Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RGW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by Dr. Peter Heslam. Peter is Director of Faith and Business at Westminster College, a fellow of the Kirby Lange Center for Public Theology in Cambridge, a research associate of the Cambridge Center for Christianity Worldwide, and a doctoral supervisor at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies. Much of Peter's work is inspired and informed by his secondary research focus, which is the ideas of the great statesman, thinker, and social entrepreneur Abraham Kuyper, whose influence continues to grow around the world. And he's the editor of the new book, Abraham Kuper on Business and Economics. Peter, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much, Darren. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_03There's this quote that I love by Abraham Kuyper. He says, There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign overall, does not cry mine. It's just such a such a beautiful and profound statement that I've heard again and again. I've I hear Abraham Kuyper's name come up from time to time in these conversations about faith and work. And we're looking forward to getting a good introduction here from you. So who was Abraham Kuyper? And why do I hear his name so frequently in these conversations?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you, Darren. And you've you've gone right to uh what I think is still his best quote, and it's the quote that got me interested in Kuiper. And it it is, as you say, often the quote that people who don't know a lot about Kuiper, they do know that quote. And I can thoroughly recommend it. I do think it can be life-changing if we think about what he's saying there, which is uh it put in different language about the sovereignty of God over every area of life. He was uh in reaction, you could say, to a kind of uh evangelical mindset that we sometimes call pietism, which uh acknowledges the sovereignty of God over the human soul and um believes that it is important to pray and to study the Bible and to go to church, uh, but doesn't have much of a vision for the cultural significance of Christ's redemption. Redemption is more an individual thing about the soul going to heaven than it is about uh the transformation of society. And Kuiper discovered this um pietistic worldview after he got ordained as a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. You asked me who was Kuiper, and to start with, after he had done his studies and his doctorate at Leiden University, uh he became a pastor. But it was that experience that convinced him that uh God had more in store for him than parish ministry, and he went on to found a newspaper, a daily newspaper, a weekly religious newspaper, a Christian university, the Free University of Amsterdam, which is still one of the leading universities in the Netherlands, and a political party, the anti-revolutionary party, and that party has been um in power uh a lot over the last uh hundred years or so, um, under a different name, the Christian Democratic Party, which is a coalition with uh a Roman Catholic party. So um a newspaper, a university, um, a political party, and he also stimulated uh the founding of new schools so that children could go to schools where uh the kind of uh ethos wasn't an atheistic or antagonistic ethos to Christianity, but was uh giving uh education in line with Christian principles. He had no problem with the Roman Catholics doing the same and humanists doing the same, but there needed to be freedom for um reformed people to know that their child uh wasn't picking up stuff at school that would be uh antithetical to their faith. So he led also a revolution of education. So you'd want to call him today, I think, a social entrepreneur. He's often called a statesman, but statesmen are often um career politicians. And Cooper wasn't a career politician, he had all kinds of careers. He was a Dutch reform minister, as I said, he was a journalist. He wrote for that newspaper every day, he wrote for his religious newspaper every week with meditations. He continued his his uh weekly meditations right the way through his career. Even when he was prime minister, he was writing biblical, uh, I think you call them in America, devotionals, short devotionals um based on uh scripture. He continued that throughout, so he was a journalist. Uh he was he was a stratetician, he he he knew how to organize. Um, he was a keynote speaker, he gave amazing addresses that uh went on usually for about an hour and a half, and um, some of those are now appearing in English. More and more of his works are appearing in English. And he changed society. I came across um Kuiper in lectures on the history and politics of the Netherlands, not on theology in the Netherlands, it was on the history and politics because you cannot tell the story of the democratisation of the Netherlands um without reference to Kauper and the emancipation of um of Christian minorities. So he's a huge figure intellectually and in the uh political life of the Netherlands and deserves to be called a social entrepreneur. And that is also why I became interested in his ideas on business. The interesting thing uh for American for an American audience, perhaps, is that Kuiper did get an invitation to come to America to give some lectures at Princeton University and the theological seminary there. And he decided that his topic would be Calvinism, and he had six lectures, and he spoke about the significance of Calvinism for various areas of life. So he gave one lecture on the arts, he gave another lecture on science, another on politics, for instance. So he gave six lectures, different areas showing how Calvinism had had in history a profound influence and could today be a source of well-being and transformation.
SPEAKER_01But he didn't give a lecture on business.
