Studying Commerce and believing Christ.

It has been observed that business breaks geographical and political boundaries. Now items like gardening tools, clothes, foods, etc which are available in one region or country can be found almost easily in another region or country. Most importantly, it creates connectivity between people. Through commerce, you meet new people from different backgrounds, culture, perspectives, ideas, etc. In the light of the Gospel, this is of immense importance since we can share our Christian ideas and ethics while discussing various plans for our businesses with people while listening to their views and ideas at the same time.

Throughout history, commerce and trade had an immense role in spreading major religions to other parts of the world beyond their place of origin. For example, the spread of Islam in South Indian coast like Kerala and South East Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia can be very much credited to traders and merchants from the Islamic world. Likewise, the spread of Christianity can also be credited to Roman traders and merchants along with missionaries who travelled along the trade routes. Now, of course, we shouldn’t be merely about converting them to our faith but to make them see that Jesus’ way of doing things works for the benefit of the society, including the economic and commercial aspect of it. Thus we can observe the great influence of traders and merchants.

Entrepreneurs, or God’s Entrepreneurs as I would like to say, also have a bigger role to play in uplifting the poor section of the society especially in the country like India where poverty is rampant. Out of 1.3 billion; 70.6 million people still live in extreme poverty as per recent statistics. Setting up a company or business can create jobs directly or indirectly to such people. There is an argument that the biggest challenge for India is not a poverty reduction but inequality. Out of the total population, only 1% control 50% of the wealth of the country. That’s how skewed our country’s wealth distribution is. The policies of the successive governments seem to be favouring certain people as they get the major bulk of the wealth of the country. Two ways of reducing such inequality are education and accessibility to technology. In such a situation, your social-work to make free schools, hospitals or training institutes for self-employment, network connectivity, etc available especially in rural areas with a portion of your God-given business earnings, will surely help these poverty-stricken people to have equal opportunities to improve their standard of living.

This is particularly true for the state where I come from, i.e. Meghalaya which has been seeing its people joining various arm or insurgent groups and other groups that indulge in illegal activities. It mostly happens in rural areas which are not connected to the main town or city. If only the Government with the help of local entrepreneurs build roads, schools and bring other infrastructures to these areas so that they are also connected and get equal opportunities, I believe insurgency could easily be removed. The fact that Philippine Government was able to demobilize the Moro insurgency in the southern island of Mindanao by granting them autonomous status under the new name of Bangsamoro in 2012 and also attracting various investors for the region’s rich deposits of coal, iron, and other minerals and at the same time giving the region a fair share of value from the natural resources while paying less tax, can serve as a great example for political and business leaders of states plagued by insurgencies.

The initial years of Amul, an Indian dairy cooperative society is also nothing short of inspirational. It was successful in bringing several national and rural milk producers together making milk and dairy products available at reasonable prices to consumers. It helped in poverty alleviation by protecting the income of dairy workers in rural areas and avoided them from being trapped in the exploitation of the middlemen. Not only that, but women were also encouraged to be a part of the workforce thereby breaking the barriers of age-old stereotype. Much of the credit goes to Dr Verghese Kurian, a social entrepreneur who is known as the “father of White Revolution”, born to a Syrian Anglican Christian Family. I am not sure whether his faith inspired his work or not but every Christians should follow his example. God doesn’t like stagnancy. The development of a society or a nation is as much God’s will as our sanctification. God has assigned the entrepreneurs along with the government to make sure that it happens accordingly and they need to take it seriously.

That’s all that I wanted to say. Well, of course, there is so much about Commerce than only setting up companies or businesses; it's also about other aspects like how you manage people in the company, keeping accounting records, the responsibility to safeguard the environment, taxation, etc. In each case, our Christian ethics and values will be an important weapon in managing various issues arising from them.

You see our role as an ambassador of Christ is not limited to informing the people about forgiveness of their sins and getting to heaven through the acceptance of His sacrifice but also about informing and practising ourselves what Jesus taught so that we can build His kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven and businessmen, corporate lawyers, auditors, CEO, economist, etc have a great role to play in it. True Gospel is something that should influence your business views (or how you run your business) and even political, legal, social views, etc. There is so much wrong in the business world today. Rampant corruption, employees competing to get to the top of the hierarchy at the expense of colleagues, crony capitalism, sexual harassments, committing illegal acts to escape taxes and what, what not!

I am reminded of the one incident mentioned in the Bible. In Daniel 6:20 – “When he (king Darius) came near the den, he called in anguish,” Daniel, servant of the Living God! Was your God, whom you serve so faithfully, able to rescue you from the Lions?” .We can notice the desperations of King Darius -he desperately wants to believe this God whom Daniel served. I don’t think this is simply a call for acknowledging the God of Daniel but also accepting that His laws, perspectives, commands and teachings to work in nation-building as later verses show. The world is like King Darius desperately in search of the answers for the solution of the various issues the world is facing today. We already have the answers i.e. in our Bible. May we dive into it and know our Bible every well. I confess this piece is incomplete, there are so many things I need to learn and can still add more to it, but may this hopefully bless and encourage you especially Commerce students as you try to relate your subject with your faith in your journey as a Christian. I repeat-God needs entrepreneurs!

This article is written by Aryton Sangma. He hails from Tura, Meghalaya, he has completed his Post-graduation in Commerce and is currently serving as a coordinator with UESI in Kolkata.

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