global business, alienation and the image of god

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Global Business, Alienation and the Image of God

Byron Elliott, P.E. Technip, USA / Vineyard Church of Katy

Katy, TX

For the Society of Vineyard Scholars April 2014

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Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and went to live in the land of Midian. .

. Moses agreed to stay with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his

daughter. She gave birth to a son whom he named Gershom: for he said, “I have

been a stranger in a strange land.”

- Exodus 2:15b,21-22

Well, I ain't feelin' happy about the state of things in my life

But I'm workin' to make it better with a six of Miller High Life.

Just drinkin' and a-drivin', makin' sure my dues get paid

Because alienation's for the rich and I'm feeling a-poorer every day.

A hey, hey, hey.

- They Might Be Giants - Alienation's For The Rich

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1. Introduction

A prevailing narrative within the church and much of Western culture is that global business is

characterized by greed, oppression, despoiling the environment and war-mongering. Starting from this

narrative “evaluations” of global business are made. These reflexive anti-globalization and anti-

capitalist critiques are typically found to be extremely unhelpful and unpersuasive for those in global

business being critiqued. Either the critiques don’t correspond to the realities that are experienced in

global business or the “blame” looks to be wholly misplaced. Since the typical critiques claim that the

problems are inherent in globalized capitalism, failure to find much in the way that is recognizable tends

to negate the effectiveness of the critique. Certain issues that look easy from an urban, middle/upper-

class western perspective often don’t translate well even into a rural western perspective, let alone a

perspective of someone from a developing nation. Child labor is a good example of this. Environmental

issues are another. Issues often need contextualization and are more complex than usually presented.

We appear to have two completely different plausibility structures.

My purpose is not to litigate these issues in this paper, but to recognize that the church and business are

not even having a conversation, if we’re talking to each other at all. If the church and business can’t

engage in a discourse that both sides can understand (and are willing to engage in) then the valid

insights that we have for each never come to fruition. Iron sharpens iron, but only so long as they come

into contact. Otherwise, you end up with two estranged camps, with the church and academy placing

the blame on business for presumed greed, immorality, mean-spiritedness and lack of intelligence, and

business placing the blame on the Church for presumed wrong-headedness, ignorance, pride, jealousy

and political prejudices. That’s not the best foundation for discourse. I want spaces of intersection

where we can engage.

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Christian anthropology presents one potential place for common ground for dialogue. The tools are in

place (at least to a large extent) - the church and academy bringing the theological and philosophical

tools, and business bringing the empirical and experiential tools.

Jared Boyd’s 2013 paper By the Sweat of Thy Brow: Toward a Spiritual Theology of Bodily Labor focuses

on bodily labor as a means of embracing the limits placed on our work and being conformed to the

image of God. Boyd is interested in bodily labor -- labor on a personal scale and a limited horizon.

Business needs labor addressed on a larger scale. Supply of the necessities of life – food, clothing,

housing material, energy - has for the last two centuries been an interconnected web spanning the

globe. With an interconnected world, the effects of our work, and thus to some extent it’s meaning,

won’t be found in our immediate proximity or even our community or our country, but will be found in

its effect globally. Likewise, the issues and problems related to work is more and more a complex

question, not easily reduced to simple models like manual labor. I want to explore not just idealized,

local, manual labor, but global, interconnected labor.

One of the problems with labor that Boyd identifies is “alienation.” This is not an atypical complaint,

but alienation is a concept that, in its modern, psychological form, is foreign to the Bible. The Bible

certainly understands “alien” in the sense of being literally a “stranger in a strange land1,” but not the

modern sense that begins to arise in the 18th and 19th century, following particularly Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. However, the concept of “alienation” has become fairly embedded in our

modern discourse. I’ll explore alienation and look at it through a lens of a Christian anthropology and

see where this leads.

2. Alienation

1 Exodus 2:22b

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The foundation of the concept of alienation of labor is essentially Marxist with Marx building on Ludwig

Feuerbach’s modification of Hegel’s philosophy of “alienation”. For Marx, alienation is separation of

things which should naturally be together in harmony. Marx rejects the “spiritual” basis of Hegel and

Feuerbach for alienation and substitutes a materialistic basis, with the cause of the alienation to be

found in capitalism. Marx identifies four types of alienation for labor in his “Economic and Philosophic

Manuscripts of 1844”2: 1. Alienation of the worker from his work; 2. Alienation of the worker from

working; 3. Alienation of the worker from himself; 4. Alienation of the worker from other workers.

