Some food for thought:
"We cannot speak of business without speaking of justice -- meaning that we need to speak specifically of economic justice, the justice of the marketplace, of buying and selling at fair prices. The great and passionate longing of the Old Testament prophets is that justice would flow like a mighty river, and their witness is a clear reminder that there is no righteousness without justice; indeed righteousness and justice are virtually synonymous and, further, there is no justice without economic justice.
"Thus Isaiah, for example, speaks of the emptiness of worship that is not matched by justice in the marketplace (Is. 58; Mic. 6:8), and the justice of the marketplace that is profiled here is that workers are paid a fair wage.
"What this means is that we do not enrich ourselves at the expense of others; we are committed to fair wages; we are resolved to always pay a fair price for a product or service... On both ends of the spectrum we are seeking justice, fairness and ultimately what is good for each person involved in a transaction...
"On a personal level, then, we are not asking which coffee in the supermarket is the cheapest but rather which brand of coffee represents a fair and just wage for the growers, the shippers, the suppliers and those who staff the registers in the grocery store..."
from Courage and Calling, by Gordon T. Smith (p. 154)
I don't know about you, but these words make me think much more about where I shop and how I am involved in the lives of people who grow, make, ship and sell the things I buy. May the Lord teach us to be wise and grow in discernment on how we steward the resources we have and spend.
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