Ep. 048 - Eventide: How Does the World View Investing? | Part 1| New Video Series!

Episode Transcript

Austin
Spencer, today we're going to look at the world's view of investing. And the reality is, over the next couple of episodes, we're going to really try to dive into what does the Bible say about investing? What is our view of God as an investor? And so we want to invite you to, to stick around with us, because this is going to be a maybe take up the next half of the year.

Austin
But we really want to dive deeply into this. What does it mean to be an investor in companies?

Spencer
We want to thank our friends at the Eventide Center for Faith and investing. Jason Meyer and his team did a fantastic job helping us to grapple with the biblical wisdom on investing. Many of the quotes and thought leaders that we cite come from their original research. I'm really excited about this series, because one of the things that we'll get to do is also share some of our personal story about how we thought about investing over time, how that's starting to shift a little bit as we select particular investments in ways that we think honor the Lord, honor biblical teaching, and really line ourselves up with God as investor in the way that he looks at

Spencer
investment overall. So as we dive in again, we're going to be talking today about two different stories that can be told the story of investing and then God's story of investing. And we'll start with the world story of investing, because that's the, that's what we swim in on a day to day basis. That's all we know for many of us is what does the world say about investing?

Spencer
But we really like what Craig Bartholomew from the Kirby Laing, center for Public Theology says. He says that it's not just about investing. When we think about the world story and God's story, it's all different parts of life. It is how we think about parenting, how we think about, interacting as friends, how we think about engaging in the public sphere here.

Spencer
But he says Christians live at the intersection of two big stories, a cultural story which shaped so much of our life, and the biblical story which we are to make our primary home. And again, what we want to think about today is, that cultural story and how it really rubs against the biblical story when we think particularly about how we choose investments.

Spencer
Yeah.

Austin
And, you know, as we think about this, I think the tension is going to be there's going to be some hard things that we hear and see as we really dive into what is this biblical story of investing? How do we really see ourselves as owners of the companies that we invest in? And I think as I have wrestled with this, the reality comes back to.

Austin
We're being sanctified day after day after day. Where I was when I was 20 is not where I am now in my late 30s. And prayerfully, it's not going to be the place that I'm at when I'm 60 and 70. My hope is that as I grow closer to the Lord throughout my life, I become more like him.

Austin
And so I need to remind myself there's not shame or dishonor. I may not have honored the Lord with investment decisions before, but as he opens my eyes, then he invites me into this new process. And so I think it can be really shame inducing if I look back and say, well, I didn't do it right before.

Austin
But also didn't think about it before and I didn't have people challenging me in it before. And so really as I think about this continuum, am I moving towards the Lord as I'm being hit with these things? And I think that's really the place that we want to be because it is challenging. It's jarring when we look at some of these scriptures, especially as we look at the difference between that biblical story and the world story.

Austin
We talk often in this podcast about, are we just getting swept into the streams of culture, and are we allowing culture to shape our theology rather than theology to shape our investment selection theology to shape our posture towards the the people around us posture towards any number of things. And so really, we want to start with what is archeology on on God in the world story.

Austin
And so we start off with this meta narrative of Scripture. And we look and we say the Bible tells one grand story. It starts off with creation. And God made things and it was good and it was good. And he made humans and they were very good because we are made in the image of God. Yet there is the fall.

Austin
Humans fall away, we walk into sin and destruction comes, work becomes toilsome and hard, thorns and thistles are produced from the ground where it used to just be fruit and beauty and goodness. And then Christ comes to redeem the world, and we are ushered into this picture in revelation of a new creation. And so I think as we look at the Bible as one grand narrative, we see revelation in the light of creation.

Austin
We see the fall in the light of the redemption. and so but that's that's the narrative, the scripture. Where is the really the narrative of the world?

Spencer
I think if we put it in light of those four movements, it really is just we have this world and we know that it's fallen. So and it stops there. There's this acceptance that really that the world says, all I can do is look out for my own. we'll get into this at much greater depth, but it comes down to how can I have the best returns possible?

