“Faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.”  If you’ve read even one of our posts, you have seen this phrase–possibly several times.  It is by far our most repeated group of words. In fact, when we tried having ChatGPT read a post to suggest language tightening, it tried to stop us from including the phrase in full more than once. We ignored that advice, because it’s such an important idea about what we hope faithful leaders will be convicted to pursue.  If you haven’t read a lot of posts, you might be wondering–“But what does it all mean?”

As we reach post #300, it seems fitting to do a little refresher on the three key concepts embedded in that phrase: faithful integrity, business a better way, and Biblical flourishing.

Faithful Integrity

People generally see “doing good”, being ethical, and having integrity as good things–but the home page of our website asserts that faithful integrity is more than “doing good” or being ethical, and we even dedicated a post to explaining why “Integrity Is Not Enough.” Those are good things–but we believe they are “goods” in a broken world that can satisfy a faithful leader with less than God’s best.

The word “integrity” has a few meanings. In our experience, when most people hear the word “integrity”, their minds go to the “honest” and “moral” meaning. However, integrity is far more than honesty or incorruptibility—it means complete and undivided. These two meanings point to the critical deficiency in the word integrity, by itself, to serve as a plumb line for the leader of an organization who professes a Biblical faith. It lacks a transcendent anchor.

Rick Warren once described integrity as follows: “Integrity is uncorrupted motivation. It means you do the right thing, and you do it for the right reason.” But does the word integrity tell us what’s “right”? The Cambridge Dictionary presents an individual meaning of “moral” as well as a communal one, but it is the communal one that matters in leading an organization of humans in the context of various stakeholders such as owners, customers and vendors (emphasis added):

Behaving in ways considered by most people to be correct and honest.

We think it is fair to say that the universe of behavior “most people” in the United States agree is “correct and honest” has been shrinking. In To Change the World, James Hunter considers the ties that bind the world today:

The question of how societies hold together gains new poignancy in a world like ours, where even a minimal consensus of sensibilities, dispositions, and attitudes seems elusive, where there are even fewer beliefs, ideals, commitments, and hopes held deeply in common, where there are few if any real and meaningful traditions observed or binding public rituals practiced. . . . [I]n response to a thinning consensus of substantive beliefs and dispositions in the larger culture, there has been a turn toward politics as a foundation and structure for social solidarity. But politicization provides a framework of expectations and action and very little substantive content. In a diverse society, ideological polarization is a natural expression of the contest to provide that content.

The word “integrity” is deficient as an anchor for leadership and organizational behavior because it relies on “morals” as an anchor, but morals can’t serve as an anchor unless we agree on what they are. The reality is that, as a society, we do not. Just think about the issues that were once “considered by most people to be correct and honest” in American society and that have been politicized. Sadly, our society is moving ever closer to the situation described in Judges 21:25, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” In his book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observes:

Anomie, it seems to me, aptly describes the state we inhabit today: a world of relativism, nonjudgmentalism, subjectivity, autonomy, individual rights, and self‑esteem. The gains of this long process have been many, but the loss, too, has been profound. The revolutionary shift from “We” to “I” means that everything that once consecrated the moral bonds binding us to one another—faith, creed, culture, custom, and convention—no longer does so. The energy now localized in the “I” has been diverted from family, congregation, and community, all of which have now grown weak, leaving us vulnerable and alone.

The definition of integrity points us to the path for a faithful leader‑-an anchor for behavior and wholeness‑-but, in today’s world, the word alone lacks the power needed to guide a faithful leader on the path toward what we believe is God’s purpose for work and business. We need more, and we think we can find it in what Scripture tells us about King David.

In Psalm 86:11, King David asked to “unite” his heart (ESV) or give him an “undivided” heart (NIV). Indeed, we learn in Psalm 78:72 that he led with “upright heart” (ESV) or “integrity of heart” (NIV). But anchor-less “integrity” alone does not tell us enough to know whether a person is “complete and undivided” in pursuing the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of the world. A person can also have integrity of heart in their wickedness, their pursuit of worldly treasure or pleasure, or simply their pursuit of what they think is “right”.

