[.text-color-blue]Invest in what you believe in.[.text-color-blue]

“Do whatever is necessary to encourage him to think of investing as this incomprehensive and massive magic machine where money goes in the front and then (voila!) even larger piles of money come out the back. Help him to think of investing as wizardry, something utterly incomprehensible. Then he won’t ask many questions, and he’ll mindlessly play along with all our schemes.”- Eventide in the voice of C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape

What’s your investment philosophy?

Does it align with your life philosophy? Does it align with your core beliefs?

For the followers of Jesus, this should be a simple answer, yet the truth is that it’s complicated and for most of us it’s not consistent.

One of the most simple investment philosophies is, “invest in the S&P 500 and don’t take it out when the market goes down.” If you’ve invested this way for the last five years, your return is approximately 75% increase on your investment — not bad.

This is simple, but is the focus on the right thing?

Our investments may be doing well as a means — creating more means — but to what ends? What are the companies in the S&P 500 doing with the money?

“One thing I would say is that ownership not only means that you are sharing in the profits in that business going forward… but it also means that you're rooting for that company. Right? So when you're investing in a company like a tobacco company, and if you're investing in the S&P 500, you are investing in tobacco and you're profiting from children in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia smoking cigarettes.” - Robin John, Eventide Investments, Author of The Good Investor

Can you root for that?

Most of us are invested in the S&P and / or the Dow Jones Industrials. How is it that it has become so common for us to invest in things that are bad for other people? 

Our Error  

The premise is we — including me — make this mistake out of complacency not from malicious hypocrisy. 

It’s a category separation error. The moment we open an investment account, a different operating system runs. It’s the financial world’s OS — risk, return, diversification, time horizon — and Jesus is not in the room.

This should not be the case! 

Here’s the analogy: most believers don’t think of eating lunch as a spiritual activity either. It’s just lunch. Investing is just investing. It lives in the “neutral” bucket — because we are tricked into believing there are parts of life where faith and God’s Word are not relevant we defer to the experts in that domain.

Jesus doesn’t have a neutral bucket.

Our work and investing is a spiritual activity because we are primarily spiritual beings. 

If Jesus is our Lord, He is Lord of everything — everything — all things have been created through Jesus and for Jesus (Colossians 1:16). The intentional or unintentional separation we make is fundamentally a spiritual mistake.

Ends vs Means 

Our focus on means leads to death and destruction. The Ukraine and Iran wars are both primarily over means. The world's focus on oil and other commodities leads to ends that spiral out of control.

When we invest for a purely financial return we are deploying a means approach. We have something we want the money to do, but we don’t consider what the money is doing before it returns to us.

We may often consider the end result for our investment. Here is an example: we want to raise and support our children so that they can flourish in this world and the next - end goal. We see college as an important means to their life success and college costs a lot of money so we invest our means to maximize the amount of means for our children.

We don’t intentionally use our means to support companies that are harming other people and leading them down the wrong road of pornography or alcoholism, but we do and this leads to disastrous ends. 

Ultimate Ends 

Jesus tells us to seek His kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). When we seek and find His kingdom, we learn to risk our means to help our family members, coworkers, and neighbors find the love of Jesus. 

The Apostle Paul surrendered his means so that others might join him in God’s kingdom, “I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.” - [.no-reftag]1 Corinthians 10:33[.no-reftag]. God gives us means for us to bring people to better ends. 

God has given us the gift of discernment and His word to guide us. He has given us means to flourish. As we apply them correctly, we are able to understand how to put everything toward the ultimate end. The goal of our lives and what we want for others.

Whose Kingdom Are You Building?

Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is now here on earth (Matthew 4:17) and invites His followers to join Him in building it now — on earth as it is heaven (Matthew 6:10). 

All day everyday we are invited to do excellent work - to invest with excellence that blesses others and leads others to know Jesus. This is how to invest for the glory of God and for the blessing of others. This truth is so simple we can graph it! 

Accept Jesus’ invitation to join Him in building God's kingdom with all you have been given for the life and flourishing of others (1 John 5:12). 

Put everything toward one thing — one end. Use your gifts and talents as well as your time and treasure toward one end — that never ends. 

Join us for our series on Redemptive Investing including:

1. Good and Bad Investments — the group will discuss examples of each (this week - sign up!)
2. The Unified Life — Your dollars should go where your life already goes
3.  Redemptive Investing in Practice — What this actually looks like

Resources: 

Article: Unadulterated Strategy — Putting Everything Toward One Thing | Howard Graham 

Article: Straighten Your Aim | Howard Graham 

Article: The Impossible Is Possible | Howard Graham

Article: Don’t Work for Money | Howard Graham

Podcast: Confronting Injustices Through Good Investing | Robin John 

Book: The Good Investor | Robin John 

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