Darren Shearer - welcome back to the theology of business podcast. I'm your  host. Darren Shearer , author of the marketplace Christian and marketing like  Jesus, and this is the show that helps marketplace Christians to partner with  God in business, to help you make disciples of your coworkers, your company  and your industry. You can get more teachings and interviews like the one you're about to hear at theologyofbusiness.com On today's episode, we'll be  discussing a biblical view of profit, and we're joined by Jeff Van Duzer. Jeff is the provost of Seattle Pacific University, and prior to which he was the dean of the  SPU School of Business and Economics, where he taught business ethics and  business law. Are you still teaching there? I know you're busy with your provost  duties. No, virtually, not at all. Gotcha. Well, he's certainly in high demand all  over all over the world, I mean, speaking at Harvard and all sorts of different  schools. During his tenure as Dean, the school opened its center for integrity  and business, launched an annual Social Venture plan competition and began  an innovative new graduate program focused on social and sustainable  business. And on a personal note, after I started this podcast and blog, which, of course, as we know, is the theology of business, I was told that Jeff's book, why  business matters to God is an absolute must read on this subject. And so I dove  into this book, and I can tell you, you will not find many authors who've been as  thoughtful about this topic as as Jeff. I highly recommend everybody go and pick up a copy of this book. Prior to SBU, he earned his Juris Doctor from Yale Law  School and was a partner with the international law firm of Davis Wright  Tremaine, where he practiced more than 20 years concentrating in commercial  finance and natural resources. Welcome to the theology of business podcast.  

Jeff Van Duzer - Jeff, great, thanks. Thanks for having me on your show.  

Darren Shearer - Yes, well, you didn't exactly grow up in the buckle of the Bible  Belt. Can you provide a backdrop to help us understand how your personal  theology of business developed?  

Jeff Van Duzer - Sure, I grew up in California, just outside of Berkeley,  California during the 60s. And my father was a professor there, and so was very  caught up in the ethos of the day, which was, this is in the middle of the Vietnam War. It was kind of anti everything establishment. And so it was anti the war, of  course, but anti police, anti big anything, and without really any thinking at all,  the swept in, anti big, anti business. And so I kind of grew up drinking those  waters, and without really questioning it carried around a whole portfolio of  examples of evil things that business had done around the world, and could pull  those out, really at the drop of a hat. And so then it was too long a story to tell  here, but through a series of really unusual circumstances, and I think in  demonstrating God's great sense of humor that I ended up being the dean of a 

business school. And early on in that time, I realized that I still had with me this  portfolio of business failures, but now I was out being asked to speak at Rotary  Clubs and so forth on. You know, all the good that business was doing and how  

our students were contributing to making the world a better place, and so on.  And I realized pretty quickly I better get up to speed on some good things  business did. And actually, once I turned my attention to it, it took no time at all.  There were just, there's just lots and lots of very positive contributions that  business makes to our overall society. And so that was kind of the sort of  backdrop for my thinking. When I was in the school, we started talking about,  you know, there was a lot being written on ethics. It's sort of typically at an  individual level. And there was some good stuff being written on a theology of  work, but we this was back in like 2001 we really didn't find much written at that  time that would talk about the broader paradigms of business. And so that kind  of launched our school based effort to explore whether, and with the tagline we  ended up using, was another way of doing business, whether there was another way of doing business, informed by God's perspective, that would sort of change how we would approach the discipline. So maybe a longer answer than you  were looking for, but that's kind of how I got there.  

Darren Shearer - Yeah, that's definitely helpful for. Our listeners. So to help our  listeners kind of get a better feel for what your theology of business is, I wonder  if this question might help us to get there. So you quoted Luke 10:2 in the last  line of your book why business matters to God, which is ask the Lord of the  harvest to send out workers into his harvest field. So interestingly, in the book,  you're not talking it. Typically, I hear that verse spoken about in terms of  evangelism, and we're going to go out and share the gospel and the Roman  road and articulate for spiritual laws and so forth. But in the context of business,  what do you what is the harvest, and practically speaking, what is the work that  the quote, unquote workers are supposed to be doing?  

