At the end of every podcast, we like to ask our guests to share what God has been teaching them in this season of life. Join David Snyder and Steve Vecchitto as they talk about the changes in multifamily real estate and the potential for social and spiritual impact in local communities.

Exodus 25:8

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.

David Snyder: For some reason, God has just brought the word sanctuary to my mind. And I probably haven’t thought about that word in forever. I don’t know why, but in the last few weeks, I’ve been studying how God gave sanctuary to Moses, he gave sanctuary to Jonah to King David.

And I just feel I’m very at peace with one of the things I have been called to do in life is provide sanctuary for our residents and where it’s a peaceful place for them to grow socially and spiritually, as they try to take steps along the line.

I’ve enjoyed sanctuary myself during this time of COVID. Because I’m up here in my mountain cabin. And I’m in the sanctuary. And I think that’s maybe where this came from. I’m just so grateful to provide sanctuary for my residents.

Steve Vecchitto: if I may actually have two that are meaningful my life today. And the first is Galatians 5:22, which is the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I just love that if I live my life through those words, I’d have a wonderful life.

Then, in the season we’re in with COVID, I have really been dwelling on Matthew 6:30, which says, Do not be anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow we’ll be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own troubles. And I think the Lord gives us plenty of mercy today and provides for all we need today. With COVID and wondering what the economy is going to look like and how our business is going to run. I could quickly run to tomorrow and be anxious about that. But instead, I can go to this passage that just gives me peace.

by Dr. Paul Campbell

The language used to describe our community has long been deterministic and continues to lead to the dehumanization of People of Color. During slavery, we were labeled as “chattel,” after slavery, we were called “vagrant convicts.” Today our culture has been branded as “ghetto,” our children relegated to “at-risk,” our young men tagged as “thugs,” and our women marginalized as “angry Black women.”

You may ask how it could be possible that in 2020 we would witness the devaluing of Black lives such as Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd? This dehumanization persists because leaders keep responding to the symptoms of inequality rather than addressing the underlying causal factors. Although the symptoms are many, the root causes can be distilled down to a much shorter list. In this article, I will address and unpack the implications of artificially created poverty, racial friendship gaps, and our historical amnesia. Let us begin with a look at economics as it pertains to the dehumanization of People of Color.

Artificial Poverty

For years I prided myself as a Black free-market capitalist. I read the works of Adam Smith, Milton Freeman, and Thomas Sowell and was a firm believer in the invisible hand of the market. However, there was one thing I could not reconcile as it pertained to my capitalistic proclivities. Through an economic study of American history, I uncovered what appeared to be the inconsistent and selective application of capitalism. For example, why were the 40 acres and a mule promised to Black former slaves called a government handout, but the 160 acres promised to White settlers going West was not? If government intervention is so repugnant in a capitalist economy, why then did America tolerate the economic suppressive Black Codes and Jim Crow laws? Moreover, my research also uncovered that the American Ghetto was in no way a natural economic phenomenon. Instead, it was artificially created by policies, such as redlining and the federal FHA underwriting policy of 1936, which clearly states that the federal government would not underwrite loans to “racially disharmonious people groups.”

As the patterns of selective capitalism emerged, it became clear that the economic constraints created by artificial poverty would necessarily lead to the reliance on the very institutions that created the American ghetto in the first place. How so? Poverty is an industry, and every industry has an economic incentive to ensure its survival. From indentured servitude to the dismantling of Black Wall Street, the systemic suppression of Black America’s contribution was predetermined, and the resulting need for governmental assistance inevitable. This deterministic causal relationship has led many to continue to dehumanize our community as lazy and the overly enthusiastic recipients of government handouts. Let us now consider the friendship gap’s implications as it pertains to the dehumanization of Black America.

The Friendship Gap

According to a study of social networks done by the Pew Research Center, 81 percent of participating White adults in the study reported that all or most of their close friends are White. This friendship gap (coined by Synapse Minnesota LLC) has multiple far-reaching implications from a social and economic perspective. Historically, this friendship or relationship gap between White and Black communities has led to a sort of economic taxation without representation; that is, policies and laws were created and imposed on our Black community without adequate representation at the tables of decision. Take, for example, the choice to build highway I-94 right through the heart of the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, back in 1956. Although there were other optimal routes, a decision was made that would displace 600 African-American families, numerous Black businesses, and Black institutions.