Contrary to the increasingly predominant cultural view that there is no “truth” (other than scientific truth) and each person has the “right” to decide what’s “right”, Deuteronomy 12:8 makes very clear that following “what is right” in your own eyes is not the way of God’s Kingdom. David’s prayer in Psalm 86:11 is twofold—he first prays “teach me your way Lord that I may walk in your truth” and then prays for a united heart. First, he asks to learn the transcendent WHY and then asks to be undivided in his pursuit of it. That is “faithful integrity”.  It is leading a complete and undivided life in alignment with God’s way—in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.

Business a Better Way

Business a better way is business in accordance with the Kingdom of God–business in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.  It’s the way God intends business to function in His Kingdom, encompassing both how the business operates and the WHY toward which it is managed–its heart.

Business a better way is best understood by contrast to the alternative of business as usual–business in “the way of the world” or, more precisely, according to “the kingdom of the world”. Every faithful leader must ultimately choose between these kingdoms.

Business as usual is “everywhere.” It is:

• Business as taught in business schools and management training programs.

• Business as rewarded by management, boards, and stockholders.

• Business as demanded by investors, fund managers, and stock analysts.

• Business as described by Milton Friedman in 1970, when he famously wrote, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.”

We are born and indoctrinated into a culture that says work is about making money, business is about profit, ministry is sacred (and spiritually superior), and business is secular (and spiritually inferior). Sadly, many people who profess Biblical faith never escape this prison because they have never been taught otherwise — the church has largely failed to lift the veil and in many cases has helped create the veil through bad theology (or poor communication of good theology) that we call faith as usual. In the words of Max De Pree:

Unless somebody articulates something different, you are going to adopt a secular standard without even thinking about it.

There are several key attributes of business as usual that set it at odds with God’s Kingdom (such as assumptions of scarcity and self‑interest and “can we” ethics rather than “should we” ethics), but the most important is its essential WHY — the ultimate priority that drives the behavior of its participants. With business as usual, the ultimate priority of the business is profit. Like a person, an organization can have only one ultimate ambition or identity — one true “heart”. Matthew 6:24 tells us, “No one can serve two masters”. Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed this principle as:

Our hearts have room only for one all‑embracing devotion . . . . Every competitor to that devotion must be hated.

If profit is the “end” to which a business is managed, then, by definition, people can never be more than a “means” — tools of production to be managed toward that end. The choice of the world’s way or God’s way for any business is first a choice between making the ultimate priority of the business what the world values or what God values.

The Bible is crystal clear about how God prioritizes profit and people. Jesus sums up all the commandments as love God and love your neighbor. 1 Timothy 6:10 tells us that the love of money (not money itself) is the root of evil. Business a better way requires changing the heart of the organization by putting profit in its proper place as a necessary means rather than an ultimate purpose. But what is the ultimate purpose for business and work–the bigger WHY–that God values?

The Bible offers one ultimate WHY for our work, i.e., the purpose for our skills and gifts.

• Isaiah 43:7 declares that glorifying God is the WHY for which we were created.

• 1 Corinthians 10:31 reinforces that glorifying God is the WHY behind everything we do—including work.

• 1 Peter 4:10‑11 says we are called to use our gifts to “serve one another” in a way that glorifies God.

The goal of leading with “faithful integrity through business a better way” requires aligning not only the ultimate priority but also the behavior of the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities. We have focused on (and devoted entire posts to) four principles we have called “First Things”: Righteousness, Kingdom, Love and Humility. These key Biblical principles that form the foundation of Integriosity are embedded in the word itself: Integrity includes the components Righteousness and Kingdom and Generosity includes the components Love and Humility.

If core to leading with “faithful integrity through business a better way” is having an ultimate WHY of glorifying God, we believe the maximization of Biblical flourishing is how a faithful leader leading with “faithful integrity through business a better way” pursues that ultimate WHY.

Biblical Flourishing

Faithful integrity, pursued through business a better way, leads to the third concept in our phrase: Biblical flourishing—the “toward” that gives direction to the journey. Just as profit is the daily goal and metric for business as usual—the “end” toward which every decision is directed—Biblical flourishing is the daily goal and fruit for business a better way. It is what the organization pursues and maximizes every day through how it operates, how it treats people, and the decisions it makes.

