The news has been filled with stories about institutions being forced to examine and act upon their priorities.  Most recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Our Capitulation Nation”.  We are seeing it most publicly with universities and law firms.  We have written about the importance of “priorities” in the past, but it feels like an appropriate time for a refresher.

We believe your priorities will shape your behavior, which means understanding them should itself be a priority for a faithful leader seeking to lead with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.

Refresher: Prioritizing

We devoted a post (#172–“Priority” Problems and Solutions) to a discussion of “priorities”.  Here is just a short refresher.

The word “priority” has an interesting history.  In his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown observes:

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.

Similarly, the Bible suggests a person can have only one “priority”.  In Matthew 6:24, we are told “no one can serve two masters.”

Notwithstanding the historical root of the word and the Biblical warning, today we often talk about having numerous priorities–plural priorities.  “Plural priorities” is a reality of how we use the word “priority” today, how we think about our lives, and how we think about leading an organization.

Priority problems underlie business as usual and the brokenness caused by business as usual. They are also at the root of many of the trials, fears, mistakes and missed opportunities we face in our personal lives.

Equal Priorities:  While a person (or an organization) can have “plural” priorities, they can’t have equal priorities. The nature of something having priority is that it is prior to every other “priority” other than any priority that ranks even higher.  At the end of the day, there can only be one primary priority that will win out–other “priorities” usually get reduced to being “means” or “strategies”, which means they will be sacrificed if they no longer serve the higher priority or if they jeopardize the higher priority.

Real Priorities: A person (or an organization) may say they have one priority, but they are actually pursuing a different priority–or they may think they are pursuing equal priorities, but there is a “real” priority.

Disordered Priorities: A person (or an organization) pursuing Biblical flourishing as their bigger WHY has disordered priorities when they set priorities that are not aligned with Biblical priorities.

For a faithful leader to assess whether their priorities might lead to behavior that ultimately undermines the Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined, Values and Re-Imagined Culture of their organization, the leader must make an honest assessment of their priorities and, most importantly, their ultimate priority.

The World Prioritizing

In looking at how nations, institutions, and people are taking positions contrary to what they said they stood for, the WSJ article on “capitulating” laments:

So much folding. We’re having an Origami moment. Does anyone have a backbone anymore?

We believe it has less about “backbone” and more about facing priority choices.  Remember, “equal priorities” sort themselves out and “real priorities” are revealed at the end of the day. Many of those nations, institutions, and people are being forced to make “at the end of the day” decisions based on their real higher priorities”.  A line from Warren Buffet’s 1993 letter capture these “at the end of the day” situations:

It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.

When trying to understand the decisions and actions coming out of tariff threats, educational defunding threats, and law firm de-accessing threats, one could say “follow the money“.  We think it is more appropriate to say “follow the mammon“.

We believe the spirit of mammon is pervasive in our culture and insidious.  It is the principal spirit that paves the path of business as usual–the path of business in the way of the world.  It is a spirit that can cause faithful leaders to “stumble” off the ancient path of business a better way–the path of business in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.

Andy Crouch gave a powerful talk explaining why “mammon” is not just an Aramaic word for “money”.  In fact, you might be quite astonished by his explanation of mammon based upon the understanding of the early Christian church:

We are talking about a quasi-personal, nameable power in human affairs that intends something, that has a will in the world that is opposed to the will of God . . . .   A demonic power . . . .  The early church concluded that mammon was not just an idea but the name of a being in service of . . . Satan. . . .  Mammon hates God . . . mammon hates persons . . . .  The result is treating persons like things.  Mammon wants everything to be impersonal.  You cannot serve a demon that wants to destroy persons, relationships, creation itself and also serve the true God who wants to reunite persons, restore relationships and liberate creation from its bondage to decay.  You cannot serve God and mammon.

There are really two gods from which to choose–the God of the Bible or the “gods” of this world.  Although “gods” of the world come in various forms–wealth, success, happiness, power, influence, fame, leisure–we believe they are all manifestations of the spirit of mammon.