SPEAKER_02And I've thought about this a lot and wondered if he was today asked to come to the United States and give a kind of summary of his worldview, I believe he would put business right up at the front. Because the business world has become so much more influential in society in the hundred years since he died in 1920 than it was uh when he was alive. We we know about globalization, don't we? And companies being able to do business all over the world. This lockdown has reminded me, uh reminded all of us how dependent we are on the likes of Zoom and Google and Facebook and all kinds of different ways of keeping us connected in the world. Of course, none of that was in existence in his day. It's now a dominant form of culture. And Kuiper, as a cultural uh critique and somebody who engaged positively with culture, would definitely, I believe, uh want to give one of those six lectures over to business. So I had the task of not being able to look at uh a lecture in Princeton, but finding what does Kuiper write about business in his many other publications and trying to draw that together. And um, just a couple of weeks ago, um an anthology that I edited uh came out and it's a collection of Kuiper's writings uh on business, and it's the first time these have come together in one volume. So it's about 400 pages, it's a hardback, it's with Lexum Press, which is one of your own uh publishers in the States, and it's called um it's called On Business and Economics, Abraham Kyper, uh, a part of his collected works on public theology. So you can find that with Lexum Press, it's available on Amazon. So this is a new uh way of approaching Kuiper is to think about what did he say about business and what was his influence on business. So it's really exciting to be able to talk about uh that with you today.
SPEAKER_03And one of those foundational theological concepts that he uh that he taught about was this idea of common grace. And you say in uh one of the articles that you wrote, common grace was, in fact, a means Kuiper used to break the stranglehold that was keeping business and theology separate. What is this theological concept of common grace and what does that have to do with business?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you. Fantastic question that goes to the heart of Kuiper's uh worldview. He's he's sometimes called the theologian of common grace, he's kind of seen as the founder of that idea, although you can find um precedent for it, and and Kuiper did in the writings of John Calvin. The idea put simply is how is it possible in a world that is fallen that there can be excellent virtues on display, excellent thinking, excellent science, excellent art, excellent music, excellent politics? How is it possible? Given the fact that we're fallen, how come there is so much uh good culture? Of course, there's a lot of bad as well, but that's not the question here. The question is, how come there is so much that's admirable? Like uh like the the Greek philosophers, how's it possible? They they they speak uh uh in amazing volumes, and uh people like Shakespeare, how's it possible? And you know, theologically, so Kuiper comes up with this idea of common grace. I I told you earlier that he was aware of these people who withdrew from culture because they thought all of it was bad and all of it would taint you, and really the only book you needed was the Bible. And um Kuiper came up with a distinction in God's grace towards uh his the work of his hands, and he called the grace that human beings need for salvation particular grace, it's particular to that individual. That's the grace uh through which our sins are forgiven and we uh are assured of eternal life. It's all grace, that's a very uh Calvinistic idea, of course. But uh common grace is God's grace outside the sphere of Christianity, so that is why it's possible for people who reject God nevertheless to be able to do great work, and um with this idea, he sought to break this anti-intellectualism amongst um Orthodox Reformed people in the Netherlands and around the world, and I believe that that revolution that he wanted with that concept, common grace, is as relevant today as it was when he was writing about it, because you still find a lot of evangelicals today who are very wary about um intellectual pursuit. And it's okay to go to college in order to get a job, in order to uh earn a decent living and to provide for your family, but you know, going much going much further than that, putting actually creating science, creating new ideas, creating theatre, creating poetry, works of art, that's all a little bit dubious. You're likely to compromise your faith if you go that route, and and kind of found a theological way of convincing people that um the the salvation that Christ has wrought for us on the cross is all encompassing. If Christ is um Lord, then he's either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. That's the way that John Stott, who was a British evangelical, he was very influenced by Neo-Calvinism, by the Caupirian uh mindset, came to articulate it. If Christ isn't Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. Um, so there's no area of human culture that's outside the realm of common grace. But to complement his idea about common grace, he had a kind of um second door, so to speak, and he called that the antithesis, and and that is to say, and this is very important because you you can go wrong if you take common grace on its own. So it's kind of two doorways here into culture, and and this second one, the antithesis, is a reminder that there is a lot in human culture that is antithetical to Christ, that is anti-Christ, even, that doesn't recognize God and is hedonistic and is uh uh directly challenging the ways of God. We don't need to be reminded of that. If we open the newspaper and listen to the news, we hear a lot of the antithesis at work. And and in my field, looking at business, you know, it almost doesn't make business news unless it's bad news. So if if I read the business uh press as I do, I very rarely read anything good. So there's lots of uh uh wrong uh in human culture, and that is because of the rebellion that uh we read about in the story of the fool. So there's a tension. We're living in this in this dynamic tension between the antithesis on one side trying to drag down human culture and common grace on the other, which is uh redeeming of culture, and Christians need to further the work of God's grace in a society and culture and reject the antithesis.
