The reality of the pandemic has exposed the terrible myths and idolatrous dysfunction of our business world.
Rather than return to business as usual, how might a more Christian ‘new normal’ look as a post-Covid reset of the business world? In this article we look at three pairs of competing ‘I’ words, and one concluding ‘I’ word, that set the context for a business reset: (Interconnected rather than Individual); our society (Interdependent rather than Independent); and our character (focused on Integrity rather than Image), leading to a conclusion of the importance of Intentionality. This month the first two pairs; next month the final pair and the conclusion.
Interconnected vs Individual
Many UK citizens took skiing holidays in the Italian Alps at half term in February 2020. During just one week in March last year, 30,000 a day returned to the UK from Spain, a hotbed of the crisis at that point. This shows the reality of interconnectedness of the business and leisure travel industry. As we connect, Covid flourishes. Security guards, bus drivers and carers have died in greater numbers than other jobs; they each interact with large numbers of the public in the course of their duties. Our response to this is to say: ‘Of course!’
We had an excellent spokesperson back in the 17th century: the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, John Donne, wrote ‘no man is an island, entire to himself’.
Christians sometimes suggest that God looks upon us as individuals, whereas in fact most New Testament letters are addressed to us in the plural. Jesus is looking forward to feasting with all of us together (Matt. 26:29). Right now we are being built together into the one temple (1 Peter 2:5). Meanwhile we rejoice that Truth is a person, that Love is a person, and that each of us is truly loved by the three-persons-in-one God. We are not disconnected individuals but rather persons who connect. We pray daily that God’s kingdom rule will come on earth; for justice and love in our social relations (Luke 11:2). The rapid spread of the initial virus, followed by the even more rapid spread of more recent variants, brings home to us our interconnected social existence.
The real world’s first lesson is that although business as usual tends to assume we live in a (false, mythic) context of individualism, instead we are undeniably and unavoidably interconnected.
Interdependent vs Independent
Independence is our culture’s icon. To be successful is to be independent. Many professionals have been able to ‘stay home’, largely unaffected directly by the disease. Yet the growth of online deliveries is a perfect example of the ‘independence’ illusion, showing how much the wealthy have in fact depended on ill-paid delivery drivers and vulnerable warehouse workers whose work has led them to take a hit from the Covid-19 virus. Jesus condemns the wealthy business person’s sense of independence when he tells the story of the rich man who fails to have compassion for the poor man ‘who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table’(Luke 16:21). He failed to care for him; he failed to notice he depended on compassion for his eternal destiny.
The Bible teaches that we depend on one another. We do not live for ourselves as individuals but as those committed to serving others – fellow Christians, neighbours, employers, employees – as ourselves (Mark 12:31). Due to international travel and business we also will need to share the vaccines, created by international investment in teams of scientists, widely. Reality teaches that we depend on one another.
It does no good to pit business and the economy against health in demands to exit lockdown and return to normal. The economy has been seen to be dependent upon our health. Our health has also been so very clearly linked as dependent upon our economic wellbeing in a time of failing mental health. This pandemic has highlighted the falsity of the myth of the independence of business.
Reality’s second lesson for us is that we are, and will continue to be, dependent on each other as part of interlocking social communities. God commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves. Business in the ‘new normal’ could take a lead in aiming for the common good.