What is being exposed is that some institutional priorities such as DEI and ESG may have been genuine priorities, but they were not ultimate priorities.  When the ultimate worldly priorities–manifestations of mammon—are threatened, lower priorities are sacrificed.

Of course, until the “end of the day”, the leader of an organization operating in alignment with business as usual can live the illusion that they care about people as much as they care about profit.  They can even do the “right thing” at the cost of some profit.  We gave an example of this in post #106 (Doing Right in Law “Without Faith”) involving the law firm Cooley LLP.

According to a WSJ article, Elon Musk wanted Cooley to fire one of it attorneys, and a Cooley partner was told that failing to fire the attorney would result in Cooley losing all of Tesla’s business.  Apparently, the Cooley attorney targeted by Musk and Tesla is a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who interviewed Musk during an SEC investigation in 2018.  The Journal article goes on to say that Cooley declined to fire the attorney, and there is evidence Musk was making good on his threat.

For a big firm like Cooley, losing a client as big as Musk was significant but probably not an “at the end of the day” choice.  They were able to maintain the priority of their values.  But the “end of the day” can come quickly.  For example:

• A 2023 Wall Street Journal headline revealed, “At Salesforce, It Is One Big Family Until Trouble Hits Home“.  Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff was apparently known for using “the Hawaiian word ‘ohana,’ or familial bonds, to describe the company’s close relationship with employees and customers.”  In announcing the layoff of thousands of employees, Benioff summed up “priority” with one phrase “Ultimately, the success of the business has to be paramount.”  When push comes to shove, the real priority surfaces.

• A recent Wall Street Journal article analyzed the decision by several large law firms to strike deals with the government in which the firms appeared to abandon some prior priorities.  The article suggests that those firms may have assessed their choice as an “at the end of the day” one, fearing the type of “death spiral” that is “a common feature of the legal industry.”

The law firms that reached agreements with the government to avoid a potential “death spiral” were prioritizing–abandoning lower priorities–to ensure sustainability.  Universities reaching agreements with the government were prioritizing–abandoning lower priorities–to retain funding.  Those fighting seem to be looking for a way to put off any “at the end of the day” choices.  If they are forced to choose, mammon is likely to win.

We devoted post #159 (Caring for People–Heart, Hype or Hustle) to looking at how an organization’s practices and positions that care for (or appear to care for) people (or the broader creation) can be driven by heart, hype, or hustle. “Hype” and “hustle” priorities are not ultimate priorities. If an organization is still stuck in business as usual with Profit as Purpose, then its caring actions or words (e.g., DEI or ESG initiatives) are likely hype or hustle.  They will likely fade away “at the end of the day”.

Priority in the Bible

We often cite Matthew 6:24 (“no one can serve two masters“) when talking about Biblical priority, but that principle weaves its way through many Biblical stories.

• God asks Abraham to choose–God or Abraham’s son Isaac.

• Jesus asks the “rich young ruler” to choose–God or money.

• In Luke 14:26 Jesus tells his followers they must choose–God or father/mother/wife/children/brothers/sisters/life (“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”)

In commenting on Matthew, Oswald Chambers observes:

Jesus is saying that the greatest concern of life is to place our relationship with God first, and everything else second.

We believe priority in the Bible is about heart.

• God didn’t actually want Abraham to kill Isaac–God just wanted to know that Abraham prioritized God over his son and was willing to sacrifice him.

• We don’t know what Jesus would have done if the rich young ruler had prioritized God and been willing to liquidate his assets.  He might have told him to give just a percentage away and keep stewarding the rest in a way that glorified God.

• Jesus isn’t really telling us to hate our family or our life–he is saying that we must prioritize God by being willing to sacrifice our relationships and even our life if God calls us in a direction that puts those at risk.

