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Friday Five: Why We Need Community and Business and More

On Fridays, we bring you the best of our blog and the best of the web. This week’s roundup includes posts on business and community as the should be, thoughts on “useless” jobs and more. 1. Beyond Gardening and Governance: Cities Need Business: At the Acton Institute’s PowerBlog, Chris Horst and Joseph Sunde write on why businesses are important for communities—and vice versa.
Healthy businesses don’t just appear out of thin air; they spring from complex networks of strong families, life-giving churches, and intersecting institutions, and they flourish under governments that rightly relate to their citizens.
2. Business as God Meant It To Be: This video from Christianity Today’s This Is Our City initiative features Katie Nienow’s story of why she “left youth ministry out of a love for economic justice.” 3. Why Should Economic Ideas Matter to Christians?: In their series on “Economic Videos Every Christian Should Watch,” Anne Bradley brings us the rap battle between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek and its implications for Christians.
We are called as Christians to engage in the culture and be a force for good. We can and should fight against bad ideas. The contention between the ideas of Keynes and Hayek mattered. Likewise, Christians need to understand and engage in the economic debates on the news. These issues all have important consequences for life as we know it today as we work to further God’s coming kingdom.
4. Does Capitalism Destroy Culture? A Response: At our blog, Joy Pullmann writes on a recent piece by Acton’s Michael Matheson Miller that outlines some of the common arguments regarding capitalism, materialism and culture.
I struggle with capitalism because I do not like mass consumption. I do not like how the easy availability of life’s daily needs makes us waste the resources God has given us. … Even so, capitalism seems like democracy. It’s the best of rotten options out there. I can’t think of an alternative that does not breed worse consequences. Can you?
5. Is Your Job Useless?: At The Gospel Coalition, Elise Amyx of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics gives inspiration for those who feel that their work is mundane and meaningless.
Though some routine assignments seem unimportant, every task is significant if God has called you to it. We fulfill our call to Christian work when we put our hands to the task he has called us to do—and leave it to God to see the final outcome.
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