As a college freshman, I decided what I wanted to do with my life. That decision has governed my career ever since.
I had been reading the free market magazine, The Freeman, for about three years. I decided that I wanted to discover what the Bible has to say about economics.
I had also been reading the twice-monthly newspaper, Christian Economics, for over a year. I was disappointed that few of the writers ever discussed specific passages in the Bible. Several authors were free market economists, but they rarely mentioned the Bible.
The more I searched for books on what the Bible says about economics, the more I became convinced that nobody knew. I was determined to find out.
I began writing for The Freeman in 1967. I was in graduate school. I wrote for a lot of journals and magazines in my graduate school years. I wrote a book on Marxism in graduate school. It was published in 1968. It had a long chapter on his economics. But I still was not ready to write a book on Christian economics. In 1971, I was hired by the Foundation for Economic Education, the organization that published The Freeman.
In 1973, my next book was published, An Introduction to Christian Economics. It was about that time that my wife suggested that I write a verse-by-verse economic commentary on the Bible. The first chapter appeared in the Chalcedon Report in May, 1973. No one had ever attempted a Bible commentary on a specific academic discipline before.
In 1977, I increased my commitment to this project to 10 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. I have stuck to that schedule ever since. So far, I have published one volume on Genesis, three on Exodus, four on Leviticus, one on Numbers, three on Deuteronomy, and one each on Matthew, Luke, Acts, Romans, I Corinthians, and I Timothy. I have also published four support volumes -- one of them 750 pages long -- plus two volumes in my Biblical Blueprint Series (1986-87): Inherit the Earth and Honest Money.
For two decades, I wrote a newsletter, Biblical Economics Today.
What if I had not decided what I wanted to do with my life at age 18? I could not have done what I have done. I needed all those years to produce these materials. I am still not finished. I still have more commentaries to write. At age 70, I plan to begin writing my mangum opus on Christian economics. I want to know what the texts say before I write a treatise.
I did not write down my goal, nor did I write down a quarterly list of goals. I did not write down a list of one-year goals, five-year goals, or 10-year goals. I might have achieved far more if I had.
In 1973, I adopted a series of deadlines: a monthly article. In 1977, I substituted a weekly input requirement: 10 hours. These compensated for my lack of written time-based goals.
I hope you will do what I failed to do in 1960: write down your goals. I have created a department to help site members formulate their goals and then evaluate their progress on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, don't forget to subscribe to my free Tip of the Week report, which is sent every Saturday morning. The sign-up box is on the Home page.
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