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Economics

What makes a salesman good?

I didn’t know too many salesmen while I was growing up, so my perception of them was shaped in large part by the jokes made about them. I understood the jokes weren’t meant to be taken literally, but hear something often enough and you do get impacted. So yes, I knew used car salesmen didn’t always trick widows into emptying their bank accounts to purchase oil-leaking gas-guzzlers. But it happened more often than not, right?

My own sales experience only reinforced this villainous stereotype. For a grand total of two weeks I sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door. While the vacuums were remarkable our sales pitch was not. We’d bully our way into a home, counting on most people being too polite to throw us out. Then we’d give them a half hour demonstration, uncovering all sorts of hidden dirt and filth in the house – this machine could pull it out of even a newly laid carpet. Then we’d make an emotional appeal, asking parents how much their children mattered to them, and presenting the $1,500 machine as a way to save their children from sickness and allergies.

I wasn’t all that good at this guilt-inducing plea, so in that two-week period I sold just one vacuum, and even that was only because my trainer clinched the deal. A few days later I was greatly relieved to hear that the couple had changed their mind and gotten all their money back.

This brief foray into sales taught me that it was every bit as sleazy as I had imagined.

Two contrasting ideas

Some years later I started dating a lovely sales manager. If I’d been thinking it through, that should have challenged my perception of sales as a low-ethics field. Clearly it wasn’t true of all salespeople! But I didn’t put two and two together. I didn’t really think about how what she was doing – selling student agendas to schools across North America – was, in fact, sales.

It was only later that year, when I had the chance to meet her company’s sales staff at their annual sales conference, that I was forced to re-evaluate. Talking with them made me realize it was possible to be a good salesman and still be a good man. It all came down to two very different understandings of what makes a salesman good.

1. Can sell anything to anyone?

One of the first salesmen I met at the conference was a twenty-something-year-old who bragged he could sell ice to Eskimos – didn’t matter the product, he could sell it. He went on about how good he was at upselling, convincing principals to buy this and that add on.

As he talked I noticed something he didn’t. His fellow salesmen were not impressed. I can’t remember now whether he was cut off, but he was answered. A more experienced fellow made it clear that this is not what a good salesman does.

In the days that followed I had a few conversations with this second gentleman, and was able to dig into what he thought sales was all about.

2. Can meet his customer’s needs

His understanding was built on his love for God and a love for his neighbor. He saw his role as a salesman as trying to meet his customers’ needs. That could be a complicated task: it might involve explaining to a customer that they have a need they didn’t even know about. The product he sold, student agendas, weren’t standard school equipment in the same way that pencils, paper, and rulers are. But he believed in his product; in a very real way he was in his job for the same reason a good teacher takes her position: they both want to help students learn. He knew that his agenda could help students be better organized by helping them manage their time and keep track of assignments. There were features that could help teachers and parents too, and all for the price of only a few dollars each.

His sales pitch wasn’t dependent on pressure – he presented the features of the agenda in as clear and concise a manner as he could, respecting both the principal’s intelligence and his time.

A couple key differences

So what’s the difference between the first sort of salesman – the one who thinks he can sell anything to anyone – and the second sort who is trying to meet the customer’s needs?

Attitude is the biggest part of it. Instead of being full of himself, the Christian salesman is thinking of others, trying to serve them by offering the opportunity to buy a valuable product.

A second difference is that a Christian salesman can only sell a product he believes in. Christians wouldn’t want to sell sand in the Sahara, even if our powers of persuasion were such that we could pull it off. A Christian salesman needs to be doing his customer a service that is to the customer’s benefit. It was no coincidence that the sales staff at this agenda company also had a role in product development. They were trying to meet customer needs, and after talking with the same principals and superintendents year after year, the sales staff could give valuable advice to the product development team about improvements, and good features to add.

Conclusion

I was grateful to meet this second salesman and his many godly sales colleagues. They changed forever the way I understood sales, showing there is a way to honor God in this field too.

Of course, there are still the sleazy sort, and lots of them. In some companies there could be pressures to overhype products, and to push customers into buying options they don’t really need.

But that shouldn’t make us steer clear of the sales field. We do need to be aware that we might face such pressures, and understand that in standing against them we could even lose our position. But at the same time, the servant-minded salesman is going to be appreciated by all his customers – honesty and integrity are valuable “sales tools.” In fact, the godly salesman I talked to was later honored as one of his company’s top sellers.

