“Help us, God, to live in the abundance for which you made us, and to bring that abundance to every part of your world.” So ends the preamble to the most profound creed of Christian business I’ve ever encountered.
Creeds enable us to tap into the best of ourselves, in every aspect, all at once. We take all the highpoints of our personal growth, and we distill them into a simple statement, with the hopes that we can capture our very best selves, best moments, in every area, and then review and distill them, always improving, balancing all our mountain tops onto a single moment.
But creeds are only effective if we do the hard work to identify those mountain tops, communicate them, and review them. The problem is we forget what we learn, so we end up learning the same lessons over and over. History, doomed to repeat itself. Mountain top leads to valley, and we have to learn again how we are to live in this world.
This creed is called “The Rule of Life” (subtitle: “For Redemptive Entrepreneurs”) and is presented to us for our consideration from a third-party, a Christian non-profit called Praxis Labs. (Creeds are also transferrable, so we can learn from others and adopt some of their mountain tops too!)[1]
The Rule of Life clearly defines what they believe to be the Truth about life, specifically in the categories of time, money, imagination, decision-making, power, and community.
I’ve found it to be very helpful and enriching.
About time, the creed says, “Instead of endless productivity, we practice a rhythm of work and rest, attending to our need to grow in all the dimensions of being human: heart, soul, mind, and strength.” On our best days, we know busyness and productivity don’t satisfy, and this reminds us of that.
About money, it says, “Instead of being preoccupied with money and possessions, we practice simplicity and generosity.” We have learned that money doesn’t satisfy, but we always forget that; and while it defies logic that giving would bring us more joy, this keeps us centered.
About imagination: “Instead of having our imagination saturated by media, we seed to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.” The hard work of mental renewal will prove more satisfying than running to entertainment for reprieve.
About decision making: “Instead of willful autonomy in decision making, we practice active dependence on God.” We are always tempted to go rogue and trust ourselves. Christians are people who have learned that never works out.
About power: “Instead of accumulating power to benefit ourselves to exploit others, we use it to generate possibility for those who have less access to opportunity.” The temptation to accumulate power for our own gain is real, but we know that path leads to internal death.
About community: “Instead of individualism and isolation, we practice real presence with others who are not part of our daily work.” We are tempted to withdraw into our circles, but we know that leads to an isolation that drains the soul.
That is just a summary; there is a lot of gold in “The Rule of Life” and I highly recommend it.
If we go back to the preamble, you’ll see the context for the entire creed: “Help us, God, to live in the abundance for which you made us, and to bring that abundance to every part of your world.”
All of those issues are placed within the context of abundance, a presupposition clearly Christian in its definition, because the Christian God is the Creator of all things good and is Himself infinitely good, with infinitely good things in His right hand, ready to release for us.
If our memories were perfect, we would never repeat the past, always living on the mountain top, climbing higher and higher as we live and learn.
And if we always acted on principal, never susceptible to the dark draw of cheap temptation, and knock-off perversions, creeds would be unnecessary, even redundant.
But be that as it may, there is a line between wishful thinking and reality, and what it means to toe that line, to live in the possibilities of your potential, is to develop a clear, rule of life.