Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. John Stott once wrote that it's a wonderful privilege to be a missionary or a pastor if God calls us to it.
However, he continued, it's a mistake to organize callings into a hierarchy. As some Christians and Christian traditions wrongly do. In his book, Christian Mission in the Modern World, Stott wrote this, quote, We often give the impression that if a young Christian man is really keen for Christ, he will undoubtedly become a foreign missionary. If he's not quite as keen as that, he'll stay at home and become a pastor. If he lacks the dedication to be a pastor, he will no doubt serve as a doctor or a teacher.
While those who end up in social work or the media or worst of all, politics are not far removed from serious backsliding, end quote.
Now, of course, it'd be rare to hear this said as bluntly as that from a pulpit today. But the same kind of neo-Gnostic sentiment still does infect the church. For example, in how we think about money, is our only job in the present moment to give to the church and to missionaries and to charities and to stay out of trouble and maybe debt and then wait for Christ's return? No, God created humans to work in his creation for his glory. Adam and Eve were not placed in the garden to retreat from the world and a life of an unending vacation.
He intended them to work. Work. The garden was to be tended. In fact, it was to be expanded beyond its boundaries over the face of the earth. The call to labor is not a secondary vocation of humanity.
It's the first command that God gave image bearers. It is our calling, one that's never been revoked. And gardens are not made with random seeds tossed around before walking away. It requires a level of intentionality, a focus about what to plant and where, a commitment to watch over what we've planted for its protection and growth. In our acts of labor, we are participating with and even adding to God's creative work in the world.
And because that work's now being done after the fall, additional moral considerations are involved. In his 2025 book, The Good Investor, How Your Work Can Confront Injustice, Love Your Neighbor, and Bring Healing to the World, author Robin John wrote, and I quote, the world is God's garden. He asked each of us in our own ways with our own gifts and resources to make his garden beautiful. God has made each of his gardeners, made us responsible to tend and nurture his vast, abundant creation, end quote. John's the co-founder and CEO of Eventide, an asset management firm dedicated to honoring God and investing in companies that create compelling value for the common good.
His focus is how to tend the garden when it comes to how we think about and employ money. As he noted, it's all too common that we become owners of companies we don't believe in, making money from products or services that harm God's image bearers and diminish the beauty and goodness of his world. And as John pointed out, there's a metaphorical kind of gardening that's now available to us today, one that hasn't been historically available when only the very wealthy were able to invest and have a say in businesses. But today, Christians can have influence on even the biggest of corporations and even bring morality into the corporate conversation. As John wrote, quote, as investors, owners in these investment portfolios, we should be engaged or invested in everything about the companies in the portfolio, their purpose, their products, their services, their practices, their values, their risk, their impact, and their profit.
That means, to the best of our knowledge and to the best of our ability, not putting our cash into the hands of people who will use it in harmful and sinful ways. By investing wisely we are opposing what's evil, and we can even be involved in mending what's broken in this world. Christians will, of course, disagree about the best ways to do this, but it should be part of our Christian consideration in this time and place because of the privilege and access we have when it comes to money. We, like William Wilberforce 200 years ago, can be used by God in our financial gardening, not just to make money, but to even build a better world. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download podcasts. And for more resources or to share this commentary with more people, go to breakpoint.org. Yeah.