If you have that servant mindset, and a product you can believe in, then sales can be a God-honoring job indeed!

Economics

The rich keep getting richer… and they're not the only ones

Capitalism helps everyone. That might be hard to believe right now, with the worldwide economy in the doldrums, and with many fingering capitalism as the culprit. But before we jump on the anti-capitalist bandwagon, and before we ask the government to take over larger areas of the economy, it would be a good idea to look back and get a proper understanding of the good capitalism has done. The fact is, capitalism is responsible for lifting billions of people out of poverty and creating improved standards of living that previous generations couldn’t have dreamed of. Swedish scholar Johan Norberg has written a brief overview of this phenomenon in The Wealth of Generations: Capitalism and the Belief in the Future. Marx got it half right It’s likely that Karl Marx, the originator of Marxism, developed the sharpest anti-capitalist theory. According to Norberg, Marx believed “that capitalism would make the rich richer and the poor poorer.” If someone was making money in a free market situation, it must be at the expense of someone else. That is, somebody was losing money if another was gaining money. Thus over time the upper class would accumulate more wealth at the expense of the middle class and lower class. The middle class would be pushed into the lower class, and the original lower class would basically starve. Marx made this prediction during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. Despite its undeserved bad reputation, the Industrial Revolution resulted in a dramatic rise in living standards. “When Marx died in 1883, the average Englishman was three times richer than he was when Marx was born, in 1818.” Since that time capitalism has continued to raise living standards to the point that “the poor in Western societies today live longer, with better access to goods and technologies, and with bigger opportunities than the kings in Marx’s days.” Lenin got it all wrong Marx’s original theory was obviously a failure; standards of living rose rapidly for all classes due to capitalism. So Marx’s disciple, and Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin had to rework the theory to explain how workers in Western countries were doing so well economically. Lenin argued that the capitalist class of the Western countries looted the poor, undeveloped countries, and gave a portion of the loot to the workers in their own countries. The rich countries were made richer because the poor countries were made poorer. Quite simply, the rich countries took the wealth of the poor countries. But like Marx’s theory, Lenin’s theory contradicts the facts. As Norberg explains, the problem with Lenin’s view is: “all continents became wealthier, albeit at different speeds. Sure, the average Western European or American is 19 times richer than in 1820, but a Latin American is 9 times richer, an Asian 6 times richer, and an African about 3 times richer. So from whom was the wealth stolen?” Capitalism benefits every class, every sector of society, and not just one special group or certain exploitive nations. In fact, Norberg describes the success of capitalism in alleviating poverty in the last three decades or so as “the greatest untold story ever.” As Norberg writes, the proportion in absolute poverty in developing countries has been reduced from: “40 to 21% since 1981. Almost 400 million people have left poverty – the biggest poverty reduction in mankind’s history. In the last 30 years chronic hunger has been halved, and so has the extent of child labor. Since 1950 illiteracy has been reduced from 70 to 23% and infant mortality has been reduced by two-thirds.” This has occurred during a period where many countries around the world have shifted away from socialism and socialistic policies towards capitalism and free market policies. Using creativity to create wealth It’s common to think of creative people as being writers, painters, musicians, and others in the fine arts. But some of the most creative people in the world are entrepreneurs. These are people who use their creative abilities to provide products and services in new and innovative ways. By doing so they create new jobs for countless people and generate wealth where previously none existed. Capitalism allows the greatest freedom and opportunities to people whose creative talents are in the economic sphere. This is a key reason (perhaps the key reason) for the success of capitalism. A thriving economy requires entrepreneurs but socialism stifles and punishes entrepreneurs. Generally speaking, socialists consider businessmen to be the exploiters of workers, therefore these “exploiters” must be heavily regulated and controlled. Capitalism, on the other hand, unleashes the creative powers of entrepreneurial businessmen, and thus becomes a driving force for generating new wealth and economic development. As economic history clearly demonstrates, capitalism is the only system that leads to prosperity. Yes, the rich do get richer under capitalism but so do the poor! Dr. Michael Wagner is the author many books, and is a regular contributor to Reformed Perspective. This article first appeared in the January 2009 issue under the title "The rich keep getting richer...and that's a good thing!"...

