Lesson 1 Key Human Issues: Economics, Commerce, and Trade
A. Overall Lesson Objective
•To appreciate the guidelines and benefits of understanding how people can do business with a biblical world view in mind.
B. Learning Competencies
•From the beginning God has inserted himself in man’s affairs, rendered assessments about His activities, and provided guidance about behavior.
•The Word provides practical guidance about conduct of economics, commerce, and trade that illustrates His concern about how we conduct ourselves.
•He knows our motives, decisions, and actions in practical day-to-day affairs of business. He keeps us in His view and makes us responsible for our actions, testing to see if we choose to engage our faith in Christ, our Creator, in these matters.
C. Lesson
Overview
Now that we have studied the biblical creation world view and looked at some common school subjects that are affected by this view, does it matter in the real world? Students are facing the next round of schooling or might be entering the work place. Young parents are in a workplace or trying to find work. About half the world’s population is having trouble finding full time work, and some are unable to go to school because money is short. A large section of mankind lives in areas where life is not easy; political instability, poverty, famine, disease and conflict affect large regions. These are the sorts of things that affect jobs and a future for most people. Does it matter what world view I have and what I believe when I am in the middle of circumstances like this?
Most people have a world view that includes some rather fuzzy (indefinite) ideas. Usually it involves a god of some sort. They may not completely believe the naturalistic world view of the universe and earth, although that is the most popular world view and the current foundation for key school subjects that we have reviewed in Unit 4 Part 1, Lessons 4-7. If you ask a dozen people on the street what they believe, they will more than likely mention some sort of religious background or belief, but the details that relate it to the next step or day in life are probably not so plain. And, in an environment where science and technology are often viewed as the fountain of truth, a concept of a god that relates to the real world probably seems like fiction. God is pertinent to life, but He is not generally known. He is often obscured by paths of life that avoid Him. (John 1:10, Matthew 7:13-14).
Then, how does a biblical creation world view make a difference? And what happens when this world view comes face to face with serious human issues?
Remember the early lessons where we covered Genesis 1. God gave us the account of creation. It was “good” (God’s assessment) without exception at the beginning. Death and suffering were not part of the picture until the Fall of man, which was marked by the entrance of sin and its consequences. He did not tire of mankind, however, and continued to interject Himself into individuals’ affairs. They forgot Him quickly. It has been this way since Genesis.
The biblical creation world view points to a Personal God. He stays involved in circumstances, whether they are easy or hard, but people forget the Creator. While people may not know Him, He certainly knows us. His very creation is intended to remind us of Him because it points to Him. The hard-core atheist does not believe it. Some, who are sold on a naturalistic world view, will deny it. But what about the average person, who is representative of most people and whose view is a mixture of things? Does it matter to him? And if it matters, what do we do?
The answer is plain: we decide whether to believe or not. God, who knows our circumstances and identifies our predisposition to sin, says that believing in Him changes how we live. While it does not remove most of the consequences of sin in a fallen creation, it does make a difference in the heart of a person in this life and opens the door to eternal life. The Bible clearly states that believing Him changes that core part of people that is so important. Furthermore, the change and its effects are independent of circumstances—whether we think they are good or bad (1 Thessalonians 5:18, Philippians 4:12-13).
With this in view, we want to examine three areas of human affairs that are common to man. If a person knows the God of biblical creation, there is a way to live through easy or harsh circumstances that falls into these three areas. How we live does make a difference, because God sees, understands, and can be with us in them. How can we be sure of this? He reminds us by pointing to Genesis events—how He kept Noah in evil times (Hebrews 11:7; 2 Peter 2:5-9).
Economics, Commerce, and Trade
The activities of man in a biblical creation sense are different because they are overseen by the Great Overseer. The early lessons show that God is an intervening God; the lives of people have been subject to His attention from the beginning. God has not changed. His standards for human behavior applied to individuals are the same as those standards for large groups of people. Those standards are fixed. God provides guidance and examples that apply to economics, commerce and trade, which are common and even dominant activities in life. They are the primary means through which people obtain wealth but also by which others are subjected to, find themselves in, or are even lifted out of, poverty. The following paragraphs provide a biblical perspective on economics, commerce, and trade:
1.God hates illegal weights, cheating, defrauding, or stealing by any means of deceptive weights and measures in the process of commerce or transactions of any sort. The same principle, more broadly applied, would cover any sort of deceptive practice in trade or business. A person or company might seem to win by doing this, but the customer or buyer loses, and God sees. Check Proverbs 20:10 and 23. Companies are nothing more than organizations of individual people that provide a product or service. Whether a decision or action is by a person or a huge company, this scripture and others like it show that God weighs our economic activities. False and deceptive practices get His attention because the nature of those things is directly contrary to God’s nature from the beginning. God demonstrates this attention to detail at the beginning at the Fall of man. When Adam is questioned about eating the forbidden fruit, Adam shifted the blame to Eve. Eve shifted the blame to the serpent. It is the same sort of action we find today: we shift blame or draw attention to something else to avoid the truth and seek to justify actions that were wrong. At the core of the matter is deception. God is not fooled. He declared the results of disobedience: death and suffering entered His creation from the time of Adam and Eve. We have not changed. Even with laws and regulation in the market place, we tend to sin. And, if we sin, we usually try to shift the blame to someone or something else.