We also believe priority in the Bible is “all or nothing”.  There is no grey.  God did not give Abraham the option of just giving Isaac a little cut.  Jesus didn’t negotiate with the rich young ruler over a specified percentage or tell his disciples they might have to have a slight disagreement with family members.  God calls people of Biblical faith to make Him THE ultimate priority–the “at the end of the day” priority.

“Grey” can feel good, because it is better than black.  It also feels good because it will get affirmed–even from the church and faith community.  Grey is still black — the way of the world. Remember 1 John 2:15: “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” Grey may be better than black, but it is not the heart to which people of Biblical faith are called and commanded–not the priority required for faithful integrity.

In the words of Oswald Chambers: “The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough.”

Genesis makes clear that God cares about the flourishing of His creation, God cares about relationships, and God cares about work as a good thing that is necessary for the flourishing of creation and for our humanity as creations in God’s image.  Nothing in Genesis supports profit as the highest priority for work or for work in community through organizations. Work and organizations exist as part of God’s design for the flourishing of humans and communities.

Faithful Leaders Prioritizing

Integriosity^® is about a path to changing the heart of an organization toward a bigger purpose of maximizing Biblical flourishing anchored in the bigger WHYs of Humanizing People, Beautifying the World and Glorifying God.  That is the “at the end of the day” priority, with profit taking its proper place as a necessary means rather than the ultimate priority.

Ordering Priorities

Ordering the “real” priorities of an organization to align with Biblical priorities while operating in a broken world is not easy, and there are no easy or perfect solutions.  But we believe there are ways for a faithful leader to identify, order and balance priorities in a way that honors Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.

After leaders identify priorities, it is critical that they are ordered, recognizing that priorities, by their nature, must have a hierarchy “at the end of the day”.

In ordering priorities, those at the top should encompass those below so that the lower priorities work as a means toward the higher priorities.  For a faithful leader leading with faithful integrity, the highest priority–the only reason we were created–must be to glorify God (Isaiah 43:7).  As we have suggested in numerous posts, we believe maximization of human flourishing is the priority that itself prioritizes what God cares most about and is a means to glorify God.

One excellent example of an organization identifying faithful priorities and then recognizing the need to order them is Bandwidth.com.  Bandwith.com identified its core values as “Faith, Family, Work and Fitness . . . in that order.”

Balancing Priorities.

We live in a fallen world in which most organizations operate according to the priorities of business as usual.  A purely linear or hierarchical approach to implementing Biblical priorities misses the reality of our world and the leader’s mandate in Genesis 1:28 (the Creation Mandate) to steward the organization in that world in a sustainable manner.

A faithful leader of a business is also a “business-leader” building a business in the world.  They face pressure from governments, analysts, markets, investors, employees, and customers. Sustainability comes with financial metrics to track and hurdles to achieve.  The world of business measures success in terms of profit and growth.  Faithful leaders providing financial capital have their own duty to steward it well.  Others providing financial capital may leverage it to threaten an organization’s sustainability. We explored these tensions in post #118 (Whose “Will” Be Done).

Maintaining sustainability in a broken world will likely require seeking “third way” solutions that recognize the need to optimize profit and access financial capital in ways that continue to glorify God and do not sacrifice the Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities embedded in the organization’s Re-Imagined Purpose, Values and Culture.

We believe there are four keys to a faithful business-leader successfully balancing priorities:  Humility, Trust, Patience, and Prayer.

Humility.  Navigating the tension between the world’s priorities and God’s priorities requires Godly wisdom, and humility is a key to wisdom.  The link between humility and wisdom can be seen in Proverbs 11:2:

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.

God is the source of all wisdom, and the Bible tells us that God will give wisdom to those who ask (James 1:5).    The faithful leader who operates without the humility to recognize the need for God’s wisdom and the need to pray for guidance is destined to run aground on the rocks of the “priorities” dilemma.  An honest assessment of the “real” priority in an organization’s culture absolutely requires humility and will yield wisdom.