Economics

Counting our blessings: Ways the world is getting better

With all the bad news we read and hear about each day, it’s easy to miss the good news. But if we are to "forget not all His benefits" (Ps. 103:2) then we shouldn't overlook the many ways that today's generation is more blessed than we have ever been. The big news? Mankind's material well-being – our overall wealth – has increased rapidly in recent decades, and that's alleviating poverty and lengthening life-spans for billions of people. In terms of daily living, things are generally getting better and better. In fact, the twentieth century witnessed the greatest improvement in living standards in the history of the world. People today live better and longer than at any time in history. This is the theme of a book by economists Stephen Moore and Julian Simon entitled It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years. They demonstrate that by every material measure, human life has dramatically improved since the early twentieth century. The also explain why this occurred, and credit it to the drive for innovation that results from free enterprise capitalism. Health Moore and Simon's focus is on the United States, partly because they themselves are American, but maybe more so because the United States has long been at the center of innovation and technological development. The United States has led the world in improving the living conditions of mankind because of its entrepreneurial, free enterprise economy. So what sort of improvements do they highlight? One of the most significant of the twentieth century is in the area of health. “The health of Americans improved in ways during the 20th century that can only be described as miraculous. Death and infant mortality rates plunged; life expectancy rose by 64 percent.” Many diseases were almost wiped out. Cancer rates have increased, of course, but that is because people are living longer. Decades ago people generally died younger and therefore didn’t live long enough to get cancer. Food and recreation Today food is incredibly plentiful and inexpensive. “Never before in history and in no other society has the common working man been able to afford such a bountiful basket of tasty foods to put on the kitchen table as Americans can today.” Historically, one of the greatest challenges that most people faced was avoiding starvation. Now, in North America, one of the greatest challenges is avoiding obesity! Similarly, wealth is more plentiful: “It is amazing but true that more financial wealth has been generated in the United States over the past 50 years than was created in all the rest of the world in all the centuries before 1950." As a result, even the poorest Americans often own a car and a color TV, not to mention other conveniences. Another effect of the wealth is that Americans “spend more on recreation and entertainment than any other society in history.” Environment All of this progress has come at a tremendous cost, right? We all know the environment was polluted and ruined in the rush to create wealth. Actually, that’s not true. Moore and Simon state: “The fact is that one of the greatest trends of the past 100 years has been the astonishing rate of progress in reducing almost every form of pollution." Air pollution in the United States has decreased steadily since the 1970s. Water pollution in lakes, streams and rivers has also decreased substantially during the same period. Americans have been criticized for using a disproportionate amount of the world’s natural resources. With only about 5 percent of the world’s population, the USA consumes between 20 and 40 percent of the earth’s resources. But through technological improvements, the USA has been making ever-greater amounts of natural resources available for use. Resource scarcity is less of a problem now than ever before. As Moore and Simon put it, “The essential point is that Americans are not resource destroyers but resource creators, who will leave future generations with a greater abundance of nature’s bounty.” How did it happen? The dramatic improvement in living standards during the twentieth century demands an explanation. And why did the majority of these improvements began in the USA? The answer to both of these queries is rather simple, according to Moore and Simon: "Why did so much of the progress of the past 100 years originate in the United States? Our shorthand answer is, Freedom works. The unique American formula of individual liberty and free enterprise has cultivated risk taking, experimentation, innovation, and scientific exploration on a grand scale that has never occurred anywhere before." During the twentieth century other countries also had capitalistic economies, such as Canada and Australia. But the USA had somewhat greater economic freedom leading to greater economic growth. “America got rich at such a faster pace than other nations in the 20th century quite simply because no other place on earth cultivates the entrepreneurial, inventive spirit of human beings more than the United States does.” Of course, many people think that capitalism is evil and that prosperity will result from government direction through socialism. But the empirical evidence demonstrates that socialism does not lead to economic prosperity for the average citizen (although it may lead to financial prosperity for the socialist government’s officials). According to Moore and Simon, the historical record shows that “Nations that have tried to use central planning as a formula for creating prosperity have been miserable failures.” This means that as governments get bigger and bigger, as is happening in the USA today, economic prosperity is threatened. In other words, “when government gets too big and intrusive, it can kill the goose of private enterprise that lays the golden eggs.” The bad side of the twentieth century Of course, the twentieth century also saw some terrible events that led to the deaths of millions of people. Does this contradict the Moore-Simon thesis? No. Those great tragedies were mostly caused by governments. National Socialism in Europe, and international socialism (i.e., communism) in Europe and Asia, account for the bulk of human slaughter in the twentieth century through wars and attempts to transform society. Socialism is dangerous and harmful. In this respect the bad side of the twentieth century does not contradict the optimistic view of innovation and progress offered by Moore and Simon. It was not free enterprise capitalist countries that caused those great tragedies; it was socialist countries. This bolsters their case: “The enduring lesson of the 20th century is that the only real restraint on progress is a government that smothers the human spirit.” Troubling trends Moore and Simon also acknowledge that there are some troubling trends that put a damper on their enthusiasm. Interestingly, although they don’t realize it, most of the problematic trends they identify are related to the decline of Christianity in the United States: the increase in taxes and the size of government, the decline of the traditional family, the decline in educational quality, the increase in violent crime, and the increase in suicide. These trends all occurred during the twentieth century at the same time as material conditions for human living were improving, and they are mostly cultural rather than economic. It is worth noting that God warned Israel in Deuteronomy that material prosperity can lead to apostasy. He promised to make them prosperous and then stated, "Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God (Deut. 8:11-14). The USA (along with the other Western countries) has become tremendously prosperous, and in its prosperity it has turned away from God. Christianity is no longer the powerful cultural force over American society it once was. Affluence, in other words, can have a downside by making people feel self-sufficient and no longer dependent on God. Conclusion Nevertheless, the dramatic improvement in living standards that occurred during the twentieth century is clearly a good thing. There is less poverty, less starvation, and less suffering. Who would want to return to the bad old days? The innovation and technological development that results from free enterprise capitalism increases human wellbeing over time. There are bad things happening every day, for sure. But there are also good developments that should be recognized and celebrated. These kinds of improvements will likely continue as long as governments don’t get in their way through excessive taxation and regulation. Economic freedom is a necessary condition for the material progress that reduces poverty and raises the standard of living for people around the world. Dr. Michael Wagner is the author many books, and is a regular contributor to Reformed Perspective. This article first appeared in the November 2014 issue....

