Secret #1
God Wants Each of Us to Be Obsessively Preoccupied with the Needs and Desires of His Other Children

If we are going to transform our financial lives with 40 Bible-based success strategies for business, we must first ask ourselves, what is business? Simply put, business is the most effective process of specialization and exchange by means of which humans can wrest a living from an often-reluctant earth. Business is one of the most important ways in which we connect, communicate, and collaborate with each other and our environment. It is thus a timeless linchpin of civilization.

As long as we all grow our own wheat and herbs, stitch our own clothes, bake our own bread, and cobble our own shoes, we need nobody else. We aren't even thinking of anyone else. We're only thinking of how to find enough time in the day to grow vegetables, feed the goats, shear the sheep, and shoe the horses. This is no way to live if you don't have to, and in the modern world, we do not have to.

Most humans, when given the chance, have discovered that life is easier and more pleasant when we abandon complete independence for interdependence, specialization, and exchange. Independent homesteading is terribly inefficient when compared to a system of specialization and exchange. If Anthony grows wheat and Juan grows corn; if Tim grows fruit and Wanda grows vegetables; if Madison raises chickens and goats while Kirk keeps cows; if Lewis turns cotton into fabric, and Michael does so with wool, and Charlie sews those fabrics into clothing and then Anthony, Juan, Tim, Wanda, Madison, Kirk, Lewis, Michael, and Charlie all meet once a week to exchange these goods with one another, astonishingly, all have more of all these things with far less time, not to mention energy expended on acquiring them, than if each person was doing everything for him- or herself.

When Anthony, Tim, and friends all specialize, they are able to focus on how to better serve one another, and in doing so, they gain more in return. The good Lord incentivizes us to increase our dependency upon each other by offering the blessing of financial abundance for those of us who comply. In other words, we each win more of a living with less effort when we specialize and trade. This process is called business.

This relates to everyone, whether or not you homestead. Do you prepare your own taxes or hire a specialist? Sell your own house or use an agent? Embedded in Jewish tradition is this idea of specialization and cooperation. You will rarely find Jews tinkering with their cars in their driveways on weekend afternoons or even mowing their own lawns. Why? Because we understand the power of specialization. If I pay my incredibly competent mechanic to maintain my BMW automobile and if I pay the ambitious youngster down the block to mow my lawn, I thereby purchase valuable hours in which to practice and perfect my own craft or trade. Each of us accomplishes our task far more quickly than we could do individually, because we have acquired proficiency at our particular skill and are able to apply efficiency by not spreading ourselves thin. By hiring others, I have more time and attention to devote to becoming better at my own trade, and I will certainly gain more by working in my own specialized trade than I will trying to save a dollar by tinkering with my car rather than paying a proper mechanic. The difference adds to my wealth. It adds to the mechanic's wealth, too. Everyone wins.

This is the power of specialization and exchange. In the late eighteenth century, Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, who was a Bible-believing Christian, popularized this understanding of the efficiencies of a specialized market economy, but Jews had already known this for millennia. But from where did they learn it? From the Bible, of course! Jews have always understood specialization, as it is described in both Genesis and Deuteronomy. In chapter 49 of Genesis, verses 1 to 28, the elderly Jacob blesses his 12 sons. He could simply have gathered them and said these few words: "I am about to be gathered to my people; I bless you all with everything good. May God take care of you always, and please bury me in the Cave of Machpelah, which my grandfather Abraham prepared. Good-bye." But that's not what happened. Instead, there are 28 verses that record the distinct and separate blessings that he gave to each son.

Similarly, in Deuteronomy 33, before ascending the mountain to be shown the Land of Israel before his death, Moses spent 29 verses blessing the individual tribes. Again, he easily could have issued one comprehensive blessing to the entire children of Israel and promptly taken his leave.

The idea behind both Jacob's blessing and that of Moses was unity with diversity. Each tribe was to have its own unique niche in the rich tapestry of a durable nation. Each tribe was to have its own specialty and to become dependent upon their brethren for everything else. If one thinks about it, isn't this what all parents would like to ensure for their children? Some way of guaranteeing that they remain united, each as concerned with the welfare of his siblings as with his own. The same is true for our Father in Heaven. In desiring to unify His children, He created a world that rewards those who specialize in some area of creative work and then trade their efforts for everything else.

Of course, each of us could declare ourselves independent of all other people and live in isolation on a remote piece of land. We could grow our own herbs and spices. We could milk our own cows and clean our own homes and knit our own sweaters and brew our own beer. And many of us do some of these things for pleasure. That is wonderful. To a degree, some weary urban dwellers yearn for this sort of existence, which they fondly imagine to be idyllic. But this is pure nostalgia. Almost everyone who has tried their hand at such a life has discovered that when it is a necessity rather than a choice, it is grueling and punishing, offering very little quality of life.

Such nostalgia makes a mockery of those who are truly trapped in such a life. True subsistence farmers and hand-to-mouth peasants typically cannot escape such a life quickly enough. In developing countries, such individuals gladly flee the grueling existence of trying to eke out a living and a life from a small plot of land as soon as they can. They flock to cities where they can sew clothing or stitch shoes in factories. Not that the life in those hot and crowded factories is delightful-it isn't-but trading their specialized skill of sewing and stitching gives them a far superior lifestyle to the alternative of stitching, sewing, planting, milking, threshing, harvesting, milling, baking, churning, and making everything else the solitary human needs to survive. In a true subsistence life, one must do almost everything by oneself. Specialization allows these individuals to throw off the shackles of the subsistence lifestyle, and business allows them to ply their trade for profit.

Compare the outlook of the solitary survivalist with that of the business professional. The former views other people as competitors and threats. By contrast, the business professional's life is intricately linked to many other people. He has to be concerned with providing goods or services at sufficient quality and at a reasonable price in order to attract and serve his customers. He has to be concerned with his employees and associates because only if they are happy and fulfilled will his enterprise prosper. Finally, he needs to be concerned with those vendors who supply him with the raw material of his production because without them he is incapable of operating. Now whom do you think God prefers: the lonesome isolationist whose slogan is "I need nobody," or the business professional active within a complex matrix of connectivity and interdependence in which he is preoccupied with making life better for so many of God's other children?

We all sometimes think we just want to get away from everyone else. We may daydream about some calamity sweeping away everyone in the world except ourselves. We think, finally, we will be able to get a parking space downtown. There will be no traffic on the freeway. At last we'll be able to watch television without fighting with our family over who gets the remote.

This is silly daydreaming, though. Imagine if it actually happened! What if everyone did disappear? Who would be operating the television station? That remote won't do you much good if there is nothing to broadcast, no news anchors, no actors. What good is that parking space downtown if there is nowhere to work? And with nobody operating gas stations or oil refineries, parking will be the least of your problems! Good luck trying to capture a wild horse or donkey once you have used up all the gas in your tank! Time for dinner? Feel like a restaurant meal? Out of luck-no cooks, no wait staff. In the grocery stores, food is rotting on the shelves. At home, your heat and electricity have gone out because no one is running the utility company.

The truth is that without other people, your life becomes even worse than that of impoverished third-world subsistence-level peasants-at least they have one another to depend on!

Are you beginning to see why specialization and exchange are the foundations for God's plan for human economic interaction? If you care about your customers as people-if you like, appreciate, and desire to serve them-you will be rewarded. However, if you prefer...