proximity to a material object, the most obvious thing to occur to us is to blame that material object. We blame weapons for murder, alcohol for drunkenness, slow traffic for the anger, photography for lust, and so on.

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 enable us to widen our reach. Tools make it possible for our radius of fruitfulness (now there is a phrase for the ages) to extend much farther than it otherwise would.

Language is part of this complex world of media. We ought not to be thrown by the fact that we even think using language. And this fact should tell us that we were created for community.

A right understanding of the gospel is therefore delighted, and delightful. Godliness is free in its enjoyment of the pleasures of God. Obedience is liberty.

In sum, Lewis believed that technological innovations were either a trick to get you subsidizing the methods of planned obsolescence, or they were a big waste of money and time.

We have to trust God for the future, always. If we try to control the future because it makes us nervous, we will only succeed in achieving the disasters we fear. And what we call controlling the future is actually controlling people—a point Lewis himself trenchantly makes in Abolition of Man—and thereby ruining their lives.

Socialism is the drive to control the free choices of other people, especially in the future, in order to prevent them from doing things that seem stupid to the self-appointed organizers, but which will lead to staggering wealth, or so the organizers say, three generations from now.

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

When we refrain from trying to run the economic choices or ventures being made by others, we are opening ourselves up for dislocations. So trusting Him in this takes diligence. Sometimes it looks as though we have to step in. Dislocations might be mild, as happened with the button industry, or they might be huge, as we saw in the Industrial Revolution, and now again in the Digital Revolution.

Every blessing a Christian ever receives is from a pierced hand.

Remember, wealth is a blessing, and what you do with it matters. 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.

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.

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.

There it is, all in a nutshell. God gives us the wealth that we will be tempted to put in place of Him.

Whatever you worship in place of God is another thing you lose. Whatever you surrender gladly to Him is returned to you, pressed down, shaken, and running over.

The first step toward genuinely productive work is to make it a point to work coram Deo, in the presence of God.

In Scripture we are told to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). We are told that whatever we do, down to the eating and drinking, we are to do it to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). And we are told to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God, holy and acceptable (Rom. 12:1–2).

Now if my body is a living sacrifice, this means that everything it rests upon is an altar. The car I drive is an altar, the bed I sleep in is an altar, and the desk where I work is an altar. Everything is offered to God, everything ascends to Him as a sweet-smelling savor.

Living in the presence of God means that you are living in such a way as to invite or seek His favor.