As we described in post #200 (Prioritize Biblical Flourishing), the idea of flourishing–particularly human flourishing or how to be “happy” and experience “well-being”–has become very popular in recent years. When we talk about “flourishing”, we use the term “Biblical flourishing”.

In one sense, we mean something narrower than the concept of flourishing that has become popular, because we are focused on flourishing in the context of organizational stakeholders and the purpose and practice of work and organizations rather than general human well‑being. In another sense, our “Biblical flourishing” is much broader than the positive psychology concept, because it encompasses the flourishing of all God’s creation rather than just human well‑being.

Our idea of Biblical flourishing has its roots in the Creation Mandate (i.e., the commandment to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth), Imago Dei (i.e., that every person was created in the image of God), the Golden Rule, the two great commandments (love God and love your neighbor), the New Commandment (love others as God loves). Biblical flourishing is also grounded in the truth that humans were given unique gifts to serve others and were created for the ultimate purpose of glorifying God.

Scripture makes clear that God wants his creation to flourish, and humans are his highest creation.  God gave us work as a good thing before the Fall as a way to pursue flourishing not only for ourselves as productive and creative image-bearers but for the rest of his creation. If we were made for the purpose of glorifying God, and God made us to seek the flourishing of his creation through our work, then it must follow that making the pursuit of Biblical flourishing the ultimate WHY of our work glorifies God.

God Prioritizes Flourishing.

We know God cares deeply about the flourishing of his creation, because it is the focus of the very first assignment and the very first command given to his image-bearers.  It is the assignment in Genesis 2:15 and the command in Genesis 1:28, sometimes referred to as the Creation Mandate (or the Cultural Mandate):

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

We are not just another species of animal created to co‑exist alongside all others. We are to “have dominion” over, and to take care of, the rest of God’s creation. Although “dominion” sounds ominous and, on its face, seems to hold the potential to justify abusing the earth and its creation, theologians seem pretty confident that it means “stewardship”. Remember, the Bible is full of passages reminding us that God continues to own everything, and we are commanded to “have dominion” in the context of God’s continuing ownership. We are to care for God’s creation as its stewards as he would care for it.

In our role as stewards, we are to create life and order just as the owner created life and order‑-“be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it“.  The Creation Mandate extends our responsibility for flourishing beyond merely human flourishing to the flourishing of all God’s creation.

God placed us here to subdue and bring order to the world. We are to cultivate nature to enable it to flourish. This includes creating life sustaining and life affirming products and culture. It includes “subduing” through the creation of social structures such as governments that keep people safe and provide public services and organizations that allow humans to work together in relationship to accomplish what a single person could not do alone. Because we live in a broken world, we also fulfill the Creation Mandate by solving problems and “repairing” the world–what is captured in the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam.

Remarkably, Genesis 2:5 shows us that God’s creation needs our work in order to flourish:

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.

The world was created to need our creativity and productivity in order to flourish, and God’s first assignment and command was for us to steward it to flourishing. Nothing was growing because God had not yet created humans to “work the ground”.  Glorifying God is our purpose, and the pursuit of Biblical flourishing is the WHY that aligns our work with that purpose.

Flourishing Through Business and Organizations.

It is critical to remember that the Creation Mandate includes “subduing” through the creation of culture and social structures such as organizations. As God’s creative image‑bearers fulfilling the Creation Mandate, we create organizations so that we can use our skills and gifts collectively to fulfill God’s purpose for work in ways we could never do individually.

An organization is simply a group of people working together toward a common goal. Its ultimate purpose must be derived from and reflect the ultimate purpose of those it brings together.  If people are created and called to glorify God by bringing Biblical flourishing to the world, then an organization of people must exist to do the same, which means it must be managed in a way that encourages, rather than hinders, its people living out that divine calling. From a Biblical perspective, business and organizations have intrinsic Kingdom value because they are an extension of God’s creation and derive their purpose from God’s purpose for us.