That there are limitations to our enjoyment and efficacy and our ability to find meaning or even

humanity in our work is obvious from our direct experience and observation. We recognize the reality

of the toil and brokenness of work. “Alienation” is one of the words used for this truth. However, the

problems with alienation of labor extend far beyond “capitalist” systems. I want to recast alienation of

labor, removing it from a Marxist context and providing it with a Christian context.

Alienation in a Marxist context is the result of capitalism (another Marxist term, it should be noted),

taking a romantic view of pre-industrial work and contrasting that with industrial work and business.3

However, as Miroslav Volf points out, “the fundamental form of alienation cannot be alienating work,

but alienation from God.”4 Therefore, we should recognize that any “alienation” associated with work

has its roots in the Fall and long precedes current economic arrangements. The fundamental cause is a

“Genesis 3” cause. Miroslav Volf further points out that “the extent to which work negates human

nature, it is alienating; and to the extent that work corresponds to human nature, it is humane.”5

Alienation is failing to act (and be) in a way that corresponds to our nature. Our nature is a Genesis 1

nature: “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he

2 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm 3 (though this is not really what Marx himself did). 4 Volf, p163 5 Volf, p168

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created them.”6 We are created in the image of God. Our nature is to be the image-bearers of God. If

we accept Marx’s description of alienation as the separation of things which should naturally be held in

harmony, if we are made in the image of God, then separation from that image is alienation

3. IMAGE OF GOD

The Bible itself is not explicit on what is meant by the Image of God, simply stating that we are made in

“the image and likeness of God.”7 There are (broadly) three traditional views on what is meant by the

“Image of God” – Substantive, Relational and Functional.8 I’ll look at these different views and then look

at Marx’s categories, substituting a misalignment with the Image of God for the “capitalist” system, with

a specific focus on the Functional view of the Image of God.

In the Substantive View, we are made in the Image of God because we have specific attributes of God.

We are in the image of God because (depending on the tradition) we have reason, ability to discern

good from evil, free will, etc. This is the classical view of the Church and of some contemporary

theologians such as Millard Erickson9, J. Gresham Machen, Anthony Hoekema and Meredith Kline.10

The Relational View is “the Image of God as experiencing relationship.”11 We are said to be in the image

or to display the image when we stand in a particular relationship. In fact, that “relationship is the

image…The image of God is not an entity which we possess so much as the experience which is present

when a relationship is active.”12 We are the Image of God as we are in relationship with God and with

6 Genesis 1:27, Genesis 5:2 7 Genesis 1:27b 8 Erickson, p164-166 9 Ericson, p164 10 Nengean, p1 11 Erickson, p164 12 Erickson, p164

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each other. Most contemporary theologians fall into this category, including Emil Brunner, Karl Barth, G.

C. Berkouwer and Jürgen Moltmann.13

A third view is the Functional view of the image of God. God’s Image as “understood through the

conceptual grid of God’s call upon humanity to specific activity.”14 We are made in the image of God “in

terms of what humans do, or are supposed to do, according to the call of God. Human function rather

than something we are, have, or experience relationally is what sets us apart as human.”15

God is the Triune God. This Trinity can be described functionally in their work as Creator, Redeemer and

Sustainer. God in image and reality is triune in nature and the work of God is triune in nature. This work

reflects the need to do three different, if inter-related, things – regarding the work of God. First is

Creator. This recognizes that the world as originally created (Eden) is not the world that was to be the

end (New Jerusalem). The world begins as a garden, an act solely of God and in the end is a city, the

work of God and humans. So, even from the beginning, there was continued creative work to do in the

world. The second role, redeemer, is to recover from the loss caused by the Fall. To get back what was

lost from the original creation. The third is sustainer. This is a falling, not merely a fallen, world that is

in a state of continual decay (entropy), and an enormous amount of work needs to be done to just keep

us from falling further. All three of these roles are important. Therefore, our work, as the image-

bearers of God, would be expected to parallel this and also be of triune nature – perhaps not each

individual, but for the Body of Christ as a whole. So, our work would include creating, redeeming and

sustaining. Doug Baker in Covenant and Community states, “ God’s image will ultimately be manifest

not primarily in individuals but in humanity as a whole.”16 That’s useful in thinking about a global

workplace where each person does a part of the whole. We could be the functional image of the triune

13 Nengean, p13 14 Cosden, p106 15 Cosden, p106 16 Baker, p ix

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God as creator, redeemer and sustainer in the totality of what we do as a whole and not each individual

needing to fulfill all roles to be working a manner consistent with being the image-bearer of God.17

Now that I’ve briefly outlined views on the Image of God, I’ll superimpose these on top of Marx’s four

categories of alienation of labor. When that is done, something interesting begins to emerge.