Jeff Van Duzer - You know, the that verse, at least, I grew up always hearing,  was referencing, you know, pastors, missionaries, and it was, as you say,  evangelism, or at least very expressly, bringing the Gospel into different contexts in a kind of pastoral way. What we began to think about was how, how did  business as a discipline or as an institution contribute to what God wanted to  see happen in the world. And we ended up suggesting that, from God's  standpoint, the mission of business as a whole, not any one business, but as a  whole, for the institution, is really twofold. On the one hand, business exists to  provide opportunities for individuals to express aspects of their God given  identities in meaningful and creative work. So business exists to create jobs that allow people to express themselves that way. And then secondly, business  exists to provide those goods and services that will enable a community to 

flourish and so, and I have argued in the book that these kinds of things, like the substantive material, well being of the world or any given community, are things  that actually matter a lot to God. They're part of God's big picture of restoring the 

kingdom. And so business contributes in that way. And so when I get to Luke  10:2 now, I think send not just missionaries and pastors, of course, that, but also send business people in the world where they can help create jobs that will  enable people to express their identities in this kind of meaningful creative ways  and help create products and services that will enable communities to flourish.  

Darren Shearer - So if I understand correctly, are you? Are you saying that the  term harvest is here in this verse is synonymous with human flourishing in  general?  

Jeff Van Duzer - That's a good question. I think, I think I would put it this way,  that harvesting is human flourishing as seen from God's perspective. So the  things that matter to God, moving them forward, moving them more into kind of  the shape that they will have in the kingdom, in the New Jerusalem, the new  heavens, the New Earth. As we press toward that new creation which is  breaking into our world, anything that kind of moves us down that road is part of  that harvest. Is that clear, yeah,  

Darren Shearer - yeah, moving us toward fully revealing that Imago Dei, that  the image of God that we were created to present to the world around us. So  what now we're moving into this, this specific topic that we have for today, which is a biblical view of profit. And you say some fascinating things in the book and  very helpful things about this topic. What do you mean when you say, and I  quote, profit is not a reward. And then you say, profit is not a measure of the  success of a business. What do you mean by those statements? Yeah,  

Jeff Van Duzer - I think when I let's start with the second one, in terms of  success, when we typically think of success, we say, is the business achieving  its purpose. And there is a still a pretty broadly held view it's under attack on  variety of fronts, but it's still a pretty broadly held view that the purpose of  business is to maximize with a return on investment, maximize profitability,  typically for the sake of the owners, and so that what a business leader manager should do is among the choices available to him or her, should choose that  which would advance the goal of optimal profitability. And if that's your measure.  Of success, then yes, the more profits you get, the more successful you are. But if instead you say the purpose of business is this two fold notion of creating  meaningful creative work and creating good products and services, if that's  instead the way you measure success, then increased profitability isn't  necessarily the same as as moving in those directions. And I say that because 

you typically increase profitability by a very close the closer you can align to  market forces, the more likely you are to be profitable and if you want to equate  profitability and success, then you have to implicitly be equating market forces,  or what I sometimes think of Adam Smith's invisible hand, with the hand of God.  And I just don't believe that. I don't believe that the market always embodies  God's perfect intentions in the moment. So if you allow for some gap between  what the market calls for and what God calls for, and if you want to measure  success against what God calls for, then profit isn't necessarily the right  measure. Now, let me quickly say it's a very important business metric, and so  I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't monitor profit or that it isn't critical that  businesses stay profitable. It obviously is. Otherwise they will stop being  businesses. It's just not the ultimate measure of success,  

Darren Shearer - yeah. And I think that what you were saying about acquitting  Adam Smith's invisible hand with the actual Hand of God, and that being really a misconception, especially here in the United States, I would say, and the idea  that, well, if, if you're not making money, then you're you're probably lazy, or if  you're not making a lot of money, then you're probably you just don't have a  good work ethic, or something like that, or you're not being smart about it. But I  think where the this book really hit home for me was when you said, we cannot  equate market forces with God's perfect will, and those things just are not  always congruent. And I think that's just such a liberating statement from from  feeling like, you know, I look around and maybe I'm not, you know, my my  business isn't just skyrocketing with that hockey stick growth. But you know  what? Lives are being impacted and, and I'm, I'm making, I'm making a  difference that God has called me to make in the world around me, and and to  not use the financial profit as your measuring stick for how honoring your  business is to God is, is just such a liberating truth?  

