— by Paul Michalski
“And as you go, find a way to make this world more beautiful.” (Barbara Bush)
Business has the potential to beautify the world–or uglify it (yes, that is actually a word). I like a quote from the late Barbara Bush about how we should approach life:
And as you go, find a way to make this world more beautiful.
The Two Choices—Beautify or Uglify
Everything we do–particularly every human interaction–can only do one of two things: (1) make the world at least a tiny bit more beautiful, or (2) make the world at least a tiny bit uglier. (Neutrality is a possibility, but missing an opportunity to beautify isn’t beautiful).
“Beautiful” was clearly God’s design when he created everything and declared it “very good”:
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)
As you read the description of the New Jerusalem that is coming–God’s Kingdom on earth–in Revelation 21:10-11, “beautiful” is the word that comes to mind:
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
In between the beauty of a garden and the beauty of a gleaming city, God blessed us and left us with a command–the “Creation Mandate”:
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28)
God made us in God’s creative, productive and relational image (Imago Dei), gave us a perfectly imperfect world, and then told us to take care of it and make it flourish–make it even more beautiful! I believe it is a call to create with beauty.
In his book Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller says that with the Creation Mandate, God was “commissioning workers to carry on his work”. Keller goes on to explain:
The word “subdue” indicates that, though all God had made was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. God left creation with deep untapped potential for cultivation that people were to unlock through their labor.
We are called to stand in for God here in the world, exercising stewardship over the rest of creation in his place as his vice-regents. We share in doing the things that God has done in creation—bringing order out of chaos, creatively building a civilization out of the material of physical and human nature, caring for all that God has made. This is a major part of what we were created to be.
So we were created to create, and everything we do–every human interaction–either brings the world a tiny bit closer to, or a tiny bit further from, God’s design and command.
By its very nature, business can add to the beauty of the world by creating solutions to challenges of human life, economic prosperity that makes those solutions affordable and accessible, and jobs that allow people to fulfill their humanity and purpose by using their God-given creativity and productivity to serve others.
How are we doing through business? We have certainly brought the garden much closer to a great city, but our beautification has been mixed with, and tarnished by plenty of uglification (yes, that is apparently also a real word).
In looking at our beautification/uglification performance, it is helpful to distinguish two ways of doing the business of creating. One is business as usual — business in “the way of the world” or, more precisely, according to “the kingdom of this world.” The other I call business a better way — business according to Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities. It’s the way God means business to further creation in a beautiful way.
Every business leader must ultimately choose between these kingdoms.