Marx’s first category is the alienation of the worker from the product of his work. The second category

is the alienation of the worker from the work. For Marx, these comes from a lack of input from the

worker into decisions of how the work is to be done, what work is to be done and what is to be

produced. The worker is not able to exercise his intellect, moral sense, free-will, creativity, etc. that are

the hall-mark of the substantive view of the Image of God. So, to the extent to which workers are not

allowed to be the substantive image of God, they would be said to be alienated.

Marx’s third category is alienation of the worker from himself. The worker should be able to understand

the purpose of his actions, their function, and act on them with conscious intention. The worker cannot

see the purpose of his work and his place in the whole. The work becomes meaningless. It is hard to

feel that we are actually being Image-bearers of God in a functional sense if we cannot see purpose in

what is being done, cannot see our place in the whole. The extent to which worker are not allowed to

act in a way consistent with the functional view of the Image of God, they are alienated.

The fourth category is alienation of the worker from other workers. This category needs little

reflection. This is clearly counter to the relational view of the Image of God. To the extent to which

people are set against other individuals, damaging or destroying our relations with them, they are not

acting in a way consistent with the relational view of the image of God, they are alienated.

17 This is based on my last year’s SVS paper: Jazz Music, Pharmaceuticals & Sewage Treatment: A Three-part Framework for Understanding Work in the Kingdom of God.

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Starting with Marx’s nominally materialistic categories, we can now see a deeper pattern. We can infer

from this is that “alienation” is caused when we are acting in work (and business) in ways that are not

consistent with being the Image Bearers of God.

There is a second interesting implication. A concrete example that encompasses all three views of the

Image of God would imply that all three are valid together.18 This tends to imply that taking all three of

the views on being the image of God and holding them in tension rather than just choosing one has

merit as it aligns with a real-world, observed phenomenon – the alienation of labor. This is not an

entirely original thought19, and while I won’t pursue this in this paper, it will be assumed throughout the

rest of the paper that all three of these views are (together) valid. We exercise the Substance of the

Image of God in doing the Function of the Image of God in Relationship with God and others as the

Trinity is in relationship.

4. GLOBAL BUSINESS AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

So, what does this look like when we try to take this framework as part of a common frame of

discourse? We’ll look at the various views of the image of God in terms of global business and try to

make them concrete.

From a relational view of the image of God, behaving in a way consistent with being the image of God

could be to build relationships. This would be vital, as global business inherently distances the producer

from the consumer and that “relationship” becomes merely anonymous (which is not necessarily a

negative. Imagine having to form meaningful relationships with everyone you have a transaction with

and everyone in the entire supply chain for everything you own. That’s an eschatological hope, not a

current reality for our finite being.) Global business builds relationships across culture and nation.

18 Furthermore, this discussion is limited to just our work and no other part of our life, and still we see a pattern that integrates all three views of the Image of God. 19 For example, see Nengean’s description of Anthony Hoekema and Meredith Kline (Nengean, p23 and p24)

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Multi-cultural teams are built as a necessity when doing global business. Learning different languages

and cultures is normal. And whereas the church tends to limit international interaction at the top

(among clergy) or limit contact in time (short-term missions), global business retains and grows

intercultural, global relationships each and every day.

What’s interesting is that global business is continually adapting itself in ways that are consistent with

being image-bearers of God, with no real understanding of doing this. In general, it sees the alienation

and feels deeply about the problems and wants to make them better. It has actually moved toward

acting in ways that are consistent with a relational view of the Image of God (though not explicitly for

that purpose). Codes and cultures of behavior, team-building, employee social activities, etc. are

common in the world of global business.

To the extent to which people in global business build relationships on a large scale across country,

language, and culture, it is acting in a way consistent with being the image bearers of God.

From the substantive view of the Image of God, if we were image bearers of God in global business, we

would be acting in ways consistent with God’s substance; using such attributes of God as reason, will,

creativity, etc. in our business.

