Conclusion
Update: 1/16/20
For it [God’s kingdom] is like when a man was about to go into another country. He called his own servants and gave over to them his wealth. To one of them he gave five talents, to another he gave two, and to yet another he gave one talent. Each one received an amount according to his own ability, and that man went on his journey (Matthew 25:14–15).
God has made an investment in you: your vision, your abilities, your productivity, and your tenacity. You may not think of it in this fashion, but this is what the Bible clearly teaches.
Once you understand the nature of the relationship between you and God, which here is explained in distinctly economic terms, you should begin to think through the implications of such an arrangement. The implications affect every area of your life. I have covered five covenantal relations, and I have covered five areas of work. The five covenantal relations govern my interpretation of the five areas of work. The five areas of work are representative; they are not comprehensive.
The requirements associated with the five covenants are sufficient to humble the most productive of individuals. The five areas of work are sufficient to keep everyone humble. Humility is fundamental to dominion. So his subordination. The model of this twofold principle of humility and subordination is the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity. Paul wrote:
Do nothing out of selfishness or empty conceit. Instead with humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should take care not only for your own needs, but also for the needs of others. You should have the same attitude toward one another as was in Christ Jesus. He existed in the form of God, but he did not consider his equality with God as something to hold on to. Instead, he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, and he was born in the likeness of men. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death of a cross! Therefore God also highly exalted him. He gave him the name that is above every name. He did this so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend, the knees of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth. He did this so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:3–11).
Humility is a good thing. Once you understand just how much God expects from you, you can better understand what you are capable of doing with the investment that He has made in you. If God believed you are capable of administering five talents, then He gave you five talents. If He expected you to be a two-talent administrator, then He gave you two talents. He did not overload you with greater talents then He expects you to be able to multiply on His behalf. God does not waste resources, and this includes you. He is not attempting to overload you. If He overloads you, you will waste a portion of His investment. That is not His purpose. His purpose is to maximize His rate of return on His investments. Isaiah wrote: “For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there unless they saturate the earth and make it produce and sprout and give seed to the farmer who sows and bread to the eater, so also my word will be that goes from my mouth—it will not return to me empty, but it will achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10–11). The principle of maximization that applies to God’s word also applies to His capital. You are part of His capital. This principle of maximization is fundamental to modern economic theory. Academic economists do not know this, but the principle of maximization is derived from the Bible.
If you are even remotely aware of your own feelings, you know that you have wasted time, resources, and opportunities. This looks as though God has failed in His investment plan. But this ignores the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. The purpose of redemption is to erase the effects of sin in the lives of God’s people. Jesus Christ died and rose again on behalf of His people. The psalmist was clear about this.
The Lord is merciful and gracious; he is patient; he has great covenant loyalty. He will not always discipline; he is not always angry. He does not deal with us as our sins deserve or repay us for what our sins demand. For as the skies are high above the earth, so great is his covenant faithfulness toward those who honor him. As far as the east is from the west, this is how far he has removed the guilt of our sins from us (Psalm 103:8–12).
It is possible that His rate of return on His investment in you will be zero. But it will not be negative. A zero rate of return will get you into heaven, and from there into the new heaven and the new earth. But you may get out of history with nothing to show for it except your soul and your experience of having been an unprofitable servant.
According to the grace of God that was given to me as a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and another is building on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay a foundation other than the one that has been laid, that is, Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, his work will be revealed, for the daylight will reveal it. For it will be revealed in fire. The fire will test the quality of what each one had done. If anyone's work remains, he will receive a reward; but if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, as though escaping through fire (I Corinthians 3:10–15).
If we are looking at our own autonomous productivity, then we are all unprofitable servants.
But which of you, who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come immediately and sit down to eat’? Will he not say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, and put a belt around your clothes and serve me until I have finished eating and drinking. Then afterward you will eat and drink’? He does not thank the servant because he did the things that were commanded, does he? Even so you also, when you have done everything that you are commanded, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants. We have only done what we ought to do’ (Luke 17:7–10).
The only thing that keeps us all for being unprofitable servants is this: we redeemed by God’s grace. The moral perfection of Christ has been imputed to us by God. Our productivity is ultimately Christ’s productivity. By our own failings, it is possible for us to stand before God on the day of judgment with nothing positive to show for our efforts. Paul was clear on this. He recommended not being in this position. So do I. This is why I have written this book. But we are not going to be a negative position. We will have learned from our own failings. History is not meaningless. It testifies against us, but it also testifies to the grace of God to us and in us. This is why we should review our failings only as a way to enable us to improve our productivity. We are supposed to learn from our mistakes.