As it pertains to social interactions, this lack of interracial friendships leads to extreme discomfort whenever the two are forced to interact. Because of this lack of genuine friendships, people default to second-hand accounts or stereotype caricatures of the races portrayed in the media. This is caused by what behavioral economists call cognitive easing: the ease with which your brain processes information and subconsciously impacts how positively (or negatively) you feel about something or someone. In other words, second-hand bias can, in an instant, cause a narrative to form in your mind that determines whether you see a thug or a future world changer. Let us now consider the implications of our nation’s historical amnesia.

Historical Amnesia

In March of this year, the federal government reluctantly approved the creation of the COVID-19 economic stimulus package. Their reluctance was partly because they were able to correctly project that there would be stage two and three economic implications of their decision for years to come. If their economic modeling predicted that there are taxpayers not yet born that would be paying for this stimulus, would it not be logical that there would also be a multi-generational economic impact from slavery, the Black Codes, and redlining? Instead, we are supposed to forget that any of it ever happened, pick ourselves up by the bootstraps, and apply American ingenuity to remove the yoke of artificial poverty from our neck. This, of course, without any intervention, lest there be any guilt of providing a handout.

This historical amnesia has led many to the irrational conclusion that our community is just not trying hard enough. The truth is that we were told to compete in the free-market economic race after being economically maimed. And when we finished last, they said for us to stop making excuses. In other words, as long as people continue to discount the historical economic impact of racial injustice, they will see the problem of inequality as a burden that they have no responsibility to correct.

At the time of this writing, my home state of Minnesota has been set on fire. The reality, however, is that these fires were burning long before the riots began. For example, the Twin Cities metro area was recently ranked the 4th worst place to live for People of Color and dead last for graduation rates for students of color. These causal factors which led to these disturbing statistics did not occur overnight, nor will they be solved quickly. What it shows, however, is the dangers of not seeing color.

In this article, we discussed the implications of artificial poverty, the friendship gap, and historical amnesia as it pertains to the dehumanization of Black America. Furthermore, we explored the selective historical application of free-market capitalism as it relates to People of Color. So how do we respond to this? We must identify the root cause of racial and economic injustice in America, rather than continuing only to address the symptoms of inequality.

by Eric Swanson

Eric Swanson explores the unofficial investment thesis of Sequoia around the Seven Deadly Sins. He describes how building great products require creators to understand the deepest truths about people. Hear his thoughts below…

A few weeks ago my son, Jeff, mentioned in passing that Sequoia Capital didn’t invest in a startup company unless the founders could identify which of the 7 deadly sins the product or service was appealing to.  Their logic is simple: “We don’t want to invest in something people should want to do. We want to invest in things that people can’t stop doing.” We would do well to pay attention to Sequoia’s theology. As one of the top venture capital firms in the country, the companies they helped to launch are collectively now worth over 20 percent of the NASDAQ stock exchange. Because they appeal to the 7 deadly sins doesn’t make them evil. Far from it. Since 2000, Sequoia has returned over $10 billion in stock and cash to non-profits and schools. They are not evil. They just understand human nature.

Read his whole article here on his blog!

What we can learn from Sequoia Capital and the 7 Deadly Sins

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON COVID-19, PLEASE SEE OUR PAGE HIGHLIGHTING SOME OF THE BEST RESOURCES OUT THERE FOR FAITH DRIVEN INVESTORS & ENTREPRENEURS IN THIS SEASON.

Article originally posted here by Townhall Finance

by Jerry Bowyer

As we have seen there were major differences between the Galilean political economy and that of Judea. This difference in economic base was partly due to providence as expressed in the geographical differences. According to the Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels:

“Matthew 5:13–16; 6:25–33; 7:13, 24–27; 13:3–9, 24–30; Luke 15:11–15

Unlike the southern Central Hill Country, which is almost exclusively hard limestone (Cenomanian), Galilee is a mixture of hard (Cenomanian), soft (Eocene), and chalky (Senonian) limestones.

Matthew 5:13–16; 6:25–33; 7:13, 24–27; 13:3–9, 24–30; Luke 15:11–15

Unlike Judea and Samaria, which had limited areas to sow grain, Galilee possessed large valleys and plains.

(Alexander, V. H. (2016). The Words and Teachings of Jesus in the Context of Galilee. In B. J. Beitzel & K. A. Lyle (Eds.), Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels (Mt 5:13–Lk 15:15). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.)

Lower Galilee (where Jesus lived and had his early ministry) had better farm land than upper Galilee (which was more mountainous and less prosperous) or than Samaria to the South. Flat land made both for better farming and also for more trade routes. Mountains are barriers to trade. They didn’t have gunpowder and could not blow the tops off of mountains or easily cut tunnels through them.

