Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Work & Wealth

by Douglas Wilson

“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?

But I sincerely hope, at least for a number of you readers, this will be the last productivity book you read. Not because I have discovered the Lost Technique that once made Atlantis great and which I am about to share with you all for a modest fee, but rather because I hope this book will help you deal with the issues surrounding productivity in such a way as to help you mortify that most peculiar lust.

The technophile is the early and eager adapter. He tries everything out, and subscribes to magazines and web digests that help him try everything out. He is the guy waiting overnight on the sidewalk for the latest iPhone release. He can’t wait until some tech giant develops a thumb drive for the base of his skull that will give him instant fluency in Spanish.

but we should remember that there was a time when horseless carriages and locomotives were as mind-bending to their generation as cybernetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are to ours.

If we get the theology of the thing right, then it should be something that our great-grandchildren can apply fruitfully fifty years from now when they are trying to incorporate who-knows-what into their daily lives. It probably won’t be the iPhone 92.

But there is a third option. Plenty of sin accompanies technology, just as plenty of sin accompanies lack of technology. However, the basic driving problem is always in the human heart, always in our use of technology, and that use is shaped and driven by our attitudes about it.

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.

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.

Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. (Deut. 28:47–48) Notice what we are told here. The solution to self-sufficiency is not to banish the goods that we used to forget God, but rather to make a point of remembering God in and through the abundance He gave to us. What was their problem? It was that they did not serve God with joy and gladness for the abundance.

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.

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.

There is not one blessing that we enjoy that was not given to us by the hand of Jesus Christ. If we insist on ignoring His lordship, His blood, His authority, and His kindness, then the time is coming, and now is, when He will chastise us by taking it all away. If we seek first the Kingdom, then other things will be added. If we don’t acknowledge Him, worship Him, or bow down before Him, He takes away that which was blocking the view, which in our case is all our stuff.

The first step toward genuinely productive work is to make it a point to work coram Deo, in the presence of God. I don’t mean to limit this to formalities like opening with prayer or closing with a benediction, but this certainly means more than just some kind of formal recognition. And by saying this I don’t mean to imply that opening and closing with prayer is necessarily a “formality.” No, not at all. But if it is limited to that, it soon will be a dead formality.

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. Faith is the fire of the altar, and it consumes the whole burnt offering, the ascension offering. What ascends to the Lord is the sweet savor of our good works: “So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10, esv). Bearing fruit in every good work is fully pleasing to Him.

Living in the presence of God means that you are living in such a way as to invite or seek His favor. The Sabbath and the tithe illustrate well the trust we are to display in this. Would you rather work hard for seven unblessed days, or work hard for six blessed days? Would you rather try to live on a hundred percent of an unblessed income or on ninety percent of a blessed income? Would you rather have smaller barns blessed or larger barns unblessed (Luke 12:20)? “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain” (Ps. 127:1).

Remembering the finitude of your labors will keep you humble. Recognizing that your labors have a place in God’s cosmic intentions for the universe will keep you from thinking that your tiny labors are stupid labors. They are nothing of the kind. Your labors in the Lord are not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

Those who value productivity highly have a tendency to give way to two very powerful temptations and so to overlook the power of plodding. If they feel the urgent call to productivity, they tend to give way to the blind guides of intensity or extension.

Many people put off working on something until they have been able to “carve out” adequate time to work on it. They need elbow room in order to get it done, and since they never get the adequate elbow room, they never get the work done.

If your use of Twitter is limited to informing all your followers that you are rummaging in the fridge for some Dr. Pepper at two a.m., then sure, quit that. But suppose you tell your followers that poverty and shame come to the one who refuses instruction, what now? How is that an abuse of Twitter? It is a godly word.

The apostle Paul wrote letters, and used the available technologies to get them delivered—whether ships, or Roman roads, or carts, or parchments, or pens. He would have preferred to have been with the Galatians in person, but he used technology to close the gap. The Reformation began in 1517, and the moveable type printing press was invented a short time before that, somewhere around 1450. It is hard for us to envision what we know as the Reformation without the technology of printing and printed editions of books.

One debate among some evangelicals is over whether Christ can be accepted as Savior only, or whether He must be accepted as Savior and Lord. Those who insist, rightly, that the basic Christian confession is Jesus is Lord do well. But we also have to make sure not to understand that in a truncated way. A truncated view of Christ’s lordship is one that limits it to His authority over my personal life. A person taking this view says, again rightly, that Christ cannot be received on an installment plan, first as Savior and then, five years later, as Lord. But even here, what is frequently being asserted is that Jesus needs to be Lord of a man’s 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.