This episode of the Theology of Business Podcast is sponsored by our friends at GWT2 Energy. Do you want to increase the profit margins of your restaurant or retail operation? One way to do that is to lower your energy costs. With over 20 years' experience helping restaurants and retailers reduce their energy bills, GWT2 Energy helps owners and operators create a customized energy savings plan that will achieve up to 25% energy savings. To start saving and become more profitable, visit gwt2energy.com. That's the number two, gwt2energy.com. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Theology of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show that helps marketplace Christians to partner with God in business to help you disciple your coworkers, your company, your industry, and your community as followers of Christ. On this show, I typically jump into topics that I'm either researching or just plain curious about. And so I find experts like my guest today, Jeff Haynan, to discuss that topic. And the one that we're going to be diving into today is value making and financial compensation from a biblical perspective. And so we we recognize that all work is valuable in the eyes of God. Well, is it? That's the big question. But but then if if if work is a good thing and everybody's work matters, why do we pay people differently? And is that the way that God really intended it? On this episode, we're joined by Jeff Haynan. Jeff is the CEO and founder of the Denver Institute for Faith and Work, an educational nonprofit dedicated to forming men and women to serve God, neighbor, and society through their daily work. And he's the founder of the 5280 Fellowship. Am I saying that right, Jeff?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 5280. It's a Denver thing.
SPEAKER_015280. That sounds a lot cooler than 5280. A program for emerging leaders in Colorado and scattered.org, a free learning platform on faith, work, and culture. So clearly, we have an entrepreneur on the show today. He writes for various publications, such as Christianity Today, on topics ranging from business to retirement to the American working class and lives in beautiful Denver, Colorado, uh, with his wife and four daughters. And you can't see his uh video right now, but I can see it's another beautiful day in Denver. Jeff, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01So, does all work have equal value in the eyes of God?
SPEAKER_02Well, that's a good question. Whenever you use the terms like all work, you have to be really careful what you say, because work is a human uh construction. And you have to think about the breadth of what that means. And so is somebody that is providing a service like a mason and building a building, is that work the equal value of, say, an Al-Qaeda warrior? Um, no, I actually don't think so. So work has uh moral dimensions, just like people have moral dimensions. And so I think we want to think well about the type of work we're doing, not only who's doing the work and the intentions that we have behind the work, but I actually think that the work itself really matters for building good societies as well as good strong businesses that are blessing their communities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what is there a rule of thumb that we could use to make the call when we look at a form of work and what what is the kind of the guiding principle there to determine is this valuable in the eyes of God?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think actually what's valuable in the eyes of God is a heart turn to him in worship and work that is offered to him as such. And in that respect, uh, you know, I've seen everything from the financial industry to manufacturing to uh retail to any one of a number of enormous amounts of jobs that society may either look highly upon or look really lowly upon. But God would say that was offered to me in worship and that has value in his eyes. So I actually think God is very concerned with our uh our state of heart and who we're doing it for, as the greatest commandment is about loving God with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and strength. And if we are doing an activity in which that is offered to him, I do think that uh is yeah, highly valuable. Um and the social impact of different types of work is another conversation. No, that I think that we need to think about uh what types of things can we do that actually bring about uh not only value in God's eyes, but real value benefit to our neighbor. And that's a I think another conversation we should have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So it's almost as though the extent to which we are our our work is worship determines the value. So there is this correlation between worship and value as it relates to work. Is that a fair statement?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, potentially. You know, uh the value of our work in God's eyes, the the New Testament, especially the words of Jesus, they give us, I think, a vision that there's going to be a great reversal. Um, so this is kind of dangerous, you know, territory. The first will be the last, the last will be first. So the types of work that we actually, I think, find the most valuable, God actually may think that other kinds of work that we don't feel as much as valuable is actually highly valuable, right? So for instance, I think um we care about like what firefighters and teachers do, but do we have the same level of respect for the janitors or hedge fund managers? Um, I think you'd get different perspectives of people listening on this too. But I think God actually is concerned first about the heart, but then also about does that work bring about blessing? Does it bring about human flourishing? Does it bring about the well-being of the customers and the communities and the employees in that context? And that's honestly, there's there's a lot of shades of gray, of uh moral gray in a lot of different kinds of work. And we could maybe potentially hop into some of those examples if you'd like. Uh, but it's a it's a tricky question. I think what's important is that though there's different types of work and different ranges of value, all people have infinite worth. All workers have infinite worth. And I think that's unchanging.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So for those of us who who understand that a janitor's work is no less valuable, all things being equal, you know, assuming the janitor is doing his work as worship, just like the hedge fund manager or uh somebody that probably makes a lot more money than than he or she does, um we we recognize it that I mean, God is no respecter of persons in that in that regard. And yet we are the same people who will pay one person a lot more, in many cases a whole lot more, for one particular job than we will for another particular job. Is this is there a biblical basis for this, or did we just sort of invent this?