There are certainly areas where global business has failed in this category. These are chronicled in

books such as Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital20 and the list is fairly familiar: Taylor’s

Scientific Management, minute division of labor, and dehumanization by use of machines, etc. Reason,

will and creativity can be removed from work, leaving only repetitive and stupefying manual labor.

To the extent that global business allows people to use these attributes and foster them, people in

global business are acting in ways that are consistent with being image bearers of God. The challenges

20 See Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, particularly chapters 3-9.

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of conducting business over long distances, different cultures, languages and time-zones requires both

developing detailed procedures for individuals to follow in their work as well as a great deal of creativity

and flexibility in dealing with the challenges and changes. Done correctly, the regularization provides a

framework in which creativity and flexibility can blossom rather than have chaos (think jazz music).

Done poorly, the regularization calcifies and becomes an impediment to creativity and flexibility. What’s

interesting is that the business world sees the problems and tries to align with acting in ways that are

consistent with being the image-bearers of God, even if they don’t understand that this is what they are

doing. “Learning Organizations” and “Systems Thinking” of Peter Senge21 are good examples of this.

Now we’ll look at the function view of the Image of God, but in more detail than we did with the other

two views.

For Marx, because work will always serve some other end, there is alienation. In reality the opposite (or

nearly opposite) is a better description. Alienation comes from work which serves no purpose, serves an

end that the individual does not agree with or serves an end the individual cannot understand. For

Boyd, “(a)lienation comes when we work too fast, or too much, or too often”22 which is then used as an

indictment of work in the modern world. But this immediately leads one to ask what about when we

work too little, or at the wrong thing or in the wrong way, to the wrong end or for or with the wrong

people? We can easily imagine (and probably know) people who are absorbed by work they love and

can spend hours and hours, day after day engrossed in it, to the exclusion of all else. While this may not

necessarily be desirable, it is anything but alienation.

Seeing the Triune God in terms of Creator-Sustainer-Redeemer, a large part of the measure of our acting

in a manner consistent with being the functional image of God is our effect on others outside of

ourselves. This should lead us to evaluate our actions in a way that is external to ourselves. There

21 Peter Senge, Fifth Discipline 22 Boyd, p7

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should be a high degree to which we look beyond just motive to results – our desire may be to plant an

orchard, but are we actually bearing fruit? This is particularly important when we look at such activities

that the church claims as important in the world – care for the poor and suffering. Which matters more

to the one who is suffering, our motives or the actual alleviation of the suffering? This is essentially

James versus Paul: “Show me your faith, I’ll show you my works.”23 The church says to business, “show

me your faith,” and business says “by my deeds I will prove to you my faith.”

At some point, when thinking about working in a way that is consistent with being the Functional Image

of God, efficacy must become one of the (but certainly not the only) considerations. While intent may

be good and moral, intent alone is not fully aligned with being the image-bearers of God – particularly

coming from a denomination who talks highly of the power of God working in the world now. It should

be clear that for our work to matter, our work must actually matter. For it to be external to myself, to

actually have functional value, it must actually matter to those outside myself. Therefore, in matters of

work and business, the issues of what we are to do and the efficacy of the work we do becomes

important to us.24

As God’s work is triune – creator, redeemer and sustainer – our work with him is also necessarily triune.

Most work that needs to be done in the world by humans is maintenance and because of this is ignored

23 Paraphrase of James 2:18 24 It should be noted that authors who are opposed to business and capitalism such as Daniel Bell dismiss efficacy out of hand. “Does capitalism work? Is the wrong question to put to capitalism. It is the wrong question because it is rather obvious that capitalism works…Even if capitalism is actually improving the situation of persons who are poor, as its defenders claim, it would still be wrong” based on objectification of individuals and “distort(ion) of human desire.” (Bell, chapter 3) It requires obscuring what is actually meant by capitalism (see Michael Novak – “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism”, chapter 1. Based on a more proper definition of capitalism, it is possible to get very different answers to Bell’s questions (which are somewhat problematic in their construction, but useful, none-the-less) of “With our economic lives ordered by capitalism, are we able to worship God truly? Are we able to desire God and the gifts of God as we ought?” Bell wants to load up the debit side of the ledger and completely dismiss the credit side.