SPEAKER_03Is this idea of common grace and the way that uh Kuiper taught it, is that is that the same, could we refer to the the kindness of God that leads us to repentance? Is that is that the same kind of thing um where this is uh it's grace for the purpose of leading to repentance and and God is enabling us, um whether we're uh born again or not, to be able to do great things, at least great things perceived in the eyes of the world, like new technologies and a beautiful piece of music um that being written. Um or is it um common grace just uh to make something that looks great in the world? Um, and that and that is maybe it helps people live longer or live better lives or something like that? Or does he tie it to uh that yes, this is all good, but this for the purpose of leading to repentance?
SPEAKER_02That's a really good question, and I think he would be keen to downplay uh that the purpose of common grace is so that um uh it will actually turn into particular grace. But that that is something to work for and it is something to pray for, and he was a um proponent of overseas mission. So he he really believed in the task of missionaries uh preaching God's grace for sinners and people coming to faith. That was no problem to him. But but common grace um wasn't so much about that kind of grace, it's a fantastic question, Darren. But I I would say that he he wanted to reserve common grace for the workings of God's grace, whether or not, and regardless of whether somebody becomes a Christian or not. So he he when he um uh ended as prime minister, when his term of office ended as prime minister, he went for a tour around the Middle East, right around the Mediterranean Sea, and he visited many different cultures, including Islamic cultures. And he writes a journal, he was always writing, and this journal comes to two great big volumes that of his uh memoirs of that trip. And he's full of admiration, even for Islam, for the discipline and for the uh devout way in which people worship and their sense of holiness. Um, so he's not thinking there about, well, you know, uh somehow uh these people um it's deficient, the grace they have because it's not leading to particular grace. He he would be delighted to hear of any Muslim who'd become a Christian, but he was also willing to admire Islamic culture, the best of Islamic culture. Of course, there's a lot that he didn't admire, but the best of Islamic culture is there because God's grace is given liberally to everyone, and he is it it's there for everyone because everyone is made in the image of God, doesn't matter what religion you ascribe to, you are made in the image of God, and for that reason you can uh model God in the way you live your life. He he he was against this idea, and again, this is very common in Christian um circles, to see work as a result of the fall. He was very keen to stress that Adam and Eve got working, God put them to work before the fall. So it's it's in the nature of human beings made in the image of a working God to work. And as they work as God's image bearers, they will be godlike, they will transform culture, they'll fill fulfill that mandate he gives to Adam and Eve to go forth and multiply and to tend to tend the earth to till and to keep. So that's a common calling. Everybody's got that calling, whether they recognize uh that it comes from God or not. They're all called to um be active in human culture and to make it reflect more uh the God who um put it there. And here's a secret because God put it there, his ordinances are at work in creation, they're at work in culture, they're at work in technology. So it's not a case of coming to technology or art or science or these other areas of work and applying from outside a Christian worldview. In the first instance, it's looking at those areas of culture and saying, where is God at work in this? Because uh it is all made by God, it will have his DNA in it. I need to discover it, I need to look at it, I need to work out how it works. If I see a pendulum swinging, I need to work out why it swings. If I see an apple fall, I need to work out why it. Fools. You know, magnetic forces, I need to work, I need to work all the these are amazing, amazing ways that the universe has order and regularity, and they need to be discovered in the first instance. So you're thinking God's thoughts after him as a scientist. You may not know you're thinking God's thoughts, but as you look at what is true about the world, you're looking into the mind of God with a mind that's made in the image of the mind of God.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh it seems I'm just a little bit confused as to um, it seems like there's some hazards theologically with it. When I think about like the the Laodiceans and how they they were materially rich, but they were actually, Jesus says they're poor, um, he didn't, and it seems like we would look at this idea of common grace and say, oh, well, that's at work when somebody's making a lot of money, somebody's um uh somebody is materially rich. And and you might even say if you're Kuiper that that's God's common grace at work that made that person rich. But Jesus is saying if apart from me, they are they are they're actually poor. He doesn't say um they're you're you're you have you're full of common grace, but uh uh you're uh you're you're you're materially rich and full of common grace. I mean, is that is that interchangeable? I mean when he says when when if somebody's materially rich, is that is that common grace? I'm just trying to understand the the purpose behind like why does why does God give this uh this kind of common grace apart from the intention of it leading to some sort of repentance?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, excellent. Kuiper would want to say that uh riches are there for human flourishing.
