Pressure is increasing across the country for schools to lower costs and enhance the revenue potential of graduates. It is easy to appreciate such an approach, but as academics who work at a faith-based liberal arts institution, the application of NPV to our setting turns out to be neither simple nor elegant.
Scripture continually invites us to reason together, to know God and love one another. The prayers of God’s people are focused on loving God and one another and teaching the same values to each generation. Our quest is to seek God with all that we are and to grow deep in our understanding of God’s purposes.
One would think that introducing Lydia, as a woman who deals in “purple cloth” would have been the normal way to introduce her than by her religious faith. For the author, the key identifier for her is her gender, place of origin and the faith she professes. Her faith influenced how she lived her life including how she conducted her business.
In some ways money and material possessions are the most touchy of subjects for a minister or lay person to deal with, especially in a materialistic society like North America. Instead of possessing your possessions, they come to possess you. You, then, obsess about how to protect them. A Christian perspective on work affects a Christian perspective on money.
One would think that introducing Lydia, as a woman who deals in “purple cloth” would have been the normal way to introduce her than by her religious faith. For the author, the key identifier for her is her gender, place of origin and the faith she professes. Her faith influenced how she lived her life including how she conducted her business.
The median wage for workers in the U.S. is about $48,000. If most readers of this blog earn more than that, most of us earn more than 98% of the world’s population. From the perspective of the entire world, we are blessed. Yet, when we hear about trials elsewhere in the world, we trade our purpose for fear, and our compassion for comfort.
“You can make money without doing evil” is one of Google’s “Ten Things We Know to be True” in the “What We Believe” section of their website. Rather than merely advocating for not doing evil, how can we as believers do something positive and live out our spiritual lives in the midst of our business and money-making activities?
While completing a business degree, I felt a slight tug to change course and pursue a seminary education and a career in ministry. This tug was easy to ignore at first, but it reappeared intermittently throughout my life. It was only after spending nearly 20 years in a secular corporate work space that the seminary tug became a clear calling, and obedience was inevitable.