Spencer
How can I make sure that I get mine? Yeah, basically, I know that there's all kinds of different challenges around me. There's war here, there's hotspots geopolitically, there's fallenness. Yes. But I in all, in spite of all of that, there's not a whole lot that I can do. And so I'm going to make sure that I do as best as I can to get as much as I can in this life, because who knows what else is going on.

Spencer
Yeah. Basically there.

Austin
Yeah. Well, as we think about it, as in terms of investors there as well, how that shapes a biblical worldview of investment or a Christian worldview is often been, well, it doesn't matter what I invest in, it matters how I use those end funds. Right. And so I think this is one of the challenges that we want to start facing.

Austin
Is there are going to be some things that we say that are really challenging, that are going to challenge status quo. Does it actually matter what I invest in or does it just matter how I use it in the long run. Right. Okay. If I don't have options in a 401 K to invest in responsible funds. what do I do.

Austin
You know I think there's, there's real wrestling that we need to do as we think about being stewards of God's resources. But you're right. The world story of investing is as long as the line goes up, everything is okay. The line's not coming up. Maybe I need to change some things around. but we don't. We don't stop.

Austin
And really consider what's making the line go up.

Spencer
Sure. And so we come back to again trying to say, Lord, your word is a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path, not going towards. You know what it says in Isaiah 50? You know those who walk by the light of their own torches, which when we boil everything down again, if we are not serving the Lord, we are serving our own desires, our own, needs wants, those kinds of things.

Spencer
And, that that creates challenges, in terms of trying to, do anything biblical. Yeah.

Austin
Yeah. Well, and I think the reality is that those two stories, whether we look at the Lord and we say, your word is a light to my feet and a lamp to my path. Or we take the, torch bearer and say, I'm going to bare the flame and do things my own way. The reality is those narratives are going to compete in every facet of life, just like you were talking about and especially in business and investing.

Austin
And as we think about it, we can continue to bring things into the light of the Lord and say, okay, what is honoring to God? And another challenge is no company is going to be clean. Right. There are companies that are going to be better than others, that are going to be more God honoring than others and their practices and the ways that they create products.

Austin
But no company is going to do everything perfect because we still live in a broken and fallen world. Companies are still run by people who are broken and fallen. We are broken and fallen. And so the ways that we enter this, we have to say we have to look at that in the light of that entire narrative. Okay.

Austin
Are we moving towards wholeness, a goodness, a truth and a beauty, a common good, if you will? Or are we just saying, well, the world are broken and I don't I don't have anything to do with that.

Spencer
Well, the other thing that we need to recognize is there's a lot more options for biblical implementation now than there were, say, 20 and 30 years ago. So even five years ago, looking at the different options that were out there, not nearly as robust as what we see now, and being able to actually practically put together a portfolio that moves the needle in the direction of what we would consider that kind of faithful investing.

Spencer
there. So as we do that, let's let's go take a step back and clarify what what is the way that the world looks at investing? if we kind of boil it down, what are the images, those visceral things that when you hear investing, what comes to mind?

Austin
Well, one of the first things that comes to mind is charts of companies that are going up or down, left or right, and stock tickers moving in opposite directions that you're trying to read both of them simultaneously, and they're in red or green, people yelling at each other on the screen, telling them why one investment is better than another.

Austin
It's chaos. It just is pure and utter chaos. You look at, imagery of like, Wall Street and the traders on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange, and they're just yelling things out, and it's.

Spencer
Just doesn't even really exist anymore. But people have that image, you know. And so it's all of it's then automated, you know, trading machines now. But you know, that's still the image that we have.

Austin
Yeah, it's still the image. And you know, as I think about that, when I started working for the nonprofit that I was at, we had a 403b and so I put money in, and we had to from our company, which is a grace, because they encouraged us to do that. But the reality was I didn't know where it was going.

Austin
Right. I just put it in the market. And so the reality for me was I was investing in the market. I didn't think about it because I wasn't concerned with it. I was concerned with whatever we were doing as a nonprofit. But the reality was, in my mind, if you'd asked me, I would have said, I don't know.

Austin
I'm invested in the stock market. I guess not understanding what it actually means to be invested in the stock market, that my capital is going to companies, for them to then have their operations, for them to do things, for them to expand into new territory, whatever that was, it didn't register with me because I just invested in the stock market.

