The current popular paradigm of capitalism is marked by short-term thinking, greed, and poor governance. Because of these sins, there is increasing risk of government intervention into and control over the business systems of the world. Pundits generally offer remedies from a naturalistic perspective, which is at best incomplete and at worse erroneous.

Early in 2011, Dominic Barton, global managing director for McKinsey & Company, offered his assessment of how to remedy the problems in business (http://hbr.org/2011/03/capitalism-for-the-long-term/ar/1). First, thinking in terms of months must be replaced by thinking in terms of years. Second, serving shareholder greed must be replaced by serving all stakeholders. And third, the governing bodies of organizations must function as owners bringing true value and wisdom to the management of organizations.

While Mr. Barton’s comments are helpful, they are from a naturalistic viewpoint; that is, his perspective is limited to solutions in the natural with no thought to the underlying spiritual reality. As an alternative, consider a biblical approach.

A biblical approach recognizes that physical reality is a manifestation of underlying spiritual reality. It recognizes that God blesses alignment with himself and therefore the real answer is to seek solutions aligned with God’s will and ways. This is the theme of the above text. To those who persevere to do God’s will until the end—by inference in accordance with God’s ways—they will receive God’s reward. Here are some thoughts on using a biblical approach to transform the current popular paradigm of capitalism.

• The naturalistic approach of moving from management based on months to management based on years is helpful but incomplete. Since God is multi-generational, a more biblical view of management is multi-generational. Management must think beyond themselves to future generations. Decisions must be made looking at decades if not centuries.
• The "greed is good" philosophy is clearly not virtuous. Barton’s antidote is to focus on serving all stakeholders, not just shareholders. This is a positive step but incomplete. A more complete view would be to pursue serving the Lord first and stakeholders second.
• Regarding the issue of poor governance, Barton’s solution is to have boards govern as owners. Certainly this is a step forward, but a more profound view is to seek boards composed of people who know how to discern God’s will and God’s ways.