Jeff Van Duzer - Yeah, I do. I do still run into quite a few Christians in business,  really sincere and thoughtful folks, who I'm totally, I'm sure, without knowing it,  are essentially idolizing the market. And I don't mean that. I don't know they're  they're not lighting incense to the market god. But they, they are saying things  like, well, it was okay for me to do because the market allowed it, or I couldn't do that because it, you know, the market wouldn't let me. And it there. There is, at  times, this sort of capitulation of authority into the hands of this force, the  market. But, but even the most you know, strenuous advocates of the market  don't really argue if they're careful for saying that it is anything better than the  best system for allocating means of production to correspond with customer or  consumer demand measured on a $1 and one vote basis. And that's very  important, but it's not Shalom. It's not, it's not, you know, God's ultimate purpose  for humanity, so 

Darren Shearer - good. So going more into what the what the scripture says  explicitly, what does the Bible teach about profit?  

Jeff Van Duzer - Well, I don't actually see a lot in Scripture. I mean, our  approach to this whole theology of business was not to go find and there are a  handful of them, but just a handful of verses that seem to be explicitly talking  about business practices. So I get to this conclusion about profit more, I guess  you would say indirectly in that I wanted to start. We wanted, as a school, to  start by asking the big question of purpose, what's the purpose of business? And we were really using mostly the Genesis account, although it does get  reinforced Through the balance of Scripture, and, in a sense, finally  consummated at the end of Revelation. But we were using mostly the creation  account to identify, sort of the way God intended this whole thing to be set up  from the beginning. And so we drew out some simple observations, and that is,  for example, we were made in the image of God. And one you don't actually  know very much about God in Genesis, but you do know that God was a worker. God made things. He created things. And everything he created, he looked at it  and said, That's good. And if we are made in that image, then we were made in  part to do work that is creative and meaningful. So we began to draw out sort of  observations like that. And from those observations then came back to these  two overarching principles, or overarching purpose statements that I shared  earlier, that is that business exists to provide these meaningful and creative  work and to provide goods and services that will enable the community to  flourish. And so once you set those things in place, you stand back and say,  Hey, there's nothing in there about return on investment. Where does profit fit?  And what I ended up concluding is that profit is obviously critically important, but it is important not as the end of the operation, but rather as the means that is  you need to be profitable in order to attract the capital that the business needs in order to let it do what it's supposed to do, which is to serve in those two key  ways. And so it kind of reverses the dominant paradigm of the day, where profit  is the ultimate purpose, and good jobs and good products are the means of  serving that purpose. And I've suggested that from our look at scripture, that in  fact, it's better understood the other way around, that profit is what is necessary  to draw in the capital that lets the business go out and do these things that it's  primary, that are its primary purpose.  

Darren Shearer - And a lot of ways, it seems like you're talking about really a  broader definition of of what profit is. I mean when Paul says that, you know, all  things are permissible, but not all things are profitable. I mean, it's kind of like  saying to the person who is saying, well, the market allowed me to do it. Well, it  may be allowable, but it might not be profitable in terms of, in view of eternity 

and and when, when Jesus says, you know, what would it profit a man to gain  the whole world and lose his soul? I mean, there's a, there's a transcendent  definition of of profit that I think Jesus is working with. It goes beyond the the  financial aspect. Yes,  

Jeff Van Duzer - absolutely I agree. Let me, let me be careful, because I  sometimes I get accused of sort of denigrating profit as if it weren't important. I  don't. I don't feel that at all. I suggested it's a critical means of attracting capital.  It's also functions as a constraint. So if I'm saying, here my I want to pursue  these purposes of, you know, goods and services that will enable the community to flourish. Okay, that's, that's what I'm aiming for. Now I have a range of options that are that I could choose to move in that direction, the fact that I need to stay  profitable constrains, the number of options I have to choose from. There are  certain options that might, in fact, advance that purpose, but would make my  business unprofitable, and those are kind of off the table because of this need,  this kind of the constraint of profit. So an analogy that I use sometimes is that  profit is like blood in your body. If you don't have blood circulating in your body,  we don't have to have a long conversation about your purpose, because you're  dead. And similarly, if a business doesn't have profit circulating in it, then it's  bankrupt. And we don't need to talk about purpose. But none of us get up in the  morning and say, today, the whole reason I'm living is to pump blood. It's  critically important, but it's not the purpose.  