Trust.  Of course, even the faithful leader who has the humility to recognize the need for God’s wisdom will only get the benefit of that wisdom by trusting God’s process, timing, and outcome:

• Process: God’s process is often counter-intuitive and counter-cultural.

• Timing: God’s timing often seems excruciatingly slow.

• Outcome: God’s best outcome for a business (the “all these things” promised in Matthew 6:33) may not be the world’s best outcome.

Prayer.  The importance of prayer in pursuing Biblical priorities and “third way” solutions seems so obvious. Unfortunately, many faithful leaders do not associate God with business decisions.  Oswald Chambers observed:

In spiritual issues it is customary for us to put God first, but we tend to think that it is inappropriate and unnecessary to put Him first in the practical, everyday issues of our lives.

God’s wisdom comes through prayer.  Of course, praying for a particular process, timing and outcome is NOT praying for God’s wisdom, and ignoring God’s wisdom to pursue your own process, timing or outcome is NOT wise–it is choosing disordered priorities.

Patience:  It is difficult to read the Bible and not walk away feeling woefully impatient.  God’s story is full of people who patiently waited and persevered (the first cousin of patience) a LONG time–a VERY LONG time.  Remember Abraham (waited 25 years for Isaac), Jacob (waited 14 years to marry Rachel), and the most patient of all, Moses (40 years in exile and then 40 years in the desert).

In the midst of today’s controversies involving the strings that can be attached to Federal funding, it is only fitting to remember how Hillsdale College prioritized when facing an “at the end of the day choice:

Hillsdale’s modern rise to prominence occurred in the 1970s. On the pretext that some of its students were receiving federal loans, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare attempted to interfere with the College’s internal affairs, including a demand that Hillsdale begin counting its students by race. Hillsdale’s trustees responded with two toughly worded resolutions: One, the College would continue its policy of non-discrimination. Two, “with the help of God,” it would “resist, by all legal means, any encroachments on its independence.”

Following almost a decade of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court decided against Hillsdale in 1984. By this time, the College had announced that rather than complying with unconstitutional federal regulation, it would instruct its students that they could no longer bring federal taxpayer money to Hillsdale. Instead, the College would replace that aid with private contributions.

Hillsdale continues to carry out its original mission today, both in the classroom and nationwide, through its many outreach programs, including its monthly speech digest, Imprimis. A prayer written in the Bible that was placed inside the 1853 cornerstone of Central Hall reflects its continuing commitment: “May earth be better and heaven be richer because of the life and labor of Hillsdale College.”

Choosing, ordering and balancing Biblical priorities in leading a business is “playing the long game”, and that takes Biblical patience (and perseverance).  Placing “our relationship with God first, and everything else second” when it really is “at the end of the day” requires true heart change–crossing the Safety/Surrender Gap.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM):  I have received two degrees from Harvard–an A.B. and a J.D.  Those degrees were high on my priority list from the age of eight.  In past years (even as a student), I was proud of attending Harvard but rarely wore Harvard “swag” outside in order to avoid accusations of “showing off”.  In recent years, I still leave it at home but for different reasons.

ESSENCE: The news has been filled with stories about institutions (e.g., universities and law firms) being forced to examine and act upon their priorities.  The priorities of an organization’s leaders will shape its behavior, which means understanding those priorities should itself be a priority for a faithful leader seeking to lead with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.  Ordering the “real” priorities of an organization to align with Biblical priorities while operating in a broken world is not easy, and there are no easy or perfect solutions.  But there are ways for a faithful leader to identify, order and balance priorities in ways that honor Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.  It requires humility, trust, patience and prayer.  Scripture is clear that we can’t serve two masters–there must be one “at the end of the day” priority that wins.  In the kingdom of the world, that priority is mammon, in its various forms.  For a faithful leader seeking to align the heart of an organization with the beliefs, principles and priorities of God’s Kingdom, that priority must be glorifying God.

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Photo Credit: Original image by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash
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