Ethics and Business

The talk of business ethics is a strange one. You have to believe that cold, nebulous organizations can carry human traits to believe that a business can be ethical. I personally don't in the same way I don't believe a country can have a faith.

I mull over the concept of America being a Christian nation a lot...mostly because I hear the phrase so much. Every day, I believe it less...not because of what's going on today, but because I simply cannot see how a nation founded on the murder of natives and theft of Africans can ever call itself Christian while taking any genuine consideration for what being Christian actually means...and that's regardless of how many copies of the 10 Commandments are posted on school walls.

Seth Godin recently wrote a piece on business ethics that really hit home for me...not just in the discussion of America as a Christian nation, but in the more personal and applicable realm of my work and purchasing life. You can read it here, but here are some of my favorite quotes.

"It's not business, it's personal."

"only people can have ethics"

"You either do work you are proud of, or you work to make the maximum amount of money."

"Business is too powerful for us to leave our humanity at the door of the office."

...and I thought it was just Mark Gungor

My mother told me about this show she heard on Moody today. She endures the "Family Life" segment to listen to Chuck Swindoll.

I thought it was only Mark Gungor encouraging people to marry ASAP because of their urges. Looks like I was wrong. I don't even know what to say to this. The glaring straw man of career-hungry women who are actively putting off marriage and family to establish themselves is just insulting. I can say this honestly and after knowing a lot of women in different kinds of churches...I haven't met one woman who wasn't open to the prospect of marriage to a decent man when God brought it into her life. Not one woman have I met has turned down a relationship because of school or work or fun or whatever. I'm calling straw woman.

I...can't...the logic is so glaringly backwards I'm almost at a loss for words. I do not see the sense in teaching teenagers abstinence-only sex education but then telling them, as they get older and more in control of their hormones, that they should marry the first thing they see sitting next to them. That's the very definition of mixed messages.

Perhaps the scariest part though, is the lesson it teaches. To tell someone to marry as early as possible teaches them not only that you cannot grow as a Christian in the strength to manage sexual desires, but actively gives them an excuse to cheat when, 10 years into their marriage, they meet someone they find more attractive.

All I see is a complete unwillingness to address the problems that young people are bringing to the church. Instead of confronting the difficulties of life today (with advice they'll need in the future if they marry), they're hearkening back to a time when things were "better" ("for whom?" I always wonder) and forcing behavior that was simply a by-product of survival as if it were the root of it all.

Couple all this with Pat Robertson's recent endorsement of male infidelity, disguised in advice on being forgiving and the divorce rate being higher within the church makes 100% sense. Put the two together and I'm beginning to think it's all actively engineered to get men children and wives as early as possible and allow them all the sexual freedom they desire once they've found a woman to be faithful to them and keep their house.