SPEAKER_02So when it comes to paying people and what the Bible says about that, uh I think that too is a little tricky. I think it's a little tricky. So let's think about this from three angles: an economic angle, a sociological angle, and a theological angle. Okay. So economically you'd say, well, you pay people based on there's if there is high demand for those sets of skills, you'd want to pay them a lot, right? Um, because there's not a lot of people that can do, say, the job of leading a Fortune 500 company. And so they need to make a whole bunch of money. Um, and so to a degree, you see in typical organizations that people that have skills, particularly leadership skills, they tend to make more. People that have kind of a technical skill usually make a little less. And those that have the least skills tend to make the lowest amount, right? Um, so that is, I think, from an economic perspective, what you'd see. Uh, sociologically, though, there's some weird stuff in the world. Like if you think about home health care workers, um, in the last decade, demand for home health care workers has risen by over a million people. I don't have the specific stat right now, but it's about it was about rising from about two and a half million home health care workers to three and a half million. So if you think of a rise of demand like that, what would you think that the what would happen to the wages of those people? You'd think with the rise of demand, you'd be like, oh gosh, we need that because our population is aging that the wages will go up. However, their real wages went down in that same period when demand went up. And you have to ask, why on earth would wages go down, real wages go down for this group of people of which there's more demand for? Uh, and the harsh uh uh I think reality of that is that most uh home healthcare workers are women of color. They don't sit upon uh positions of power in which they can determine how much they're gonna make uh and others. And so they're treated more interchangeably, they don't have enough uh kind of negotiating power to push up some of their wages, right? So, especially in the last 50 years, sociologically, unions have uh gone away uh in America, not completely, but they've been drastically diminished. And you see the wage disparity between low-income workers and high-income workers really grow, like astronomically, and you can actually see this globally as well as here in the United States. So I think we do need to think about that. Um, biblically speaking, how much should I pay somebody? I actually think that's a real tricky one because I think God leaves that in many ways up to us. There is some stuff, you know, Paul talks about a worker's worth his wages, right? It actually in the book of James, it also talks about the wages of poor farmers uh were withheld from them. And God said, uh, look, I heard their cries. He's actually pulling in Old Testament traditions, and actually from both Exodus as well as Deuteronomy, saying, Look, if you're not paying people what they need to be able to survive uh right now, I'm gonna hear their cries in Yahweh Sabbath, oh, may set his face against you, right? Unless you pay that person well. So that's like the prophetic side. On the just and the good side, you have somebody like Boaz who allowed a poor immigrant to glean and to be able to work and have a sense of uh dignity, and it you know worked out that you know they got married as well. And they created not only a just system and just wages, but a way for them to enter into the community. So, in my view on the wage question, am I paying people enough that they can support themselves and their family and engage in the life of their community? I think that is a good question for Christians to ask on the lower end of the pay scale. On the higher end of the pay scale, I think the question to ask is how much do I really need? And how much should I give away? And those are questions of uh generosity as well as uh self-limiting. I think uh there is a guy that we had speak at one of our events called Business for the Common Good. His name is Alan Barnhart. Alan has given away uh millions and millions of dollars. He gave away his company to his donor-advised fund. What was interesting to me when he spoke at Business for the Common Good this last year was not how much money he's given away. It was that he capped his salary at a certain amount and he refused to take any more than a certain multiple of uh of his lowest wage workers. And I thought the ability to say, no, I'm gonna give this away, that even though I run a half a billion dollar company, I don't need that much, there's like the the humility of Jesus was dripping on him. So I think there's questions to ask on both ends of the pay scale from a biblical perspective on the wage question.