Austin
And I think that's primarily the world story, is that we have money. We put it into the market. We don't think what the market means. We just think it should go up because the stock market is supposed to go up, but we don't really start pulling back those layers of the onion and saying, well, what do we mean by the market?

Austin
What is the market comprised of? And how am I actually participating in the market? Because it's really not the market. It's hundreds if not thousands of companies that were investing in to better. How do investment professionals then think about the way they invest money?

Spencer
Well, there's this fiduciary responsibility. So we've got to act in ways that would align investments with clients, desires. And and that core desire is more money is better than less money. Sooner is better than later and less volatility is better than more volatility. And so we kind of come back to those those principles. But it all comes back to if we summed it up in one statement, maximizing risk adjusted returns.

Spencer
There's a lot to that. But the maximize piece is how much can how quickly can we grow these, you know, resources over time. So maximize risk adjusted. So the risk adjusted would mean we don't want to have volatility on the way if we don't have to. You know, you'd rather have a 10% rate of return. That gave you a little bit more every day and gets to 10% at the end of the year, rather than have the market go up, you know, 5% in the first quarter, down 10% in the second quarter, 15% in the third quarter, and then finally achieve that rate of return at the end of the year, that that volatility

Spencer
is not preferable, relative to just a little bit every day. And as we think about that, it also implies that we need a level of diversification across different investments, because if we have one investment, one stock, one company that we're invested in, that stock is going to have a lot more of a ride typically than if we have ten stocks, which are going to have every day.

Spencer
typically some stock is going to go up, some stocks are going to go down. But then we we layer that out to 100 or 1000 or 10,000 stocks. That level of diversification it helps to mute the ups and downs. Yeah. So what we've done is we maximize risk adjusted returns when that becomes the focal point. What it means is we need to invest in as many companies as we can.

Spencer
Ideally, that will kind of mute those, those those downturns and, and allow us a level of greater stability. Now what that also means, though, is that we don't care as much about the particular companies that we're invested in because we say, well, you know, more is better than less, and it's difficult. There's gray in every company. So am I going to make a judgment call on this?

Spencer
So, that's how the the world's story basically is. Let's try to get as broad a set of investments. Let's try to keep things going, you know, towards, positive returns with a minimum of volatility. And it's actually cheaper in some ways just to invest in everything. you know, there's, forerunners here, Vanguard and others that have done a great job of minimizing expenses because they say we're not going to pick one company against another if it's publicly traded, we're going to make an investment in it.

Spencer
And sometimes based on the market size of the company or other factors. But that makes it pretty simple to make those investments and pretty inexpensive. If we don't have to vet. Okay. Are these people employing, slaves in China? You know, are these people, you know, engaged in practices that are going to be, you know, terrible, for kids in, you know, some part of the world.

Spencer
Yeah. So, that is has been the trajectory of the world story and so now as we see that more clearly now, we can can look and say, okay, is that is that okay? Based on what we see in Scripture, does God say, okay, well, just invest and invest based in a way that is going to go along with the culture.

Austin
Is that okay? Great.

Spencer


Austin
Yeah. And I think that's the big question that we start being confronted with, right? Is, is having gain, is seeing a return from exploitative actions. Is that okay? Is that God honoring. how does God really view that? Does he care about how we make returns or just that we made returns? And that's really what we want to dive into in our first little foray today, we're going to get into deeper and deeper and deeper over the next several weeks.

Austin
But what is what does Scripture say about this? Is, is God okay with just getting money? However, as long as it's given back to him honorably.

Spencer
Well, and I think this is something as well that we need to be very open that it's there is a level of gray. Yeah. And what companies do most companies do some things well and some things poorly. Most companies add some value to the world and do some things that maybe are counterproductive from a scriptural standpoint. There are some companies, though, that, you know, if we think about, let's just say, pure, the purest company that's out there.

Spencer
And if we said, okay, that is a company that is pure light, and we have another company over here that is pure darkness, there are some companies that we could say that's if it's not pure darkness, it's probably close to pure darkness. Yeah. And that's what we want to surface today is what are those actions that we see within companies that make us think, okay, there's no company that's pure light over here.