SPEAKER_02So it all depends how that rich person got rich. A lot of rich people get rich through exploitation, and Kuiper is absolutely clear that that's an example of the antithesis at work. That's not common grace, so you can be rich uh because you've allowed the antithesis to uh be at work through the work of your hands, of course, it could be inherited wealth from a for from a former generation who was exploitative, whatever. So rich richness is not a measure of God's blessing and it's not a measure of common grace. Um but if you have made money through um the common good, promoting the common good, that your workers have been um well rewarded and well looked after, and your work has um brought order to chaos and developed human culture, that's most certainly um a result of the workings of common grace, whether you're uh aware of it or not. So, yeah, no, you're right that this idea could be misapplied, and you're very right, Darren, to be aware of that. Um and it's an age-old mistake for the wealthy to kind of pat themselves on their back because it seems to others perhaps as if they've curried God's favor. God must be, you know, on my side, uh, because I'm wealthy, and you know, it's still uh it's still heresy today, just as it was at the time of Job and the and the and in Proverbs and you know the biblical world, there's lots of examples of this. Um, and um it is absolutely the case that Jesus uh is there for the poor and for the oppressed and for those who have nothing and uh endorses um the rich man uh selling all his possessions and giving to the poor. But we also know that um there there were wealthy believers in the Anglican church. We're thinking at the moment of Pentecost and the new community in Acts 2, and we know there that uh the the believers it said uh sold their possessions and lived a kind of community life. They shared it amongst uh all those according to their need. But but we find later on in Acts that there's plenty of examples of Christians offering hospitality. We know of Lydia who dealt with in purple cloth, we know that Paul was a tent maker, and um the early apostles were dependent on Christians providing them with hospitality, as was Jesus. He often um accepted the hospitality of wealthy people, and Nicodemus uh and Joseph of Arimathea are other examples. So what matters is how you made your wealth and how you're using it.
SPEAKER_03But what if you made it with like because it doesn't really account for or at least maybe I didn't exploit people through you know child labor or you know different things like that, but maybe I'm still driven by selfish ambition. Maybe I'm I'm trying to um uh really just make a name for myself and not it's not about the lordship of Jesus. Uh I mean, is is that is that really is that really common grace at work if I've got these just really like I said, I'm not I'm not cheating, I'm not I'm playing by um the rules of the game, you know, the the poker game. Like there was the you know famous article about that. Um I'm not breaking any laws, but I mean, isn't God more focused on the heart issues going on or or no?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh again, really astute question, Darren. Um I I think uh Kuiper would want to have a very nuanced um response to that kind of question by saying that it's neat, it's not that you can say, oh, that guy's just operating uh according to the antithesis, and that guy is just operating according to common grace, that these things are mixed, they're going on through each other and around each other all the time, and that the antithesis runs through every human heart because we're all capable of it. Um, it doesn't matter how redeemed we are, we've got a fallen heart that it constantly needs redeeming and constantly needs saving and constantly needs reminding of God's standards, and we need constantly to seek forgiveness. So um it's both, and Darren, it's both um the antithesis um and common grace. So somebody could be selfish and wanted to make a name for themselves, as you put it, and that's exactly the sin of Babel. That's exactly what they say to each other. They say, let's build a tower up to heaven, because um this way we'll be able to make a name for ourselves.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we might even call that human flourishing.
SPEAKER_02You may even call that human flourishing, although I don't know what use that tower might be, but it did create some jobs, I guess. Right. So, yes, well, that that that then is a good example. It created jobs, um, but actually it all came tumbling down, and that is what happens to human folly and to human um hubris and pride. It's about the sin of pride, isn't it? It occurs in Genesis 11, which isn't that far after Genesis 3 about the fall. Uh, and we talked about Pentecost earlier. I do think that that confusion of languages that God gives as a judgment on the pride of um the tower builders of Babel is undone through the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when instead of people not being able to understand each other, they suddenly can. Not because they speak the same language as they did at the time of Babel, they all speak their own language. But they can understand, people who've never studied that language can speak it so that other people can understand it. And and so I think putting Babel and Pentecost together is a bit like putting the antithesis and common grace together. It's a way of it's it's an imaginative framework, it's a biblical framework, but it gives us the imagination we need to be able to look at a business, let's take any business like Facebook and say it's a mixture. It's not all common grace. There's some antithesis in there to do with the handling of data. Um, you know, you look at Google, look at Microsoft. It's a real mixture. God's grace runs through the fallen world. And that is what it's like in our hearts, and that is what it's like in human culture. And of course, there'll be more grace in some activities than in others, but everything is tainted by the fall, just as everything is touched by God's grace.
