The Business as Mission Network is a blog that every Christian should keep up with. Not only does it provide great tips and encouragement to entrepreneurs who are trying to spread the Kingdom of God, it’s also a definitive example of showing of what an encompassing Christian world-view is supposed to look like.

I really appreciate how they attempt to break the myth and improper stereotypes of the greedy businessman. In a recent post, they discuss the profit motive:

The wide-standing perception is that business is primarily about maximizing profits. However, the true purpose of business is to provide a vehicle for serving others through efficient delivery of useful goods and services. When this objective is pursued, there will be an opportunity for profit. Profit is like oxygen—it allows a company to grow and continue to serve others effectively. Another prevailing notion is that nonprofit organizations are inherently nobler than for-profit organizations. But there is no direct correlation between lack of profit and benefit to society. In fact, the greater the product or service’s benefit to the recipient, the greater the potential for profit. We cannot consider business ignoble or unspiritual because it is profitable.

This type of thinking needs to be spread once more throughout the population if we want our society to continue to prosper. Right now, the trend seems to be to punish the profitable, simply because they’re profitable and therefore are greedy and care about nothing else but that profit.

The truly noble businessman serves others and creates profit, mutual wealth, and goodwill by involving himself in voluntary exchanges. All of our innovations and advances in civilization have come about precisely because of this motive.

It would do us well not to confuse these noble businessmen with those I like to call the slimy pickpockets. Slimy pickpockets might have once been true businessmen, but have long since given into the temptation to gain undeserved profit by allying themselves with government to receive tax revenue, and therefore get a huge base of involuntary customers that they don’t really have to serve.

The other word for these tax revenues is “subsidies”, and they are one of the great evils forced upon the American people by a government overstepping it’s bounds. While these slimy pickpockets do deserve blame heaped upon them, it’s hard for a business to reject money that is essentially free and helps reduce competition. No businessman starts out with desiring to be a slimy pickpocket.

So once again we have an example of how government influence corrupts what is originally good and wholesome. The power and coercion implicit in all government actions simply does not mesh with free, voluntary trade.

Christian entrepreneurs must resist the temptation to take candy out of the government’s overflowing hand or they may quickly find themselves in a place they never expected to be: slaves to the will of government, and not to the will of their customers.

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