Spencer
But this is getting really close to pure darkness. Yeah. Over here, because of the way that the profits are generated. Right. Because of the products, the services, the practices, the way profit is actually, generated by these companies. So, as we think about that, we, we would look at the biblical view of profit, and we first go and we would anchor these thoughts in Proverbs chapter one, verses ten through 19 that we'll put up here on the screen.

Spencer
My son, if sinful men entice you, do not give in to them. If they say, come along with us, let's lie in wait for innocent blood. Let's ambush some harmless soul. Let's swallow them alive like the grave and whole like those who go down to the pit. We will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder.

Spencer
Cast lots with us. We will all share the purse. My son. Do not go along with them. Do not set foot on their paths for their feet. Rush into evil. They are swift to shed blood. How useless to spread a net where every bird can see it. These men lie and wait for their own blood. They ambush only themselves.

Spencer
Such are the paths of all who go after ill gotten gain. It takes away the life of those who get it. So what we see here is particularly these parts that we will highlight, there's a casting lots with us. There's there's this enticement that they're going to, the king's son here. Solomon's son, whom Solomon speaking these words and saying, do not do this.

Spencer
People will come and they will want you to put wealth with them. And he's saying, do not share the purse with them. Do not go after this ill gotten game. And you may say, well, you know, our company is really lying. An ambush here for people. That sounds like a bit of a stretch from what Solomon saying, but we'll get into this more.

Spencer
But if we have companies where the marketing strategy is handing out cigarets to seven year olds in Indonesia, if we have companies who their whole business model is based on, pornography and nightclubs and, and enticing people to addiction in casinos, you have to say there's, there's a level here that's not dissimilar from lying in wait in ambush and really trying to prey on people's frailties, and, and and pulling them in even at an age that's very, very young.

Spencer
Yeah. it's one thing if you would say, okay, well, you know, this person made a bad decision and they're an adult, what have you. But there's a lot of these that we see, actually, it's preying on weak, vulnerable people. And we have to really grapple with how those profits happen.

Austin
Yeah. And you know, Spencer is I think about that. I think about the podcast that we listened to Finding Ruby that was produced by IJM and in one of the episodes, they talked about how people get ensnared into viewing and manipulating child children for online sexual exploitation. And they mention that every one of them starts off with just regular pornography.

Austin
But then they can't be satisfied. And so it's the ones that get to that extreme. Started off with what they thought was not that bad in the first place. And then you get off to this incredibly destructive where you're abusing children. Yeah. And it's the reality is we may not see it as bad in the first onset.

Austin
It is it's destructive. But oftentimes where it leads can be even more destructive. And so the question then just becomes, do those prophets, if we are profiting from a company that produces pornography. How does that make it. How do you sit with that. Right. How do you deal with the reality that prophets do to have moral attachments?

Austin
We read in Deuteronomy 23:18, you must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow, because the Lord your God detests them both. God is saying here in the law, don't bring this ill gotten gain into the house of the Lord. He doesn't want anything to do with it because he knows where it comes from.

Austin
He knows where those profits were generated from.

Spencer
Right. And it's we need to be clear here when we say the Lord your God detests them both. It's not saying he detests the prostitutes. You know they're still created in God's image. But the earnings. Yeah, that the earnings of the female prostitute, the earnings of the male prostitute, that is what he detests, to the point that, you know, you surface the question earlier.

Spencer
Okay. Well, if I just have more earnings, you know, if I get a 10% rate of return over here in this investment, and I only get 8% over here, well, that extra 2%, you know, would it just make the Lord happy if, if maybe I use that extra 2%, to fund, you know, helping the poor or missions or what have you.

Spencer
I think what we see here is, you know, there's there's moral attachments here, and he doesn't want any of those funds coming in to the temple treasury. Yeah.

Austin
And we think about this. We look at what happens in Judas. And after Judas betrays Jesus, he sells him out for 30 pieces of silver. He then feels the guilt and the shame of selling his friend out, and he goes back to the Pharisees to try to give the money back. And they won't take it right. They say, we will not take that blood money back into the temple.