SPEAKER_03Interesting. Well, uh, Peter, what are some of the other topics you highlight in this new book, Abraham Kuyper on Business and Economics?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's also a good question.
SPEAKER_02Um Kuiper being a Calvinist was a great enthusiast for the Heidelberg Catechism, which is, I think, in Anglo terms, we tend to call that the Westminster Confession, and they have similar roots. And um in those in that catechism, um, you make promises about um the way, for instance, that you won't steal. Uh it's a it's a kind of decide, it's not just doctrine, it's also about discipleship. And so Cauper takes the traditional doctrines of the Calvinist uh tradition and says, well, what does that have to say for today? And he draws the conclusion from, for instance, that line about um that you are not to take what belongs to another, to draw out the implications of property rights. But if it's wrong to steal, it must be then right in God's eyes that you can claim something as your own. And with that, he's very critical of a kind of com he's before the days of communism, but he's against an enforced kind of communal society where everything is commonly owned. Because clearly, God allows people to own things and demands from them stewardship. So he goes through the Old Testament laws about the giving of land and the way that you're responsible if your if your um if your ox does damage to a neighbor's property, uh you have to go and repair it and recompense the damage. That if you if you own something, you have responsibility for it. So Kuiper's ideas are deeply antithetical to the shareholder economy, where you and I can own shares in a business and have absolutely no responsibility for the decisions that business makes whatsoever. Um, in fact, that's that's what a public company does. It takes our money and says, we'll we'll run the company and give you a return, and that's all you're interested in. It's your pension, it's your investment, that's the shareholder economy. And we see the destructive nature of this, and Kaypo saw this coming, of um divorcing uh the ownership of anything from responsibility for it. So so he would want to say that there must be a way of holding uh business and economics to account, that it has to take um responsibility for its actions. So if you this is of Kuiper lived long before you know anybody talked about global warming. But he if he was around today, I'm quite sure he would be, you know, the Greta Kundberg of today, so to speak, in saying that this is an absolute travesty, that um business can be causing environmental damage because business is there for the very purpose of stewarding God's creation. But he wouldn't be anti-business, and maybe this is a difference with the kind of um climate extinction, uh extinction rebellion protesters, um, who are very doom laden. He would be wanting to say it is wrong for business to uh have a damaging impact on the environment, but that's not to make us anti-business because God is the Lord of business just like he's the lord of medicine and the arts and every other area of life, education. Um so what we need then is green entrepreneurship. We need entrepreneurship, it's the only way that things will change, but it needs to be green, it needs to be in line with the biblical revelation, and he took, as a summary of the biblical revelation, the Heidelberg Catechism or the Westminster Confession. So that's the kind of way that Kuiper works, is he he looks at what scripture is saying and allows it to be utterly uh damning of that which is opposed to God's ways, but gives loads of bandwidth to the ways in which scripture endorses a good culture. He he, for instance, is very excited when he looks at the history of economics about the invention of money. You say, well, you know, which theologian waxes so positively about money? Surely all we hear from the pulpit about money is negative. But Kuiper says money was a fantastic invention because instead of having to have um one agricultural product that you could swap with somebody else's agricultural product, you could you could agree that a piece of metal in your pocket was worth a certain amount. And as long as the person you were trading with was agreed that that was what that piece of metal was worth, you could suddenly exchange. And for that reason, you could become much more mobile and you could take in your pocket the proceeds of what you've sold rather than that you've got somebody's ox in exchange for your donkey or uh fruit in exchange for wheat or something like that. So he goes through the history of economics showing how uh the invention of money and and then later the division of labor. Um Adam Smith talked about this, um, that allows a special specialism that we don't all have to create all that we need. You and I are talking through um means that haven't been created by us at all, but we're using them. That's the division of labor. Some people do this, other people do that, other people do this, and together they produce something that's absolutely amazing that users like you and I just take for granted. That's the division of labor. Not everybody needs to produce everything they need for sustenance. And it it takes several centuries for this to actually happen in human history, and and Kuiper's very excited about it. So so I think this is a Christian way of understanding uh economics, is to see God's hand in the absolutely amazing creativity that we see in the modern economy. And one side of that is the way it's been able to deliver so many people from poverty. And this pandemic is such a crisis because it threatens that. And the gains that have been made by people coming out of poverty have been set back because the world economy has been um on pause. Um that's that's you know, that's much more serious than the health threat, is