Economics

BUSINESS IS BEAUTIFUL! How do you view your business?

If you are an average healthy, able-bodied North American you will spend at least half of all the waking hours in your life at work (which, for most of us, is a separate place and community from what we call “home”). You will spend the majority of the remaining available hours engaging the marketplace in some way. Given that level of involvement, it’s remarkable how negative our outlook often is of work, business and the marketplace. Work continues to receive a bad rap. The world of business is often characterized as a cold, calculating, sometimes cutthroat place where relationships are exploitative and largely dysfunctional. We might be tempted to think that, at its best, doing business should be nothing more than money changing hands. Terms like “work/life balance” indicate a prevalent notion that there is no life at work. Rather life is something we escape to after work. Similarly, a saying like “living for the weekend” would indicate that we view work as an unfortunate but necessary detour on our way to our real life. And if we’re fortunate enough to not be suffering through feelings of drudgery, perhaps we’re still at a loss as to the meaning of it all. In the Christian community especially – how many Christ followers haven’t had an inferiority complex about their work; as if church ministry was somehow a better or more faithful endeavour than whatever it is that they put their mind to from 8 AM to 5 PM each day? How many console themselves with the idea that the work they do provides funds for ministry which is where the “real meaningful” work in our world is done? A necessary evil? But is that really true? Is ministry the only way to really obey the Great Commandment and Great Commission? Is business only a necessary evil in the process? Consider what James K.A. Smith, editor of Comment magazine once wrote. When we spend our money, we are not just consuming commercial goods, we are also fostering and perpetuating ways of being human. To be a patron is to be a selector, an evaluator, and a progenitor of certain forms of cultural life. You didn’t realize that you exercised such power did you? Our entire lives, including the purchases we make and the businesses we patronize, tell a story. If we are impacting culture – if we are telling a story – as patrons, then wouldn’t we be doing the very same as producers? Our businesses are also an opportunity to impact the world around us. Consider the influence we can have in our business life with: our employees, customers, contractors and suppliers, the entrepreneurs we encourage the business leaders we meet the organizations we build, the products we develop, the work we produce, the services we deliver, the way we serve our customers and the way we cooperate with each other at work. All of this too, reflects what it is to be human. All of this too is “ministry.” Our work is a prime opportunity for us to create beauty. Not a superficial surface beauty but the kind of beauty that flows out of love. The kind of beauty that reveals something “other.” Business is an opportunity for beauty Makato Fujimura, founder of the International Arts Movement, says: Human beings cannot live for a long time in a place bereft of beauty. We hunger for beauty if we are robbed of it. True beauty nurtures our deepest longings. Our time spent at work and in the marketplace has an impact. All the time and all the resources available to us on the job and all the activities we engage in offer us an amazing opportunity to meet not just people’s physical needs but also their deepest needs and influences our understanding of what is to be human in the process. Fujimura continues… In our pragmatism, beauty and art have been exiled to the peripheral realities of our culture and our business environments. So we can approach work as something to be endured. Or we can see it as an opportunity to encourage something beautiful. Love transforms our businesses from cold, hard utilitarian structures into powerful catalysts for human flourishing. Our leadership – creativity – innovation – organization – resources and the power we’re each given, everything in the world of business tells a story. When love for God and neighbour is the driving force in our life – including our businesses – the story that that tells addresses our fellow man’s deepest longings. Because when love drives our business, “business is beautiful.” Jason Bouwman is the founder of Compass Creative (CompassCreative.ca).  Questions for further study How do you view your business? Do you see it as beautiful or a necessary evil? Why? Discuss your perspective of business with a friend or colleague. What is their feedback to you on your perspective of how you view your business? What steps can you take to help you and others see that, by design, business can be beautiful? ...