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And uh I love that example of of Alan Barnhard and Simon Lee and his company is a is another one people could dig into uh these CEOs capping their salary. Uh so there's the this issue of of injustice that immediately comes into play when we start to talk about monetary compensation from a biblical perspective. But it is there on the on the other side of the the issue, is there a sense of God affirming paying one person more than another? You know, for example, I'm thinking about the issue of uh timely work versus work that is just not timely. Um like if somebody was to just get really bent out of shape right now about like I know somebody that's in the event planning business and her business just got crushed with the the coronavirus and the and the lockdown and social distancing and everything. And so the it would be a shame to just sit there and get and shake your fist at God and shake your fist at uh everybody else for what like if you don't if you don't pivot and you just assume that, well, my this work, this skill set is valuable. Well, in this uh current market, uh such as it is, uh it's not a timely uh uh service to try to render, maybe like virtual events, and and that's it, that's a shift that that she's making. So are there is there a sense where some people maybe should be paid more than others? And is there a biblical basis for that?
SPEAKER_02Um I wouldn't go as far as biblical basis. Maybe you have a uh maybe you have some illustrations, you know, from the biblical narrative that that I don't. Um but um I think that we need to think about a handful of things. Uh hold on real quick. Can we can we pause the podcast? I'm gonna re-answer that question. Can we do that? Sure. So to answer the question about the realities of paying people more and less, I think this is obviously true. We're gonna want to pay some people more and some people less, right? The the founder, uh Wendy Cup, the founder of Teach for America, for a long time, she wanted to take the same wage as an entry-level teacher in New York, and this was like 20 years ago. And her board eventually said, look, you making $25,000 a year is not gonna help you or the organization grow and attract the kind of talent we need to build a uh a real movement here, right? And so they built a pay scale, uh uh at one that made sense, right? So absolutely, there are some, I mean, longevity, history of performance, the actual demand for that um service that that employee is rendering in sort of, and the reality is that the market and the economy, this is all changing right now. There is temporarily less of a demand for uh hospitality workers. Um Central Florida is gonna have uh, which is yeah, I'm I was just talking to somebody in Central Florida, major uh tourist area, and they're gonna lose anywhere from 20 to 33 percent of their hospitality workers. So, right now, that has been really depressed. So there's a lot of different factors that go into how much um you know we're paying people. Um, I think still though, uh I'll just speak. How about I speak from a very kind of practical side? Uh I lead a small organization. Okay, I have uh eight people. Um, how do I pay people, right? People that have more experience and more leadership ability and then have more responsibility to execute on goals, they get paid more. People that have a little less experience, a little less skills, and not quite as much responsibility, they get paid less as well. Um, however, the disparity between how much the front, the lowest paid full-time employee and the highest paid full-time employee, it's not a very big disparity. It's not very big. Now we're a nonprofit of eight people, right? But it is something to think about, I still think, on the a company of a thousand, right? Um do you have to pay a CEO, you know, a million dollars in salary and 10 million in stock options uh to be able to attract them or not? Uh years ago, I read an interesting story about the Costco CEO. You know, that was compensated something like a half million dollars in salary plus stock options, but it was far less than peers. And Costco's one of the most powerful companies in the world as well. So there are still real human questions saying um it's not only about maximal kind of profit gaining, and then even for Christians to give that away, it may be just as Christian to say we're gonna take less of profit this year, I am gonna take less of a salary, and I'm gonna have an abnormally high uh entry-level wage for my people because I want them all to thrive and to flourish. So there's real, I think there's real questions there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And like in the in the startup world, one of the big question is, is this business scalable? Or is it just sort of uh what they you know call lifestyle business where you're gonna maybe see incremental growth, but uh an investor doesn't typically like a venture capitalist at that level, isn't gonna want to invest in a business that's not scalable, they're gonna put their money toward the thing that's that's scalable. Like is there a biblical uh uh basis for that? Or or again, are we just sort of because as you know, this this show is about the theology of business. So with something as as familiar and and um we're so that there's we're so dependent on our livelihood and and how we compensate people is such a part of our way of life. Uh I I just it just seems like something we we need to, if we're gonna be paying more for this type of product and and and less for this other one, when they're basically the same, like or paying this p person more, this person less, when they're basically um when they're doing a similar, similar type of a job, like what are the go-to biblical uh uh passages to help to to shape that framework for how we approach that?