I argue that the differences in economic base should not be ignored when looking at the different ways in which Jesus talked about money in these different economic contexts; because he did, indeed, speak differently to Galileans about economic matters than he did to Judeans. One powerful way to demonstrate this is by looking at parallel sections of the Bible which are very similar, but not completely identical. There are often called ‘parallel passages’, but sometimes people use that phrase to refer to sections of the Bible which are talking about the same event at the same place and time, while others who use that phrase include in it passages which do not describe the same events, but rather similar events.

I’m using the phrase in that latter way: different events which have very similar messages. The Sermon on the Mount (starting in Matthew 5) and the Sermon on the Plain (starting in Luke 6) are so similar that those who wish to assault the veracity of the Scriptures try to use variations between them as proof of contradictions in the Bible. The detractors usually key in on the fact that one is reported to have happened on a mountain and the other is reported to have happened on a plain. But, in addition, there are differences in the actual content of his recorded remarks. For example, Luke’s Sermon on the Plain contains ‘woes’ against the wealthy. However, Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount does not.

Let’s look at the different economic contexts of the two sermons. First the Sermon on the Plain:

17 And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases;

(Lk. 6:17 KJV)

We see that Jesus’ message was given in a context which centered on the capital region of Judea and its capital city, Jerusalem. There were people from Tyre and Sidon as well, which were major financial centers and which had some close financial ties with Jerusalem. For example, Tyre minted the Temple Shekel for the Herodians (which we will see was important tool of economic extraction from the people centering in its use in the temple system). It is extremely unlikely that Jesus gave the sermon in close physical proximity to Tyre and Sidon in the far North of the region. This would have been far afield from Jesus’ usual mission field. Far more likely is that Jesus was speaking near Jerusalem and that Tyreans and Sidonians were in Jerusalem for business reasons. For a rough analogy, imagine New Yorkers visiting the Washington, DC region, and stopping their negotiations to hear an itinerant preacher from flyover country.

However, even if you reject my conclusion about where the sermon was probably given, the Gospels are quite clear about to whom it was given. That’s the main point.

By contrast, the Sermon on the Mount was given to a different, far broader group of people centered in or near Galilee:

23 And Jesus was going about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

24 And the news about Him went out into all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, taken with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them.

25 And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.

(Matt. 4:23-25 NAS)

So, the Sermon on the Mount was given to Galileans, Decapolites (Decapolinians?), Judeans (including Jerusalemites) and trans-Jordanians. This is a very broad audience, more than just a national audience. It’s hard to know where it occurred—probably someplace centrally located—but the important point is who was in the audience. It was made up of people from different types of regions with different political economies. Think of something more like a national television address than a regional speech on local TV in Washington DC with visiting business interests from New York.

So, we see that although the categories are not perfectly aligned, the different audiences for the two sermons correspond somewhat to the different political economies we’ve discussed. One centers in Judea, and the other has a broader audience which includes Galileans, with Jesus giving what appears to be one of his stock speeches (with some variations) in both places. It is a nearly perfect environment to test the thesis that Jesus varies his economic commentary depending on the political economy environment into which he is speaking.

First, let’s look at the very beginning of both speeches. Both start with the Beatitudes, but the first Beatitude has an interesting variation between the two versions.

The Sermon on the Mount begins:

KJV Matthew 5:1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

(Matt. 4:25-5:3 KJV)

Whereas the Sermon on the Plain starts with:

20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. (Lk. 6:20 KJV)

The phrase ‘poor in spirit’ is generally considered to be less ‘in your face’ when it comes to confronting issues of economics. It is more malleable and more reconcilable with a spiritual, as opposed to socio-economic, focus. And it is given to the broad national audience which includes people from the more free-market system of Galilee and the likely more free-market system of the Decapolis, instead of just the residents of the capital city and environs.

But to the Judeans we have the blessing given to ‘the poor’, which denotes a specifically economic grouping (though connotations may suggest other social characteristics.) It is more ‘in your face.’ Preachers and polemicists who are focused on economic reform tend to default to this version of the first Beatitude – though mistakenly using it to argue for a more politicized, Judean-type, economic system – represented by the region from which the bulk of the audience was drawn.

Beyond the small variation in the first Beatitude, there is a much larger variation to consider, a section which is missing from one version and present in the other.

In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus transitions directly from the end of the Beatitudes to a denunciation of the rich:

22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.

23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.

24 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.

25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. (Lk. 6:25 KJV)

(Lk. 6:22-25 KJV)

But who is ‘you rich?’ It is the wealthy elite centered in the political capital of Israel, the Jerusalem elite and their cronies from the rest of Judea and Tyre and Sidon. Interesting that Jesus uses the 2nd person pronoun ‘you.’ He does not denounce the abstraction known as ‘the rich’; rather he specifies the rich to whom he is speaking, primarily the Judean rich.