You should review your progress in a systematic basis every few months, and at least once a year. To do this, you need a written plan. It should have objective criteria for each time period in your plan: quarterly and yearly. Without objective criteria in the plan, it will be difficult for you to assess your progress accurately. Whenever you review it, do not focus on your failings. Acknowledge them, but do not focus on them. Focus instead on your successes. Why should you do this? Because these are areas in your life in which you want to show a positive rate of return.
God’s warning regarding the final accounting that we find in Matthew 25 and Luke 19 is supposed to catch our attention. It is the model for all of our efforts in life. A business’ profit-and-loss statement is a reflection of the ultimate profit-and-loss statement that each person will receive from God on judgment day. This is why the parable of the talents is inserted into the New Testament text immediately before the description of the final judgment. It is the day of reckoning, meaning accounting.
In business, this is what a profit-and-loss sheet is supposed to reveal. We acknowledge the losses. We seek to eliminate them. We focus on the profits. We try to make more of them. Profits and losses are how consumers maintain their authority in the marketplace. We must listen to consumers. Whenever we see losses, we should understand this as consumers telling us to stop doing this. When we see profits, we should understand this as consumers telling us to keep doing this.
If you have taken seriously the message of this book, you should be ready to make a detailed personal inventory of your life. You should sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper and write down what your main talents are. Do not skip any of them. This may take several hours. I hope it will take several hours. Do not do this in one sitting. Do it over several days. If you are married, ask your spouse about your most significant abilities. What have you done in the past that has been productive so far? Do not try to explain them yet. Just list them. Also list the evidence. You are looking for patterns.
The second stage is to write down explanations for each of these patterns that throw light on why you have been successful. It is not sufficient to discover a pattern; you should find evidence that explains it. This is because you are looking for a small number of areas of your life on which you are going to focus your attention, your efforts, your time, and maybe money. You may not discover more than five of these areas. If you have more than five, you will have a difficult time narrowing down which areas on which to concentrate.
The third step in this personal inventory is to identify those areas in which you think you may have opportunities to participate productively. You are trying to identify your most productive areas so the reasons for this, and several opportunities to excel. Ask yourself this: “Will my productivity in this area uniquely contribute to the extension of the kingdom of God?” You are searching for your calling. You want to identify that key opportunity in which your gifts will lead to your greatest productivity. Also, will your productivity is this area be unique? Do you have unique skills, interests, and evidence from your past that potential competitors may not possess? You are looking for the most important thing you can do with your life for the kingdom of God in which you would be most difficult to replace. This is not easy to discover in most cases. My case is not representative.
I did not immediately come to the conclusion that I should concentrate on economics. I had been reading the free market magazine, The Freeman, for about two years. I was interested in economics, but I was more interested in politics. When I first began college in the fall of 1959, I listed political science as my major. I thought about changing my major to economics in the second semester of my freshman year, when I was 18 years old. But I decided by the end of the semester that I would switch to history. I did better in my American history course than in my economics course. I also recognized that the methodology of the economics department was favorable to government intervention. It was hostile to the Austrian School’s approach to economic analysis. I believed that I could do better as a college student studying history than any other academic major. There is no question in my mind today that I was correct in this assessment. Yet I never thought of the study of history as my calling. I always thought of it as leading to a job. I knew it would not undermine my interest in economics. It would strengthen my performance as an economist. But I realized that I would have to be a self-taught economist. As it turned out, I never did get a job teaching history. I never needed one.
You probably have a job. I hope you will find that your particular talents are conducive to effective performance in your job. I think you should be grateful that you have a job, and you should be especially grateful if your unique talents enable you to perform at an above-average level. I do not think you should quit your job yet. It may be that you will never have to quit it. But you would be wise to quit it if you find that it interferes significantly with your calling, and some other occupation will not interfere significantly. If you ever find that this is the case, you should seriously consider abandoning your career for a new career, even if it does not initially pay more than your present job. Your goal is to have your job fund your calling in addition to funding a comfortable lifestyle. Only in the rarest of cases does someone find that his job is his calling, and he can benefit from rising wages without undermining his calling.
It may take a considerable amount of time before you will be able to secure a job that will not interfere with your calling, in which will also provide you with sufficient income for you and your family to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. You should be patient. Do not rush into a new career until you have evidence that it will be a superior career in terms of the time that it provides you to work on your calling. Do not focus on higher income as your primary motivation for making a career change. Focus instead on your calling.
