The Growing Impact Space
The Growing Impact Space
The Impact Investing space has grown substantially over the past decade. The idea that our capital and businesses can be used for good has deeply resonated with retail investors all the way to family offices and institutions. Christians have sought to tailor their investment approach within this nascent space, with a focus on adding a “Kingdom” element to the traditional environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) factors that the world uses to define impact.
Below is a non-exhaustive list that shows the breakdown of these two impact categories and how they differ.
The recent embrace of Kingdom Impact has been an exciting focus for the Christian business world. Stories of how God has used business to bring men and women around the world to saving faith are encouraging testimonies of His sovereignty and providence in every aspect of our lives. There has (rightfully) been little debate or disagreement within the Christian world of the necessity of Kingdom Impact, so it is helpful to instead transition our focus to the ESG factors that the world has focused on.
We must ask an important question: as Christians, do we have anything to offer to the non-Kingdom impact space? I believe the theologically-minded Christian should give a hearty “Yes!” to this question. While looking historically, in addition to theologically, Christians should not only add to this type of impact, but lead the world’s thinking in regards to ESG as a whole.
The Church as the Leader
Stepping back, it is helpful to look at how movements within Christianity have become part of the mainstream. Historically, the global Church has been a leader in some of the most impactful aspects of society, including education and healthcare. Truth that the Church has known for millennia may take time for the world’s knowledge to catch on to. Over the past decade, the emerging growth of impact investing has followed this same trend. In short, the world did not decide that business with an ESG focus was good. Christians have known this since God commanded Adam to work in the Garden!
Simple affirmations of how Christians theologically and biblically should view vocation aid in giving clarity to our view of ESG.
Work is intrinsically good, as evidenced by its creation before the fall. (Gen 1:29-31)
Christians are called to work. (Gen 2:15)
Jesus came to fix all that was broken, and does this by the outworking of the church through its members. (Rev 21:5, Eph 3:10)
The implications of these three statements are immense. Christians affirm the goodness of work. The fruit of this inherently good creation must have intrinsic good. In other words, there will be impact from any believer’s non-sinful occupation. (Going a theological level deeper, it would be more accurate to say that work is good but broken, therefore its output will also be partially broken.)
In order to correctly understand the Christian lens through which we view investing, it is imperative for a believer to have a solid grasp of the teleological way in which God has made his wisdom apparent in ordering the world. In other words, the means through which God has chosen to typically work will rightfully influence our view of the value and impact of work and investing. Practically, a thorough understanding of common grace, providence, and sovereignty should make a believer well-equipped to navigate this space.
Practical Considerations
How then do we see this practically worked out in investing? We can conclude that the world’s view of impact and ESG is not wrong, but it is too narrow. As the church, we should work to expand our own scope of what should fall into the traditional impact space. We affirm the goodness of renewable energy, clean water in third-world countries, and businesses that improve upon education and healthcare. Yet we also can see God’s providence, sovereignty, and common grace in the complexity that He has designed our modern day economy to operate in. In his book God at Work, Gene Veith explains that “we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And He does give us our daily bread. He does it by means of a farmer who planted and harvested the grain, the baker who made the flour into bread, the person who prepared our meal” (1).
In short, Christians affirming ESG-type impact are actually just speaking what we know to be true from Scripture: God works in even the smallest areas of our lives for His own purposes. The world may see a doctor giving a vaccination in a third-world country. Our Christian eyes see the glory, providence, and common grace behind this. We see a pharmaceutical company that developed the vaccine. We see capital markets that provided the funding for it to operate. We see auditors ensuring proper accounting and governance to keep the business running.
This speaks to what we know to be true in 1 Corinthians 12, with God using many pieces that are no less important to what we see to be the end goal. As Tim Keller says in his book Every Good Endeavor, “Our gospel-trained eyes can see the world ablaze with the glory of God’s work through the people He has created and called - in everything from the simplest actions, such as milking a cow, to the most brilliant artistic or historic achievements” (64).
Even in jobs that we may not think love our neighbor or benefit society, through His design, they do! In doing so, we rightfully affirm the goodness of vocation in general to our brothers and sisters in our churches. Their work matters, because He is at work in it!
These theological ideas that run through the Old and New Testament can greatly influence how Christians invest on a very practical level. Understanding how God uses our vocations as His means to impact our world and our neighbors gives us immense clarity into where we should best allocate our capital. As these topics are discussed further, a more Biblically-based view of ESG can be coupled with Kingdom impact to see the Gospel continue to redeem all areas of life.