the economic threat that this pandemic is to the poor. But nevertheless, it is true that over the last hundred years, um the um the deliverance of people out of poverty through the workings of business is an outstanding success story. It's amazing that it's so little gets talked about, and it very little gets talked about in academia and in church circles. Um it's it's it's a huge story, and and yet it's it's something we're a bit embarrassed about. Isn't that just greed? You know, how can greed do any good for the world? But when billions of people are uh lifted out of poverty through the workings of the uh global economy, then I think we have to um have a theological framework like Common Grace and the Antithesis to try and make sense of what's going on because surely God must be in that. If Jesus brings good news to the poor and we're seeing um so many uh billions of poor people lifted out of abject poverty, they're not becoming wealthy, we're talking about abject poverty, which is measurable. Then I think we need to sit up and listen. So Kuiper's ideas are taking off amongst the very areas of the world where more and more poor people are escaping from poverty. And I don't think that's a coincidence. They find in Kuiper's ideas a kind of entrepreneurial theology about taking responsibility and exercising stewardship and avoiding bribes and doing honest work and doing work that glorifies God. Um so where in the world we see the church is growing, they're the same areas of the world where the economy is growing. And I'm not talking about big business, I'm talking about small business growing to produce jobs for their local community. This is happening in every part of the world where the church is also growing. And I think this represents an enormous opportunity for a Cauperian worldview to really have global impact. Um, and evangelicals, and they are generally evangelicals where the church is growing, or evangelical Pentecostals, that they're looking for theological frameworks to help them make sense of the lives they lead. And uh a Caupirian worldview is um kind of head and shoulders above any of the other kinds of um offerings, I think, that come from um an evangelical biblical kind of viewpoint. And so it's no wonder to me that as um economies grow and become emerging economies rather than developing economies, the interest in in Kuiperian thinking is also growing.
SPEAKER_03Well, certainly we want people to go get a copy of the book, Abraham Kuyper on Business and Economics, and uh wrestle with some of these uh concepts and important contributions that have been made to um our our theology of of work and theology of business. Um, Peter, what um in addition to going to get the book, what what do you want people to do after they listen to this interview?
SPEAKER_02To live their lives as if God is interested in every part of their lives, not just the Bible studies they attend or lead, not just the churches they go to for an hour on a Sunday. Not just the work they do with young people in the church or with children, but in every aspect of their lives, that they see that as the place where they are to practice their discipleship. I I don't think there's an option to be a part-time Christian or a leisure-time Christian. And yet that's what we've got, is you know, um, God will fill up your the time that you're not working. We'll we'll give you plenty of tasks to do in this church uh that will help the mission of this church. I think that's the wrong way around. I think church pastors need to be saying, how can we as the church help you to live out your vocation in whatever it is that you do? That's what I want people to take away. What has God given me to do? What's my art? What gets me out of bed? What inspires me? What is my role in life and to see God working through you in that area? And that can be in accountancy, it can be in things that don't look as if they're all that much to do about God, but God really values accurate spreadsheets and accurate accounts and maths that really does add up and um experiments in labs that really change the way we do things and provide new technologies. He's really interested in that. It changes people's lives. He's into changing lives, he's into bringing shalom. That's what I want is people to be passionate about areas of life they may have thought really God wasn't all that interested in. They're kind of secular. Um, it can be in the gym, it can be the sports you do, it can be in dancing, it could be in art, whatever is your gifting, that is where God wants you to live for him and do your work uh as unto the Lord.
SPEAKER_03Well said. And and as Abraham Kuyper said, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign overall, does not cry mine. And uh faith in business.com is the website. Is that the best place for people to go to to get the book and learn more about um and and hear more from you, Peter?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, that's right. Faith in Business um is a project in the UK, but we've got a global reach. And as I say, I often come to the United States. So Faith in Business, if you it's faith in business.org, not dot com. And um you can find a lot of resources there.
SPEAKER_03All right, uh, faith in business.org. Everybody go check it out. Um, Peter, thank you for your uh diligence and and all of the translation and editing and research and and um formulating your your own thoughts and and um and certainly related to Abraham Kuyper and and um just this treasure trove of of uh wisdom that you're bringing out to us. Um we sure appreciate you and your ministry. Thanks for sharing with our listeners today.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much indeed for giving this opportunity. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity in Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.