I need some expert help with a complex search term

I have been tasked to write a reflection paper on a book by Timothy Keller using the prompt:

“The way to serve God at work is to make as much money as you can, so that you can be as generous as you can.”

Can someone help me with a search term that will show me everything in my resources that is relevant to that prompt? Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot!

I found this article... https://purposeinleadership.com/2014/11/10/serve-god-in-your-work/  And this book... https://www.logos.com/product/136713/every-good-endeavor-connecting-your-work-to-gods-work Factbook may be helpful using the book.

Just a starting point: money NEAR generous.

wait for KS4J though.  KS4J will have a way better search.  KS4J always does.

Bob

I have been tasked to write a reflection paper on a book by Timothy Keller using the prompt:

“The way to serve God at work is to make as much money as you can, so that you can be as generous as you can.”

Can someone help me with a search term that will show me everything in my resources that is relevant to that prompt?

Search idea for a number of articles & chapters to consider:

([field heading,largetext] motivation,serve,steal) WITHIN 11 WORDS (Lord, God, hands) WITHIN 22 WORDS (business, generous, give, labor, labour, money, work)

Keep Smiling [:)]

“The way to serve God at work is to make as much money as you can, so that you can be as generous as you can.”

Some ideas:

Reflection: think of the positive, negative and the possible.

Do you want to see the topic from a macro or micro view? or maybe a combination?

Money is an artifact, that has value in a society where it can be used as an exchange method in a free market, and is generally considered positive to have (attitude), to be able to provide for the needs of the family / clan.

The Bible talks about unjust wealth. Does it have to do with the way it is obtained?

E.g. Middleman exploits producers, and abuses final consumer, pays little to the former, and charges much to the latter, he then makes good profit, is this ethical?

How about if the product or service does not cause harm, and uses money from the final user that would have spent it on vice, to help evangelize that same market segment that is paying for the product or service? definitively a gray area.

Now what if the profit margin is low, and producer is well payed, and final consumer not charged too much, but the process of producing the product poisons substrata water or causes contamination to other Earth resources?

What about stakeholders, people that live in the community where the goods are manufactured, are they bearing too great a burden with contaminated rivers due to toxic residues byproduct of production processes?

Then the distribution problem: is it ok to have the owner of the means of production get the most of the surplus amount gotten by the selling of the products produced?

Scandinavia has moved to what is called the middle way: not untamed capitalism, neither ineffective communism, but they chose middle of the way: cooperativism.

The means of production are owned collectively, and the surplus of benefits produced by the selling of the products is distributed evenly among the members of the cooperative.  This seems to be more in line with the Bible thrust of having things (means of production in this case) in common.

So there is many angles in which you can reflect on the acquisition of wealth in a free market, by various means. 

It is important that the initiatives be socially responsible (cause no harm, help with problems, creates better living conditions, etc), take care of right distribution of excedents (profit), and has systems where injustices (in the productive organization itself) are prevented and investigated to prevent recurrence of waste, abuse, misuse, etc.

There are many good resources that can give both macro and micro views on the productive and economic process:

https://www.logos.com/search?query=economic%20ethics&sortBy=Relevance&limit=60&page=1&ownership=all&geographicAvailability=availableToMe 

https://www.logos.com/search?query=exploited&sortBy=Relevance&limit=60&page=1&ownership=all&geographicAvailability=availableToMe 

Now about serving God is a topic in itself: can we serve God in a free market where power players usually set their interests above regular humanity?

Many cooperatives have allowed groups of people to achieve many important socioeconomic goals in a more christian way. Have they checked to see that there is no exploitation in there supply chain or the distribution system? that depends on the particular cooperative.

In Scandinavia over 40% Gnp is contributed by cooperatives, and they have some of the highest quality of life standards, could something similar be achieved in western countries?

Possibilities are very interesting.

Hope you can see that there are many angles when reflecting about systems that are supposed to be in support of human flourishing, and not the other way around (humans in support of unregulated resource depleting capitalism that benefits very few in the long run).

Different angle for further research, reflection and constructive comment.

Peace and grace.

“The way to serve God at work is to make as much money as you can, so that you can be as generous as you can.”

Can someone help me with a search term that will show me everything in my resources that is relevant to that prompt? Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

I'm sorry you haven't gotten a satisfactory answer. I did not offer a solution because it relates to people and theological positions that I know so little about that I can't offer a decent vocabulary. Starting from a position of complete ignorance, I would search all resources for "(purpose NEAR wealth) OR generosity"

I would scan the results:

• first, to find resources related to Keller and his buddies
• second, to find early church positions on the issue
• third, to find commentaries on passages that I found in the above two groups of resources.
• finally, to find resources that might fill the holes I have in my research

IHSA: 

Remember I am not an expert.

I looked up the widow giving her all to the Temple in a Timothy Keller quick collection (used the cited by tool in Luke 21:1-4), and found the following:

It is hard to read so the excerpt is:

What Is the Right Way to Work for God?

At the beginning of this book, I told you that I’ve had a constant struggle figuring out what God wanted from me in light of the needs of the world. The question ringing in my mind, constantly, was: Am I doing enough for God?

The gospel teaches us that our approval by God is not based on doing “enough” for Him. Some might conclude, then, that we have no obligations to the world. The gospel isn’t about work, after all; it’s about resting in God’s work on your behalf.

It’s clear though, that Jesus expects His followers to be fervently at work in His kingdom. And if we love people like He’s loved us, than we cannot sit idly by while people perish.

But how much is enough? And is it possible to take on too much responsibility? Is enjoying any luxury here on earth a failure to really embrace the sacrificial call of the cross?

In short, I’m asking this: What does a gospel-centered approach to the brokenness of the world look like?

 Greear, J. D., & Keller, T. (2011). Gospel: recovering the power that made christianity revolutionary. Nashville, TN: B&H Books.

 

Then I found some proximity search info in a quick Timothy Keller collection:

Not in the book that you are doing the reflection about, but gives a glimpse of what Timothy Keller's idea of the topic centers around.

In a general search (Basic), there are a lot of hits that deal with the topic.

An interesting one talks about the reward associated with risk for entrepreneurs, but then mentions that there are occupations within the system that carry a high risk, and are not rewarded accordingly within those possible entrepreneurial enterprises:

The above is my two cents, that hope is helpful to you. I understand that your library probably looks very different from mine, so not sure if the above can be of help.

IHSA:

In the book you are doing your reflection about, there is a particular case mentioned in which a person part of a company decided that a good biz they were doing in reality did not actually contributed socially to a good cause, or improved some particular condition (more or less), so the person decided to not take the bonus, and used the opportunity to explain what principles had been taken into consideration to reject the bonus.

I would think the explanation given to the co-workers was sort of spreading the seed, maybe in another time and place someone else would water the seed, and who knows, maybe God could use the process to help a person get closer to Him.

What is interesting about the case is that profit maximization was taken as an opportunity to do God's work, even if at a seeming expense from the normal life point of view.

Just a thought.

IHSA

Going up a notch in the search strategies for your project, you may consider also using Louw Nida numbers to identify relevant passages, and then use the cited by tool to look in T. Keller collection:

Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition.). New York: United Bible Societies.

Another possibility is to try and use L9's Discourse Analysis tools. Once key verses identified with profit IAW Louw NIda you can then use Bible Discourse Analysis to see larger chunks of meaning and try to see if key concepts identified there can be searched for in T. Keller's book that you have to reflect about.

Unfortunately the book does not seem to be available in Logos format, so getting it in other electronic format will allow you to do an Inline search for the analysis.

Hope this helps.