Once you have secured a job or a career that enables you to develop your calling, then you will be ready to make the next self-assessment. This is the assessment associated with volunteering, education, and maybe starting a business. What talents do you have, and what time do you have, that would enable you to become a successful volunteer without undermining significantly either your productivity in your occupation and also your productivity in your calling? Are there such areas available to you? If not, then you should move on to the question of your education. This includes educating your children. What you have to learn in order to improve your performance in your career? What you have to read? What you have to write regularly on a blog? Are there opportunities for you to teach this information on a face-to-face basis already small-group basis? Who will let you teach? Where can you teach? When can you teach? When you teach, you will learn a great deal more. We learn by doing, but we also learn by teaching.
You may not have the talent the opportunity to start a business, but if you think you do, then you should consider this is a potential substitute for your job in the pursuit of greater productivity in your calling.
All of this takes a detailed the self-inventory. It must be an ongoing self-inventory. You will learn more. You will find that you have greater opportunities for service. You may find that the talents you have thought were most productive in one area of your life would apply even more productively in another area of your life. The ability to speak and write are examples of talents that can apply in numerous areas of life. You may decide to take these talents and apply the with greater diligence in some other area of your life. Such a switch is almost always filled with great uncertainty. Count the cost.
By now, you understand what it means to become an activist. Inevitably, for as long as you are alive, you are an activist to some extent. You are also an entrepreneur. You face uncertainty in every area of your life. You have to make decisions about what to do with your life, which includes your money and your talents, but most of all includes your time. But I am talking about professional activism. I do not mean paid activism. I surely mean a great deal more than the typical focus of activism: politics. I do not think most people have the capability of becoming professional politicians or even skilled amateurs. I suspect that more people are able to go into business than going to politics. But politics is one area of activism. If that is of special interest to you, and you believe that your talent so far indicates that you would be effective as a political activist, then you should consider this is a possible calling.
I do not think that anybody should become a lifetime activist who concentrates on a specific area of service until there is balance to his life with respect to his individual covenant, his family covenant, his church covenant, and his civil covenant. There must be balance in a person’s allocation of time, money, and emotion among the four covenants. This is mandatory before somebody becomes a volunteer, an educator, or businessman. First things first. Covenantal responsibilities, individual and group, have greater eternal consequences than the responsibilities associated with a person’s job, education, or business responsibilities.
If you have read the student’s edition in the teacher’s edition of this book, then you are ready to become an activist. You have greater knowledge about Christian economics the 99% of the people who call themselves Christians. With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility. It is not sufficient for you to spend the rest of your life studying at the expense of doing. James was clear about this. You should be equally clear.
Be doers of the word and not only hearers, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word but not a doer, he is like a man who examines his natural face in a mirror. He examines himself and then goes away and immediately forgets what he was like. But the person who looks carefully into the perfect law of freedom, and continues to do so, not just being a hearer who forgets, this man will be blessed in his actions (James 1:22–25).
You need goals for your activism. These goals should be personal. They should also be corporate. They are goals for yourself, but they are goals for those around you. Do not have too many goals. You cannot keep track of all of them if you have too many. I think five would be adequate.
Second, you need a plan associated with each of these goals. The plan should be specific. There should be criteria for judging your performance. They should be written. You should review your progress in achieving this plan on a regular basis. You should do it at least once every three months and then once a year. You may revise the plan. You probably should revise the plan if you find that you are not able to perform well enough to achieve the goal associated with the plan. But you should give it time. I think three years probably is the minimum period. That was the approximate length of Jesus’ ministry.
Third, all of these goals should be consistent with your calling and should reinforce it. As I have stated over and over, your calling is central. Focus on your calling. Everything in your life should be consistent with your calling and also reinforce it. This includes your marriage. It includes your church membership. If there is a discrepancy between your calling and your goals, you had better find a new calling if you are unwilling to revise your goals.
Only when you are sure about these matters, or at least highly confident, should you go on to read the fourth volume in this series: the scholar’s edition. The scholar’s edition is aimed at scholars. Not many people should become scholars. Far more people should become activists and become scholars. Yet even scholars must become activists. They must find ways to become personally active or at least to recruit people who would become personally active.
If you read a scholarly treatise, you will find that it does not call on readers to take action. Yet a well-designed treatise will produce people who take action. This was surely true of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. It was true of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. It was true of Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action. I hope it is true of this book when it is completed. (Das Kapital was also a multi-volume book, but he only completed Volume I. The two other volumes, incomplete, were published by Engels after Marx died.)
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To read the entire book, go here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/department197.cfm.