Darren Shearer - I appreciate you sharing that that definitely provides some  perspective for us. So looking at maybe a practical example, who is one of your  favorite examples of a business whose leaders have what you would consider to be a biblical view of profit,  

Jeff Van Duzer - you know that's I hate this question. I. Get this, and I hated it  for a couple reasons. One is just when you sort of say, Oh, I really like Company X, the newspaper comes out with some horrific thing they've done, and you feel  like a jerk. But the other, the other reason I don't, I'm uncomfortable with the  question, is because a lot of things that from the outside look very similar can be quite differently motivated from the inside. So I will sort of answer your question.  I've admired Costco as a company for a long time, and in part, that's because  I've met their founders or their founder, and if you read their statement of  purpose, they identify as a purpose, providing good and meaning, meaningful.  And I don't have their exact words, but meaningful, creative jobs and good  products for their consumers, and they go on to say at the end of that, oh, and  by the way, if we do these things, we will actually optimize profitability, having  listened to their their the leaders of The company, I'm personally believe,  suspect suspicious of the fact that that last clause was added in there because 

lawyers are worried that if you don't run your business to maximize profitability,  you could get sued. But I don't actually think it's really what motivates them. I  think they are actually motivated by trying to create a good work environment for their employees and products and services that are, you know, enable are  helpful for their communities. I mean, that doesn't mean they don't spend lots of  time worried about profitability. They aren't great business people in a traditional  sense, but I think that they are actually motivated by these purposes that I'm and it does actually show up in some decisions that they make. So for example,  even in times of scarcity for particular products, where market forces would  allow them to charge more and increase their margins, they have an internal  policy, which, I mean, I don't know how rigorously it's enforced, but they have an internal policy of limiting the margins in any event, so not taking advantage, if  you'd like, of scarcity in the market to drive prices up. So, I mean, I say all that,  and I say, Yay, go Costco, but I can't tell for sure that their owners aren't sneakily going home and saying, Oh, we we say all these cool things, but really,  underneath it all, it's all kind of fake. It's we say those cool things because they  drive profits. So that's it's just very difficult to pierce down into the belly of the of  the organization from afar. And so I will offer up Costco, but I'm prepared to be  wrong if that's the way it plays out. Well, that's  

Darren Shearer - a great example. And and you probably found that a follow on  topic that inevitably comes up around this, this discussion about profit, is how,  what is the right amount of compensation for people? And there's a fascinating  story that I think probably a lot of our listeners are familiar with, Dan Price, the  founder, CEO, I think he's still the CEO of gravity payments, so a graduate of the Seattle Pacific Business program where, of course, you were the Dean while he  was there, correct. And so it was a The reason why that it hit the headlines was  because he raised, if I understand correctly, raised the minimum wage, minimum salary, I should say, for gravity payments employees to $70,000 and lowered his CEO salary to $70,000 and so I'm curious, did do you do you feel that your  business program kind of helped to inspire Dan to do that.  

Jeff Van Duzer - I don't know. I've heard him talk where, obviously, you know,  he obviously shows up as one of the alums that we point to. He tells a story of,  sort of an aha moment on a, I think, a hiking trail with somebody else talking  about how hard it is to live in Seattle on less than 70,000 and so, but when he  speaks here, he gives some credit to us. So I guess I don't know for sure, but  the idea that you would be interested in the welfare of your employees is clearly  sort of congruent with what we're talking about. We haven't, we haven't actually  migrated this into questions about salary. And the reason I say that is, if you're if  we're being precise, we talk about providing good jobs that allow people to be to do meaningful and creative work, and that I think I can derive from Scripture. I 

can't tell you from Scripture how best to allocate the revenues that a business  generates between different classes of employees and owners and vendors. If  that gets into that's a much more difficult conversation, and you know, we  certainly spend a fair bit of time on it in business ethics classes, but it doesn't  follow directly from our statement that business is to provide good and  meaningful jobs.  