2.Believing in God affects individual attitudes toward money and economics. This is demonstrated in a scene (Luke 19:1-9) with Zaccheus, a tax collector, when he chooses to believe in Jesus. He not only chooses not to cheat, but promises to return what may have been taken illegally. Zaccheus’s world view changes with his contact with God. Matthew 6:24 expresses the principle in larger terms.
3.Isaiah 58:3-5 speaks of mistreatment of workers in a revealing context of managers who are complaining to God that they have fasted but are upset that God has not noticed. The section is much more than a comment on fasting. Rather, it is a challenge to lifestyles, where God sees the difference in evil and good conduct that we miss so easily. God points to the right lifestyle after these verses. Consider the audacity of God to ‘suggest’ an association between how we conduct our livelihood and how we love Him! He suggests that a believer’s lifestyle should have the same attributes that God has. Therefore, releasing people from bondage, addressing practical needs, and avoiding wickedness are consistent with belief in God. How quickly we forget that our ‘chosen’ lifestyles are embedded in a specifically created, narrow band of habitable earth, so we have opportunity to reach out to Him (and grow to be like Him) or not (Acts 17:27).
Don’t the Isaiah verses sound very much like the same God, Who deals with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and the early generations? When we deal with God, we are dealing with the same God of these first people, the God of Isaiah, and the God of today. True belief in this God of biblical creation affects how we conduct ourselves in economics, commerce, and trade. As we learned in the lessons, God is personal: He observes and interjects Himself into the affairs of people.
In the end, He holds us responsible for our actions. He remembers decisions and actions. It started the day He gave Adam one command: eat freely of all these trees, but do not eat of one particular tree. We have not done well since then. That is why we need a Savior. God knows the difference between living a life the way we please and a belief in Him that touches our economic, commercial and trade practices. So, when we observe terrible economic conditions, remember that God is not the ultimate culprit. We are. It was the same from the beginning. Likewise, when people bask in riches while neighbors starve, do you not think that God takes notice? If a poor person adjusts the scales a little bit to get a little more for a product, does God not take notice? Since He can place and name each star in the universe as part of one day’s creation work, He is able to observe and properly assess our economic behaviors.
D. Assignment
Consider Luke 3:14. Expand its meaning in your own words. Consider John 14:27 and expand the sentence about peace in your own words. From these verses, explain why you think God is aware of both conflict and peace. Be prepared to share that in the next class.
E. Learning Activity
Teacher note: this exercise takes longer than most. A separate session may be required.
Divide into teams. Evaluate the situation in the next paragraph and correct the wrongs by issuing a judgement (based on the principles of this lesson). State the wrong or wrongs committed, make a judgement, or make recommendations. Each team has 10 minutes to present.
A company of five people provides catering services for a school of 100 children. They make an estimate for the bill for the school of 150 P per child. At the last minute, a food supplier changes prices so the actual cost drops by 25%, so the company will net 50% more profit. The school is poor. When the bill is to be paid, the school only pays for 75% of the children but promises the rest within a week. One of the catering company workers is a parent of the two children who go to the school, and told the school of the unforeseen profit that the company made. A week passes. No payment to the catering company is made. The catering company takes the school to court to collect what is due. The school counter-sues, complaining that they should have been made aware of the price drop in the catering company’s costs and then renegotiated a lower price with the school. Hence, no money, according to the school administrator, is due to the catering company. In the meantime, the catering company fires the employee who is a parent with two children in the school, and the parent cannot pay the next quarter’s fees. The school drops the parents’ children from the roles and sends them home without recourse. The parent takes the school to court, demanding re-instatement of the two children and a financial plan to make up the lost fees. Today is the day that everyone is in court. What are you, as the judge, going to do to sort it out? And, by the way, your grown son is president of the catering company. Use biblical principles covered in this lesson.
F. Concluding Assessment
God sees how we do business and has biblical standards by which He examines our conduct.