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by the church.25 A quote by Jürgen Moltmann is a good example of this: “The inner fellowship of the

Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is represented in the fundamental human communications and is

manifested in them through creation and redemption.”26 Maintenance (sustaining) is noticeably missing

from this list. This prejudice makes it easier for the Church to dismiss the work of global business and

just ignore that the world needs to be sustained. Critics can assume that the good things in the material

status quo would remain exactly the same, down to the morning fair-trade, tall, skinny latte at

Starbucks, if the “evils” of capitalism and global business (who do so much of the human work to sustain

the material status quo) were banished. In reality, the poor would starve and the diseased would suffer.

The stuff everyone takes for granted would no longer be there.

The church can have a limited view of the details of the functional image of God. Is it feeding the poor

or is it feeding everyone, including the poor? The institutional church conflates its own goals and

mission with those of the entire Body of Christ to the detriment of the entire body. How could not

feeding 90% of the world be the image of God? “It will get done anyway” is not a very solid answer, not

just theoretically but empirically as well. Historically, famine was common in all societies, even affluent

ones. In the past century, wealthy countries such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela have gone from food

surpluses to food shortages because of people who thought that it would “just get done anyway.” It

doesn’t just happen. Fighting poverty looks like a large effort and our daily bread a small effort. In

truth, fighting poverty is a large effort but our daily bread is an enormous effort, many orders of

magnitude greater, and one that must be done prior to feeding the hungry (otherwise all you do is add

to the ranks of the hungry). This points toward global business acting in ways that are consistent with

the functional image of God.

25 See my paper from last year’s SVS Conference: Jazz Music, Pharmaceuticals & Sewage Treatment: A Three-part Framework for Understanding Work in the Kingdom of God for a fuller discussion. 26 Moltmann, p241

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It is important to understand what I am NOT saying. I am not “glibly identifying Protestant ideology with

capitalist modernity”27 as John Hughes describes Barth’s worry about Christian defenses of business. I

am saying to look at the tools we currently have at our disposal and to use the ones that actually do the

most good, the ones that when we use them, we can most reflect the image of God.

5. CONCLUSION

This, in turn, should bring us back to the question of alienation. That there are places where we do act

in ways consistent with being the Image-bearers of God doesn’t mean that there aren’t places where we

don’t. There are still issues with exploitation, corruption and alienation, etc.28

The church and business can dialogue constructively and help people see the place where their work fits

into the work of the whole body of Christ as the Image of God and how to better align with acting in

ways consistent with being image-bearers of God.

Per Miroslav Volf, “If the doctrine of sin requires a Christian to assert the permanence of alienation in

work against all utopian hopes of complete freedom from alienation…(t)he presence of the Spirit of the

resurrected Christ in the whole of creation, and in particular in those who acknowledge Christ’s lordship,

gives hope that work also can be transformed in ever greater correspondence to this ideal.”29

The church can speak into this and provide understanding, if church and business can get to a point we

are speaking a common language. There is hope in such a partnership.

27 Hughes, p13 28 One of the issues with industrialization and global business is division of labor on a scale beyond that of pre-industrial times. While this division of labor allows for greater production of goods (and hence a greater supply to be able to feed, water, house, clothe and provide medicine), the individual rarely (really NEVER) sees the whole picture personally. It is very difficult to see what part one plays in the whole. So, while the individual may be acting objectively in a capacity consistent with being the image bearer of God in providing a part of the supply chain which provides the food, clothing, etc., subjectively it may appear to the individual that what they are doing is meaningless, and meaningless work is not consistent with acting according to a functional view of the image of God. Humans are psychological creatures and felt alienation is real alienation. 29 Volf, p168

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barker, Doug P. Covenant and Community: Our Role as the Image of God. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008. Bell, Daniel. The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids:

Baker Academic, 2012. Boyd, Jared. “By The Sweat of Thy Brow: Towards a Spiritual Theology of Bodily Labor”. 2013 Society of

Vineyard Scholars Conference. Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century.

New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974. Cosden, Darrell. A Theology of Work: Work and the New Creation. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2004. Erickson, Millard. Introduction to Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997. Hughes, John. The End of Work: Theological Critiques of Capitalism. Malden: Blackwell Publishing,

2007. Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Economic-Philosophic-Manuscripts-1844.pdf

Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: A New Tehology of Creation and the Spirit of God. San Francisco:

Harper & Row, 1985. Nengean, Isaiah. The Imago Dei as the Imago Trinitatis: Jürgen Moltmann’s Doctrine of the Image of

God. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2013. Novak, Michael. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Volf, Miroslav. Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.



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