The Sermon on the Mount, by contrast, moves right from the end of the Beatitudes to the Salt of the Earth, as he addresses a group which includes many of the salt of the earth in its midst, omitting the woes to the rich.

11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. (No statement of woe towards the rich)

13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. (Matt. 5:11-13 KJV)

It is unlikely to the extreme that Jesus varies his speech when speaking to different groups from different economic environments in two ways which differ specifically in their economic content, by mere coincidence. Like any great speaker, he knew his audience and adapted his speech accordingly.

This will become even more apparent as we examine numerous other instances of how Jesus caters his messages pertaining to economic matters in response to the nuances of different economic environments and the different economic aspects of the occupations of the people he encounters in his travels.

Article originally posted here by Eventide

by Eventide

How do we understand if a company is creating value for society? One way is to ask intuitive questions of the company—questions like “If you walked into a supply center, would you be proud of the quality of the product and working conditions?”

Listen as Hannah Cumming shares 7 intuitive questions to help investors evaluate a company’s ability to create value:

Article originally posted here by Inspire

by Robert Netzly

The biblically responsible investing (BRI) movement is booming as Christian investors move billions of dollars each year to switch their portfolios into biblically responsible investments, seeking to avoid profiting from abortion drug manufacturers, adult entertainment distributors, LGBT activism, human trafficking and other immoral issues.

As the biblically responsible investing (BRI) movement continues to take Wall Street by storm, the question of performance routinely surfaces. Questions such as, “Will I have to sacrifice performance if I switch my portfolio to biblically responsible investing?” are natural, logical and very appropriate questions to ask. Perhaps it is because we are wired to assume that if we do the right thing we are going to suffer for it, the proverbial “good guys finish last” situation, or maybe because we are fearful that if we do something out of the ordinary, like biblically responsible investing, that we are taking a big risk by venturing outside of the perceived safety of the herd, but whatever the reason, investors and financial advisors are frequently tripped up by the question of performance, often even skeptical toward the growing amount of research data showing that good values and good returns are not mutually exclusive.

While one way to answer the concerns about performance is simply to point to the actual track record of biblically responsible investing funds, which you can research for free at inspireinsight.com, or to read the independent, academic research that analyzes the performance of biblically responsible investments relative to secular investments, which you can find on the research page at inspireinvesting.com, I want to address the performance question in a different light today, drawing from two passages in the New Testament.

Follow Me

Jesus had a unique way of calling people to follow Him. He just said, “follow me”. No cajoling, no convincing, no explaining, just a simple and authoritative call to follow. One of those encounters is the well-known story of Jesus calling His first disciples,

“While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers…and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” (Matthew 4:18-22)

Another famous story of Jesus calling a man to follow him is the story of the rich young ruler, who comes to Jesus asking what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to follow the ten commandments, to which the rich man replies “all of these I have kept since my youth” (umm, really?). Jesus’ following reply was not what the young ruler was expecting to hear,

“…He said to him, ‘One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, ‘How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’” (Luke 18:22-24)

In these two stories we find Jesus giving the call to leave what you have and follow Him, and two very different reactions to that call. The fishermen are called to leave their income, their livelihood and their business assets to follow Jesus, and their response is one of faith, “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” The rich young ruler is called to walk away from his earthly wealth and follow Jesus, and his reaction is one of sadness and disobedience.

Counting The Cost

Here is my point, sometimes (oftentimes?) Jesus calls people to make earthly sacrifices in order to follow Him by faith. Does Jesus call everyone to leave their business or sell all they have to follow Him? No, certainly not. But He does call some people to that, and if He calls you there can be no room for deliberation, only counting the cost and immediately following Him.

Has the Lord pricked your heart about investing with biblical values? If you researched at inspireinsight.com and discovered that you were actively profiting from abortions and adult entertainment, would that bother your conscience? I would submit to you that is the Lord calling you to pursue biblically responsible investing for His glory and your joy. I would then submit to you that the question of a hypothetical performance sacrifice is irrelevant, because if God is calling you to switch your investments to biblically responsible investing, it does not matter what the cost is. Our only option, and indeed our greatest joy, is immediate obedience.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe and have experienced that Christians are not required to accept lower investment returns in order to invest biblically responsibly. But even if that was the case, or even if it somehow became the case in the future, does it matter? Would we reject the call of God because we are unwilling to give up performance potential? Or would we immediately drop our investments and follow Him?