SPEAKER_02Uh what are the of of how much we should pay people in different industries? Do you mean Darren?
SPEAKER_01Well, basically the the extent to which it's okay, it's biblically, there's a biblical basis for uh paying some people more and some people less. Like, you know, thinking about the the parable of talents. And so they were each entrusted with uh different amounts, each according to his own uh ability. So, and then you know, we got the the example of um you know the the workers that were all basically paid the same, even though they didn't work uh the same amount. And and so there's like a lot of very interesting and and even potentially confusing passages that that as we think about this in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you're you we're in weird territory if we try to do too much direct Bible verse application to modern wage conversations. So, like the parable of the talents, like I've heard this quoted ad nauseum about um uh stewardship, meaning God entrusted this much money to me, this I have to, you know, have a kingdom return of this much amount as well. But did that mean that God was deciding that all the rich people that have the wealth right now that God would give those money to them? Whereas people that don't have the wealth right now, He wouldn't entrust as much to them? Uh maybe, maybe. I've heard that in Protestant circles, but Catholics wouldn't think about it that way at all, actually. Um, because wages don't necessarily come to people because of only like uh God said you should have this much money, right? That that that that's not the only way people make money. So I think that's real tricky. If you want to do another weird wage Bible in uh Bible story, it's when Jesus, you know, has the parable of uh, you know, the farm owner that pays uh all the dudes the same amount. The one that worked at the beginning of the day, um, worked one that started at the middle of the day, and one that started at the end of the day, he paid all the same amount because the point of that parable wasn't necessarily about wages, the point was about grace, right? It was a context of like, hey, I know um the Gentiles are later to the game, uh, but my grace is going to be poured out on them as well as to the Jewish people. And I know that makes you frustrated right there. So again, we we go too much in our biblical kind of application if we try to say this is the Bible verse that that we then apply to this conversation about wages today. However, the Bible doesn't leave us, you know, empty-handed here. Uh, again, Ruth, Deuteronomy. Me, uh, the book of James, the prophetic, um, the prophetic witness of people having enough to provide for themselves, right? Even the prophetic imagination in Isaiah, it talks about people building their houses and having enough to sit under their own trees, right? This real connection between my work and having enough to live a good life. Like there are things like that that that when systems get distorted and people don't have that, and they can find themselves working one or two jobs but never never own a house and get further in debt. Like, here's a question of systemic issues that I think believers need to be thinking about, right? So love God, love your neighbor, and your employee is your neighbor. Um, it's not to say that everybody should make the same. I don't, I don't necessarily agree with that, but your employer is your neighbor and God is present in the needs of your neighbor. So I think we should think about it in terms of huh, what is it, what how much do I need? How much does the company need to be able to attract talent to be able to lead? Um, and then what does it mean to be not only a generous person, but a generous business? All right, that I may pay people even more than market says on the front line because I want to retain good people um and I want to bless them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So are we saying that the the biblical framework for thinking about uh uh a monetary compensation is pay everybody uh a fair wage, uh or some might say pay them a livable wage. So maybe there's difference between fair wage and livable wage, but this is um there's a lot of there's a lot of gray area, as you were saying, you know, like the the the passage about Jesus and the um the workers out in the in in the vineyard, they were all paid the same, even though one of them just came at the at the very end of the day. And people are like, what in the world? Like, why is he getting paid the same as us? And and as you said, it's a message about grace. You know, you could also think about maybe it's um like if you ever try to buy, of course, it's it's different right now in this economic environment, but try to buy a plane ticket at the last second, you know, you're probably gonna pay uh you're probably gonna pay a lot more for that. Maybe there was some of that um that diamond by that dynamic going where the the um the manager just needed extra work at the very end of the day, and it was hard to come by potentially. I don't know. But but I totally uh agree with what you're saying about you can't