I try not to work on Sunday, and today I succeeded. Church is a good reinforcement for business ethics. Some antichurch writers claim that a morality that needs religion isn’t moral at all; instead, they say, if you don’t find your morality within yourself, you can’t get it from anything outside.
They’re missing the point. Christianity doesn’t superimpose a morality from outside. Instead, it changes the heart so that one is strengthened to do what’s right and resist what’s wrong. The Bible also informs the conscience, so that right and wrong aren’t merely a matter of opinion. Then we go to church because we are social beings and were never designed to operate in isolation. Morality isn’t just a series of decisions; it’s a continuous process of life. Christ living through us can produce a morality far preferable to one that comes from gritting the teeth and making right decisions.
Nearly all religions are actually philosophies: they try to explain life and how to be happy. Christianity is first of all history: it tells what God has done on certain occasions in order to redeem man from his ruined estate. Second: it is an experience where God’s redemptive work is made actual in your individual heart. Third comes the philosophy, which tells us what to do in response to this gracious experience.
It affects the way you do plumbing, believe it or not.