Economics

What is "Equal Pay for work of Equal Value"?

Canada's Liberal government has announced plans to bring in “equal pay for work of equal value” legislation by 2018. It would apply to almost 900,000 Canadian employees, including not only federal employees, but also anyone working in federally regulated sectors like banks and airlines. To be clear, we're not talking about "equal pay for equal work." That's the idea that if two people are doing the exact same work, and to the same quality, and for the same amount of hours – if it is exactly the same – then the federal government should pay them the same. That makes good sense. But what we have here is the government deciding they are going to intervene in situations where people are doing very different work from one another. And the government is going to figure out how much their work should be worth, and whether they are doing work "of equal value." None of the newspapers reporting on this can spot the huge glaring problem with this - they talk of it as if it is simply a matter of administrating it right. So what is the problem? Who decides how work should be valued? Consider this: how valuable is the work done by a second string back-up goaltender on an NHL team? He might still make several hundred thousand, even a million or two, and yet he's not doing all that much. Meanwhile a good teacher is helping form the next generation of minds – what could be more important? Yet this teacher isn’t likely to make even one hundred thousand. Whose job is more valuable? A bureaucrat might decide it is the teacher. But are we going to start paying our teachers millions to even it up? What we have here is an example of the "diamond water paradox." While water is more important for life than diamonds (we can't survive more than 3 days without water, but we can get by a lot longer without diamonds) water remains much, much cheaper than diamonds. Why is that? As we all know, it's because water is far more abundant than diamonds. Or to say it the other way around, diamonds are more expensive than water because they are rarer...even though they aren't more important or more useful. So something’s price is not always determined by how useful it is. There are other factors involved, and when it comes to jobs, that may also include how ready a supply there is for this position vs. that position. Teachers are in a far more abundant supply than NHL players of any type. That's why the NHL player gets more. If we start arbitrarily deciding this job is the equivalent of that one, and so both should get the same pay, only bad things can result. In our example it would either mean bumping all the teachers' salaries up substantially (which we can't afford) or lowering the goaltenders' salaries to just a hundred thousand. But if these goalies are any good they could make more than that overseas. And so, suddenly, we've created a situation in which there is a shortage of quality second-string goalies because the government restricts what they can be paid. Of course, the government isn't going to restrict goalies' pay – this is a goofy example. But the principles are just the same – the government is going to set up some sort of system of deciding what work is equal to which. And because it's going to ignore simple economic rules (like scarcity driving prices up) it's going to be a mess.  ...

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