Gud Times

A while ago my friend Matt Hosier asked me if I read this book. I hadn't but I have now. In Business for the Glory of God Wayne Grudem attempts an apologetic for business. Business he feels is under attack and good Christians end up worrying that by being involved in business they are somehow falling short. So Wayne Grudem steps up to give a theological defence for making a profit. He argues that business is neither evil nor even morally neutral but inherently good and created by God.

There are 9 key areas that Grudem examines; ownership, productivity, employment, commercial transactions, profit, money, inequality of possessions, competition & borrowing and lending. He ends with a short review on the effects of the above on attitudes of the heart and the effect of business on world poverty.

Each chapter starts with a phrase: "...is fundamentally good and provides many opportunities for glorifying God but also many temptations to sin" and ends with a sentence like, "But the distortions of something good must not cause us to think the thing itself is evil..."

Grudem does a reasonable job of concisely laying out his reasons why business is good and very briefly raising some of the dangers of greed, envy and materialism. The weakest arguments by far are his argument that inequality of possessions is the way God intended things to be, that this is a good thing that gives glory to God. While extreme wealth and extreme poverty are both considered 'bad things' there's no way of drawing a line, no attempt at working out how some inequality is good but too much inequality is bad. Nor is there a recognition that in the countries that have excelled in competition, profit making and generally getting rich are also the countries with the greatest inequality.

The other weak chapter are his concluding remarks on world poverty. Plenty of people agree with the premise that trade is better than aid (for example here and here) but there is a naivety about his words that...