Austin
They know that it was destructive. They know that it was blood money, even though they they paid it, they were okay to pay it, right. But they knew they couldn't take it back into the temple because it would not honor the Lord. And so I think we have to look at this and say, if if God detests those earnings and he does not want them to come into the temple, he doesn't want blood money to come into the temple, then what are we to do with profits that are ill gotten?

Austin
Are we to bring those back into the temple and say, okay, God, you can wash it clean, which is true. God always can wash all of our sin clean. He does wash our sin clean. He is faithful and just. He is loving kind with us. But as we see these things are we actually willing to wrestle with them?

Austin
Or are we just going to wash our hands and say, I don't, I don't want to ask the questions. I don't want to know. don't make him culpable, Lord.

Spencer
Right. Well, and it goes to a passage, there's so many of them that we could cite here, but Hosea six six, for instance, for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. God saying, I don't want you to just bring offerings. You know, you might be a rich landowner that has all kinds of different sheep and cattle.

Spencer
I don't want you to just bring off offerings to me. I want I'm much more concerned about how you treated all of the people to get, you know, that. And and what your, what your faithfulness looks like on a day to day basis rather than just. Did you bring me a burnt offering? Yeah. so there's so much to this that we'll be able to unpack, but I think as we as we look at this, what we can say is instead of just, you know, you take money and you throw it into this ethereal concept called the market.

Spencer
and it gives you returns. What we want to shift our focus to is we take we, we as investors, we take this capital that God has provided us. We put it into companies and those companies. Then we hold to an ethical responsibility to do things in ways that honor the Lord. Now, one of those things we want to see is profit.

Spencer
there needs to be profit for sustainability, for growth, for all kinds of different things. But that's not the only thing. And we could even argue that it might not even be the primary thing. It is a one of those things. certainly. But there are a lot of other considerations as we think about how we invest and we, like we've talked about earlier, like you shared in your anecdote about investing, the deck is kind of stacked against us.

Spencer
You know, here it's not easy to see where we invest now. you know, we we, there's from, William Cavanaugh, who's a professor at DePaul University, says retirement accounts tend to just go into mutual funds where not only do I not have any idea how the companies that I have stock in are being operated, I don't even know what companies I have stock in.

Spencer
So, you know, if his, we don't know what his 401k, you know, looks like, but, so many of them, you invest and you get a statement and you might see one line of what's in that statement. Well, it might even be, a fund that is, it might even be something that's not even listing the fund that you're invested in.

Spencer
So then you would have to find a fund. Well, then the fund might be invested in other funds. So it's not uncommon for a target date fund to be invested in 3 or 4, you know, other different funds. Well, then you would need to track down each of those funds. There's potentially thousands of investments in each one of those funds.

Spencer
And then you would need to research each one of the companies to understand where are your investments there. But it's it's a process that takes a lot of time. And it's not all that friendly to investors that really want to say, well, what is my money going towards? You know, a lot of ways, because the goal, again, has been how do we diversify investments as best we can?

Spencer
How do we maximize risk adjusted returns? That is the world story. Yeah, that is the world's question. And as we think about how we invest, it takes some energy, it takes some reflection to go any other path. Yeah.

Austin
Well, Spencer, thanks for walking us through just that last little piece there for y'all watching. We we don't want to leave you high and hanging. So next week we're going to look at some frequently asked questions. We're going to share a little bit more of our story of how we've gotten to this place where we've wrestled with how do we actually view the companies that we invest in, what is our responsibility?

Austin
And the reality is it's challenging, and we want to embrace that challenge that coming to grips with the fact that God wants us to to wrestle with where profits are generated from, how do we deploy the capital that he has given us? How do we be stewards of his resources? It's hard. And so we're going to explore that a little bit more in the next episode.

Spencer
And there's a lot of different ways that we can implement, actually, that we think are biblically faithful. Yeah. So it's kind of a continuum there too, but it's important to ask question and to make it a prayerful decision. about how we're going to try to do this in a way that honors the Lord.

Austin
Yeah. So we hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or reach out to us. And we look forward to seeing you again next time. If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss the next episode.

Disclosure
This content was provided by Second Half Stewardship. We're in Knoxville, Tennessee, and you can visit our website at www.secondhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general, educational and informational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment advisory, financial planning, legal, tax, or other professional advice based on your specific situation. Please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.