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.

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.

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.

we should regard our tools the same way we regard our money—with grateful suspicion.

As soon as we are talking about the world, we are talking about other people, and this brings up the issue of tools of communication, or media in the standard use of that term.

For man, the artificial is natural.

When you go somewhere, or when you send a message somewhere, you are simply projecting what you already are. If you are a bore and a bellygod, then social media will in fact enable you to engage in some digital scribbling so that people in South America can, if they wish, read about your grumbles over lunch.

The two issues mentioned earlier that underlie economics are first, the need for us to respect the free choices of others, and second, to use our own power of free choice to investigate the fruitful world God gave to us. We leave the results (the future) to God.

A national economy on any given day is the sum total of all the economic decisions that are made by all the individuals in that country throughout the course of the day. And this all relates to our productivity and the work we are assigned to do.

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.

Julius Caesar and George Washington got around their respective worlds in basically the same way. Transportation was either horse drawn or sail driven for both men. That being the case, let us pick on George Washington. What would he have needed to have there at Mount Vernon in order to be able even to approximate what you have the ability to order up (with your thumb) on the phone in your pocket? He would have needed at least ten thousand servants.

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

The technophile just assumes that man is the measure of all things, and he plumps his resume in order to get a job with Google, so that he too may become one of the lords of the earth. The technophobe just memorizes the poetry of Wendell Berry, and yearns for the days of yesterday when all our food was eked out under a hot sun by a slow mule and a picturesque peasant staggering behind it. Both are forms of ingratitude; both are grotesque. The only obedient response is to accept that wealth as the gift of God that it is, and to keep it in its proper creaturely place.

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. Jeshurun waxes fat and kicks.

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.

If we had pure motives, we wouldn’t be needing to repent.

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

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:

The works that ascend before Him are the works that He prepared beforehand for us to do. He gives us the works that are intended to return to Him.

The work that we will do by the grace of God, and to which God will respond with “well done, good and faithful servant,” will be work that is teeny tiny. Finitude is one of our glories. God will not say well done to any human whose work is the size of three galaxies. He will say well done to pipsqueaks with a couple of fists full of nanoworks.

A short space of time looking through a telescope should convince you that we actually live in Whoville.

George MacDonald once said that obedience is the great opener of eyes. The more we do, the more we will be able to do. The more we learn, the more we know, and one of the things we know is how to learn more.

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).

God created us for glory, and there is no way for us to find a switch that will turn that off. We are inveterate glory-seekers, and the thing that distinguishes a good man from a bad man is what he finds glorious—not whether he finds something glorious.

We often have hidden reserves that even we do not suspect.

Every week you place all your ambitions on His altar and watch them ascend to Heaven in a column of smoke. When you get to your office Monday morning, they will be there on your desk, cleansed and waiting for you.

the first step in achieving mastery is taking responsibility for the results.

Those who work for the work, and not the award, are—get this—more likely to win the award.

Another key to mastery is realizing that the key to originality is imitation.

Learn what good work is, imitate it studiously, and do that over time.

Lewis again: “No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.”

The third key to mastery is repetition.

Intensity is manifested when the deadline approaches and the manager of the project gets some lighter fluid, douses his hair with it, sets it ablaze, and runs around in tight little circles. Extension is the solution called “working late.”

productive work requires a rhythm, a metronome.

What plodding requires is predictability and routine.

Pascal observed somewhere that it is a mistake to think that we can do all of the time what we can do some of the time. Put another way, it is a mistake to think that your high points, or your fastest speeds, or your most productive moments, can simply be duplicated over and over again at will.

The question to ask yourself is this: “For a dedicated worker, what is a reasonable average pace for this task?”

Everywhere the human race goes, it drags a bell curve around with it.

Belief that we will win the war is not a denial of the reality of that war.

The Bible says that the wealthy are tempted to hubris, self-sufficiency, lack of concern for the poor, oppression, and the rest of that sorry lot. Wealth is a good thing, but it brings temptations. A lot of wealth is a lot of a good thing, but it brings with it a lot of temptations.

We worry about the course of history because we are not in control of it, and we like to pretend that this means no one is in control of it. But this follows not. Jesus is the Lord of history. He is the Lord of all this.

Christians are logocentric, people of words. Why should we be bothered by a tsunami of words? This is where we swim.

The first was the importance of inductive study of the Bible, which is to say, asking questions of the text that can actually be answered from the text.

The Scriptures are the repository of all the essential wisdom that God wants us to have, and my father taught me, whenever I have a question, to turn to the text first. To the law and the testimony. Back to the text.

“Whenever you run out of things to say, go on to the next verse.”

Charles de Gaulle put it memorably when he said that graveyards are full of indispensable men.