just take a proof text and say, here there's our theology of monetary compensation. But I'm I'm trying to understand, and I I'm hoping our listeners are curious about this too, is um what is our theological framework or biblical framework for thinking not just about work being valuable in the eyes of God, which we agree that if it's morally good work, uh then yeah, whether you're uh a janitor or whether you're a hedge fund manager or school teacher, every all work is valuable in the eyes of God, assuming it's being done as an act of as an as an act of worship. But but then when we turn around and take our wages and then go pay somebody, we we we're paying people differently for different things. And what is the the biblical framework for thinking about how to do that properly?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 1 Timothy 5.18, scripture says you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages. Of course, Paul here is pulling on these Old Testament uh verses like Leviticus 19, 13, you shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until morning. That's because people that were living day to day, they needed the wages right there. So you could think about paying fairly, paying promptly, right? And being aware that um if you are a dad of three kids, a fair or even a livable wage looks very different than if you're a single guy. Um, I I think those are human conversations that without setting sort of a floor or a ceiling, um the biblical paradigm is love your neighbor as yourself. So I'll I'll go back into early part of my career. Early part of my career, I worked for a small Christian school and the wages were oppressive. Like uh if we had an unexpected $20 expense that month, stress, anxiety, my wife would get in like arguments and fights about how could you have done this? We couldn't really participate in the social life of our community. We just didn't, we didn't have much. Uh, and that was really early in my career. Uh, and that was uh our reality. Now, there are millions of people that live in that right there. Um, and I'm not saying everybody should make the same. However, if there are people that you can pay um and you can build business models that benefit employees just as much as investors and customers, I think this is pleasing in God's sake.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And the the the passage you mentioned coming from Leviticus about, you know, don't muzzle an ox while he's threshing. Uh, I mean, it's it says a a laborer is worthy of his his hire. So it's whatever you were hired to do. And I think what was happening there is people had actually agreed that, okay, this is what the the arrangement is, this is what I'm gonna get paid. And they weren't paying what they said they were gonna pay, which is a a totally next level of injustice where you said you were gonna, but but as far as these are the established wages, and we're just gonna pay what the market will bear. I I like what Jeff Van Duzer says, and it comes up again and again, um, that especially around the issue of of wages and and compensation, is that the the invisible hand of, you know, from Adam Smith's work is not necessarily the almighty hand of God. And so we can't just rely on what the market will bear to tell us are we uh are we obeying God in the way that we approach financial compensation?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the question is, okay, love your neighbor as yourself. What do I need to feel like I can live a good life? What kind of a house or what kind of a um uh car or food? Like, what do I need? Um, that is how you are to love your neighbor as yourself because you're thinking about your own needs, right? Does other person have kind of less, less important needs than you do? Well, that is actually the question. And that is, I think, an intercultural question that we can have as well. Like, what are those? And I think those are real questions that we need to uh grapple with. That no, people aren't just making a certain amount because that's what their labor deserves. A lot of people are making a certain amount because that's how the markets uh have been designed, or that's kind of the going rate right now, or they didn't have the same amount of opportunities, you know, that we have, right? So there's a real opportunity for love uh for human flourishing in our businesses as we think about wages and using wages also as a tool to attract really talented people that can help drive change. Like you need that as well. So I think I think it goes both ways.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and this issue, this really a theological issue as I see it, is at the heart of why people gravitate toward one economic system or another one, right? And I know you're an you're an economist. You you you say that uh The Economist is the best magazine in the in the world, hands down. Um, so I know you're well versed in in this, but wouldn't you agree that this trying to uh understand and take a take a stand on this issue uh is what kind of makes a socialist out of somebody or makes a capitalist out of the next person?