Darren Shearer - Yeah, and going back to yours, your earlier statement from  the book about we cannot equate market forces with God's perfect will. Often  the justification for, you know, kind of the typical salary, or even a little bit is to is  to be, I'm at market rate for the salaries that I'm paying my people. But market  forces are not always consistent or congruent with God's perfect will. So I think  it's a it really challenges us to really go not just look at the market and what is  the what is the South the average salary? Listed as for that profession and that  zip code out on the internet. But what is God saying to you about what you need to pay your people is probably a better approach. Wouldn't you say,  

Jeff Van Duzer - yes, absolutely. I don't think, I don't think it is right to just say, I  pay what the market will bear. But as we will talk about in our business ethics  class, once you cut loose of the mooring from market forces and try to come up  with some other standard that says, And so here's how you should go about  figuring that out. It gets very difficult. I can do the bottom of the ladder. That is, I  believe pretty strongly that Christians in business should be straining. If they're  not fully able, they should be straining to pay everybody, at a minimum, a livable  wage. That I think I can, I can sort of make the case for from scripture, but and  certainly in most instances, the market would allow you to hire people at a lower  price than that, so that kind of pushes up your floor. I find it more difficult to  come up with a good approach or standard that I could somehow link back to,  sort of the authority of Scripture as it relates to how much you should pay at the  top or not pay at the top. You know, there's, you know, obviously factors like  greed and other things that you could talk about. But, you know, sometimes I'll  say to my classes, this is a CEO is 100 times as much as the average worker. Is that bad? Oh, yes. If it were 50, would that be bad? Yes, if it were 25 oh, I don't  know. Well maybe. And I'd say, Well, how do you get to that number? And it's  very difficult to come up with a good answer to that, other than just kind of  almost how it feels. Well,  

Darren Shearer - these are, these are fascinating and challenging questions to  wrestle with and, and, and I can certainly see why my friend Tim was so eager  to refer me to your book. Why work matters to God. And I would encourage all of our listeners to go pick up a copy as well. It's on on Amazon. Is that? Is that the  best place for people to get it, or is there another site 

Jeff Van Duzer - people should go to. I think Amazon's fine. I think, I think you  can buy it directly from InterVarsity press, but I Amazon gives you the, you know, the same access to it. So  

Darren Shearer - yes, and Jeff, would you leave us with a parting piece of  advice related to this, this topic of a biblical view of profit.  

Jeff Van Duzer - Well, I guess what I would want to remind. And I don't mean by this that people aren't already there, but it's useful for all of us to get reminders.  And I do want to remind Christians who are active in the business world not to  divide their lives between a sphere of their life, where Jesus is clearly Lord, and  then their business, where so many times they just, it's just kind of, well, we,  everybody does business the same way. You know, you can almost have to. It's  like gravity and. And that's not true. Business is not like gravity. Business is a  social construct, and I think God cares a great deal of how it is constructed. So I  guess I would just encourage Christians in business to keep submitting all of  their life, including their business world, not not just at the nature, at the level of  interpersonal relations being nice to their employees, but even as they think  about business decisions like, what's the right price point for this product to  submit that kind of decision also to the Lordship of Jesus,  

Darren Shearer - well said and spu.edu is a website to learn about what's  happening at Seattle Pacific University. Any other websites you wanted to  mention? Jeff?  

Jeff Van Duzer - Well, I think through that website, you can get to the business  schools, which has a lot of materials in that center for integrity and business that you identified. I think there's also a great theology of work project that's going on out there that has a tremendous amount of resources, if people are interested in that, and I think through both of those sites, you'll find links to other centers that  are working in this space.  

Darren Shearer - Wonderful. Jeff, thank you so much for being so generous  with your time and your expertise. Thank you for your willingness to put it into  such a format that we can that we can dive into and benefit from, and may God  continue to bless everything you put your mind to Darren,  

Jeff Van Duzer - thank you so much. It's been a real privilege to have had this  chance. I  

Darren Shearer - hope you've enjoyed this episode. You can share your 

feedback and get more information to help you partner with God in business and disciple your coworkers your company and your industry. At  

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Last modified: Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 1:01 PM