Faith, Morals, and Money


Book Description

Most books on business ethics approach the subject philosophically. That approach, Zinbarg tells us, is that it neglects the most important source of most people's understanding of right and wrong: their religious tradition. While philosophy can shed the light of reason on the ethical dilemmas of economic life, it's less than convincing about why we ought to behave well, lacking the compelling urgency of religious faith. Following a wonderfully lucid and succinct summary of the ethical systems relative to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, the author presents a variety of case studies (in lively dialogue form) from the whole gamut of economic life, including misrepresentation by sellers, truth in advertising, the ethics of part-time employment, child labor and environmental ethics. The solutions may vary from tradition to tradition, but overall one is struck by the similarities. This is a book grounded in the real ethical challenges of modern business practice, with a kind of world-religious perspective so necessary in an era of globalization.




Offerings of the Heart


Book Description

Nadiv Lev. “Offerings of the Heart.” This phrase sets the tone for the Jewish spiritual perspective that money is a tool for actualizing God’s presence in the world. Building on this core value and setting aside the financial/spiritual split with which many congregational leaders operate, Rabbi Shawn Zevit brings the depth and breadth of Jewish teachings on money and the spiritual life to all faith communities. This book provides texts and tools to help clergy, staff, and lay leaders of congregations of any faith approach financial and other resources as core means to build and maintain whole and holy lives in a communal setting. Zevit demonstrates how faith communities can create values-based approaches to developing and managing financial and human resources that are rooted in the very sacred traditions, principles, and impulses that bring us together. "Rabbi Shawn Zevit has gathered much of the wisdom of the Jewish community learned through four millennia of life with God. He shows us the rich thought and experience Hebrew scriptures and traditions contribute for all who seek to be faithful in the use of money in their communities. A deep understanding of generosity and giving is brought to bear on the practicalities of budgets, planning, and reaching out in deeds of justice and mercy." -- Loren B. Mead, founding president, The Alban Institute




God and Money


Book Description

Two young Harvard MBAs on the fast track to wealth and success tell their story of God's transforming power and how Scripture brought them to the startling conclusion that they should give the majority of their money away to those in need. Packed with compelling case studies, research, and practical strategies, God and Money offers an honest look at what the Bible says about generous giving. No matter what your salary may be, God and Money shows you how you can reap the rewards of radical generosity in your own life.--from publisher description.




What Money Can't Buy


Book Description

In What Money Can't Buy, renowned political philosopher Michael J. Sandel rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society. Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? Over recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?




Reason Informed by Faith


Book Description

Excellent textbook introduction to the basic issues of fundamental moral theology that considers all of today's moral issues. +




The Invisible Bestseller


Book Description

How can a book -- one that's found in courthouses, libraries, and millions of households across the land -- be everywhere and nowhere at the same time? In this book, veteran religion writer Kenneth Briggs asks how, even as the Bible remains the best-selling book of all time, fewer Americans than ever can correctly articulate what it says, much less how it might offer guidance for their lives. In a quest to make sense of the Bible's relative disappearance from public life, Briggs shares with readers his own two-year cross-country journey to a variety of places. Brigg's narrative incorporates pertinent interviews throughout with preachers, pollsters, scholars, and ordinary citizens from California to Texas to Florida to Massachusetts. As he probes and reflects on his varied findings, Briggs offers keen insight into why and how the Bible's place in American public life has shifted and shrunk -- and he suggests what role the Bible may play in the US in years to come. -- adapted from book flap.




Money, Greed, and God


Book Description

In Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute Jay W. Richards and bestselling author of Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It's Too Late and Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who Are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes, defends capitalism within the context of the Christian faith, revealing how entrepreneurial enterprise, based on hard work, honesty, and trust, actually fosters creativity and growth. In doing so, Money, Greed, and God exposes eight myths about capitalism, and demonstrates that a good Christian can be a good capitalist.




Moral Issues and Christian Responses


Book Description

Previously published by Cengage/Wadsworth, this popular anthology for the study of Christian ethics has been a mainstay of undergraduate courses for nearly thirty years. Shannon and Patricia Jung provide an introduction to contemporary moral issues from decidedly, yet diverse, Christian moral perspectives. The anthology intentionally seeks a range of voices to produce a kind of "point/counterpoint" discussion of the ethical issue. Among the classic issues considered are: sexuality and reproductive rights, prejudice, biomedical ethics, the environment, immigration, terrorism, war, and globalization. New issues include: development ethics, personal finance and consumerism, workplace ethics, health care, and citizenship.




Every Good Endeavour


Book Description

In today's increasingly competitive and insecure economic environment, we often question the reason for work: why am I doing this? Why is it so hard? And what can I do about it? Work may seem just a means to an end: we do it to earn the money to enjoy life outside the workplace. Here, Timothy Keller argues that God's plan is radically more ambitious: he actually created us to work. We are to work together to make the world a better place, to help each other, and so to find purpose for our lives. Our faith should enhance our work, and our work should develop our faith.With deep insight, Timothy Keller draws on essential and relevant biblical wisdom to address our questions about work. There is grace available if we have taken the wrong attitude, idolising money and using our careers to glorify ourselves rather than God. This book provides the foundations for a work-life balance where we can thrive both personally and professionally. Keller shows how through excellence, integrity, discipline, creativity and passion in the workplace we can impact society for good.Developing a better attitude to work releases us to serve others humbly, to worship God everyday, and leaves us deeply fulfilled.




Morality


Book Description

A distinguished religious leader's stirring case for reconstructing a shared framework of virtues and values. With liberal democracy embattled, public discourse grown toxic, family life breaking down, and drug abuse and depression on the rise, many fear what the future holds. In Morality, respected faith leader and public intellectual Jonathan Sacks traces today's crisis to our loss of a strong, shared moral code and our elevation of self-interest over the common good. We have outsourced morality to the market and the state, but neither is capable of showing us how to live. Sacks leads readers from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment to the present day to show that there is no liberty without morality and no freedom without responsibility, arguing that we all must play our part in rebuilding a common moral foundation. A major work of moral philosophy, Morality is an inspiring vision of a world in which we can all find our place and face the future without fear.