SPEAKER_02Um I I guess I would disagree with that. Uh I know I know people of various different political persuasions. Um and I don't think that um we have to go to thinking about like the government controlling the means of production to actually think about good wages for your employees. I actually think you can live in a free market system, but not obey the free market system. You can obey God and say, what does it mean to uh what does it mean to do well to provide goods and services uh to our community that brings real value as well as real value to our employees? So I don't know, I don't, I don't think that this issue makes you a capitalist or or a socialist. I think thoughtful engagement of this issue, uh, and actually a lot of issues are around money means you are trying to apply ethics, you're trying to apply a broader cultural framework, uh a countercultural framework to how you're making business decisions. I think that's an important thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Because if it if it's just raw, unbridled socialism or raw unbridled capitalism, I mean, both of those are gonna be just extremely destructive. So it's it's not it's not as a Christian, and that's why we go to the Bible instead of going to what uh um Adam Smith wrote or what Karl Marx wrote. Or I mean, like, yeah, understand what the different perspectives are, but have a good solid theology of business for how you're for how you're thinking about this. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, to the point of the importance of your podcast, we need to think about our business in terms of the broader story of God's activity in the world rather than sort of take the the assumptions from our culture. And if you're listening in China, you're probably thinking about it more in terms of a communist perspective. If you're in America, of course, it would be more of a capitalist perspective. Uh, read what read widely, read broadly, understand the best economic thinkers, right? Uh you know, from Kansas Shumputer, but uh we really need to re-evaluate, especially in a very painful economic time right now. Uh Lord, what are you calling me to? How can I bless others as you've blessed me, especially for most business owners? This is a really important time for us to think about generosity, not only in terms of what we give away, but also in terms of what we keep in the company to bless our employees and help them live good, God-honoring lives as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, excellent. Well, Jeff, as we wrap it up, tell us about what you're working on and how people can get involved.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sure. So I lead an organization called Denver Institute for Faith and Work. Um, we do a handful of things. Uh, we provide people content, everything from free short courses to a podcast uh to articles all on how face shapes work in different kinds of industries. We have a young leaders program that's principally for those in the Denver metro area called the 5280 Fellowship. 5280 is from the Mile High City, because Denver's the Mile High City, and 5,280 feet are in a mile, so that's where that came from. Um, and then uh we do public events as well. And um, some of them are more local, and some of them we have a national or international draw. Our event business for the common good draws people from all over the place. And we do that late January, early February every year. So the best way to get in touch with what we're doing, go to Denverinstitute.org and sign up for our newsletter, and you can um yeah, start learning about what it means to follow Jesus as a uh carpenter, craftsman, uh woman caring for kids and doing a part-time job uh as somebody in finance or a business owner. So we got a lot of stuff out there.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Well, Jeff, thanks for what you're doing. Thank you for sharing your time and your your wisdom perspective with us. I know we're uh we're all better for it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00We 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 company, your industry, and your community at theologyofusiness.com. The Theology of Business podcast is sponsored by Hybridge Books and Media, a media agency specializing in publishing and promoting the world-changing ideas of inspiring thought leaders through book publishing, website development, publicity, email marketing, social media management, podcast management, and video based course publishing. Take the next step to share your message with the world by contacting us at hybridmedia.com. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.