Done rightly, business allows us to glorify God by bringing Biblical flourishing through the creation of solutions to the material challenges of human life, and through the economic prosperity that makes those solutions affordable and accessible in a way that cares for all creation. It also offers jobs–vehicles for people to flourish by fulfilling their humanity and purpose–living out the Creation Mandate, Imago Dei, the Golden Rule, and the commandments to love God and love each other through service. Because we live in a broken world, business also fulfills the Creation Mandate by solving problems and “repairing” the world.

Biblical flourishing is the comprehensive wholeness (Shalom) that flows from living and working in accordance with God’s design for humans, organizations, and creation. We summarize the Biblical purposes of work and organizations‑-the bigger WHYs that lead to Biblical flourishing‑-as threefold:

Humanize People: An organization humanizes people when it provides opportunities for them to be engaged in meaningful work that unleashes their God‑given productivity and creativity and creates economic prosperity in a culture of Shalom built on Biblical principles of relationships, community, human dignity, and flourishing. In the process, they become more “fully human” and able to flourish.

Beautify the World: An organization adds to the beauty of the world and assists in God’s restorative plan for His Kingdom by creating opportunities, economic prosperity, goods and services, and by solving problems and “repairing” the world, in ways that help families and communities to flourish, and by extending its culture of Shalom to all creation it touches. In the process, the work of the organization takes on deeper meaning for its own people.

Glorify God: An organization glorifies God and loves its neighbors principally through serving people–by providing opportunities for individuals to express aspects of their God‑given identities in creative and meaningful work, by providing opportunities, economic prosperity, goods and services, and by solving problems and “repairing” the world, in ways that enable families and communities to flourish, and by creating a culture of Shalom conducive to the flourishing of all creation it touches.

The ultimate priority of Glorifying God comes through the Biblical flourishing created by Humanizing People and Beautifying the World.

Although the nature of an organization is that it has intrinsic value because it is a creation of God’s image‑bearers fulfilling (whether or not knowingly) the Creation Mandate, an organization’s full intrinsic Kingdom value in God’s design can only be realized if its faithful leaders pursue faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.

That’s why–after 300 posts–we refuse to shorten the phrase even if AI says we should.  “Faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing” is our most repeated phrase because it captures the heart of what we believe God calls faithful leaders to pursue. Each word matters. Each concept is essential. Together, they point to a Jeremiah 6:16 ancient path.

Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM):  The phrase “faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing” didn’t exist at the time of post #1 in January 2020. It evolved over time as I reflected and prayed and refined the message of Integriosity.  But all of its component parts have been there since the beginning–faithful integrity, business a better way and flourishing.  The phrase came together for the first time in post #202.  Thank you to those who are on the journey with me–whether starting from post #1 or from starting from this post #300.

SPOILER ALERT: For those who joined the journey recently or even somewhere in the middle, post #301 will be an index with links to the first 300.

ESSENCE: “Faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.” It is by far our most repeated group of words. Particularly for readers new to this journey, that phrase deserves unpacking: what does it really mean? As we reach post #300, it seems fitting to do a little refresher on the three key concepts embedded in that phrase. The word “integrity” is deficient as a plumb line for faithful leadership and organizational behavior because it lacks a transcendent anchor. Faithful integrity is leading a complete and undivided life in alignment with God’s anchors in Scripture. In contrast to business as usual in the way of the kingdom of the world, business a better way is business in accordance with the Kingdom of God–business in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.  It is the way we believe God intends business to function in his Kingdom, encompassing both how the business operates and, more importantly, the WHY toward which it is managed–its heart. Faithful integrity, pursued through business a better way, leads to the third concept in our phrase: Biblical flourishing. This is both the daily goal and the daily fruit—the “toward” that gives direction to the journey. It is the comprehensive wholeness (Shalom) that flows from living and working in accordance with God’s design for humans, organizations, and creation—expressed through the three bigger WHYs: Humanize People, Beautify the World, and Glorify God. This vision goes far beyond “doing good”, being ethical or making cosmetic changes to an organization without changing its heart. Those are good–but we believe they are “goods” that, in a broken world, can satisfy a faithful leader with less than God’s best. “Faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing” is our most repeated phrase because it captures the heart of what we believe God calls faithful leaders to pursue. Each word matters. Each concept is essential. Together, they point to a Jeremiah 6:16 ancient path for faithful leaders. 

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