Faith Integration

Running Header: Group 4 Faith Integration 1

Group 4 Faith Integration 2

The world of business is pressure filled and burdensome. There are deadlines and quotas which need to be met and at times the strain can be unbearable. Stress may come from several different directions which often cause those in senior managerial positions to make immoral or unethical decisions. Companies have done this in the past and sadly more will do it in the future.

Stress is not always a bad thing; however, when there is impossibly high expectations to make more money, to create a more efficient company, to be better than competitors and to do better than previous years it can lead people to do almost anything to meet these expectations. Corporations, such as Enron and Freddie Mac, who tweaked numbers and falsified books on multiple occasions lead the government to pass laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. These stringent laws have made finance and accounting significantly more complex and difficult, leading some corporations to return to the private sector or to list their shares in overseas markets instead of in the United States (Brealey, Myers and Marcus, 2018, p. 72, par. 1-2).

“With transparency, corporate troubles generally lead to corrective action” (Brealey, Myers and Marcus, 2018, p. 71, par. 6). When companies are transparent and honest with their struggles they can learn how to fix and heal their business. Trials and stress may cause some people to fold, but it also forces people to make changes and to learn from their mistakes and become better. By cheating the system or manipulating the numbers mistakes and problems are only temporarily buried or kicked down the road, but sooner or later the truth will come out. Galatians 6:7 teaches the lesson, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (King James Version). We reap what we sow. Either we sow corruption and deceit and reap the consequences of dishonesty and poor ethics or we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others to create a more Christ-like environment. More often than not we will come out further ahead than we would have had those trials and hardships not come.

Financial markets and institutions are important to business because they are there to help with financing that they need. When a business is trying to start up or when they need a little help they have to go to a financial institution so they can get the money that they need to start. “Businesses have to go to financial markets and institutions for the financing they need to grow. When they have a surplus of cash, and no need for immediate financing, they have to invest the cash, for example, in bank accounts or in securities” (Brealey, Myers, & Marcus, 2018)

The Bible talks about the rich and the poor and borrowers and lenders and how they are all related. Proverbs 22:7 says “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.” Reading this verse you can see that one thing that the Bible doesn’t really want is for those to borrow money, this is one thing that everyone knows isn’t possible especially if you are starting a business, not very many people would be able to open a business on their own without having to borrow some money, but according to the Bible if you borrow money from someone you are becoming a slave to them. The same as it says the rich rule over the poor, this could be looking at business owners ruling over their employees, it may not be like what we all think about ruling over someone but if you think about it then yes a company owner is in some sort of way ruling over their employees.

References

Brealey, R. A., Myers, S. C., & Marcus, A. J. (2018). Fundamentals of corporate finance. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Education.