FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Connecting Our World, Reaching Our World

By LeRoy Lawson

A good book can have quite unintended consequences. Thomas Friedman”s The World Is Flat (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) is not a book on missions. It is, flatly stated, a stimulating, prejudice-shattering study of global economics. America”s reign as the sole superpower, defining “business as usual” as whatever advances American interests at whatever cost to other nations, is over. The revolution now underway is as mind-boggling as the Copernican discovery that the world is not flat. Only this time, we round-earthers must accept the fact that economically, it is.

It”s no longer “business as usual” time for world missions, either. I couldn”t read of this strange new world Friedman describes without pondering its implications for Christian missions. For the church, too, it”s a new world.

A New, Flattened World

This is the era of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), of the World Wide Web, of multinational corporations, and of several other forces that, Friedman contends, have flattened the world.

Before 9/11, there was 11/9 (1989), when the Berlin Wall collapsed with a stunning impact on world politics and economics. After 11/9 there was 8/9 (1995), when Netscape went public and suddenly people from all over the world could instantly be in touch with each other via the Internet.

Other world flatteners included work flow software that makes it possible not only for humans to talk to each other, but computers also. Then came open-sourcing (with people at all levels of organizations contributing to policy decisions), and outsourcing (with jobs moving from high-salaried Americans to low-salaried workers in the developing countries), and offshoring and supply-chaining and insourcing and informing and all kinds of other activities for which new names had to be invented.

Add them together and you have business as we”ve never known it. You learned that already, if you”ve ever tried to go online for tech support. Courteous voices with unfamiliar accents do their best to accommodate you. They are paid much less than their American counterparts, but in their countries their salaries are beyond anything they could have dreamed of before the world went flat. Yet even as jobs have moved abroad, more have been created at home, a kind of win-win many did not anticipate.

Friedman”s most inspiring chapters are his final ones, in which he offers his prescription for survival in this new world””necessary recommendations because Al-Qaida is taking advantage of the flattening, also. They stem from an observation Friedman made a few years ago, that countries with McDonald”s restaurants had never gone to war against each other after McDonald”s arrived there. He called this the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.

In this book he announces his Dell Theory, a variation on the theme. He believes “the advent and spread of just-in-time global supply chains in the flat world are an even greater restraint on geopolitical adventurism than the more general rising standard of living that McDonald”s symbolized.” So his theory:

No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell”s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain. Because people embedded in major global supply chains don”t want to fight old-time wars anymore. They want to make just-in-time deliveries of goods and services””and enjoy the rising standards of living that come with that.

What does all this have to do with Christian missions? In a flat world, the good news and good jobs are not polar opposites. A good sermon by itself is not as effective as a good sermon and a helping hand to a good income. The way to bring the good news to countries like China (our rapidly rising economic competitor) will be through cooperating for their economic advantage.

Nothing new here. Jesus taught some powerful lessons; he also fed the 5,000. Christian missions is concerned about spiritual and material good news. Many of today”s most progressive missiologists are exploring business as missions, convinced that in the new world Christian business persons may have a greater influence than traditional missionaries can. (See the August 19, 2007, issue of Christian Standard.)

It”s a subject worth much greater study.

A Surprising Autobiography

As you can see, I”m into economics in this column, trying to understand a little more about what holds our country and our world together financially, and what this all means for the worldwide work of the church. Thomas Friedman”s lessons in economics I”ll remember for a long time. I”ll also carry many of Alan Greenspan”s with me, because they provide additional insight into the ideas Friedman introduces.

Greenspan”s autobiography surprised me. I didn”t expect The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New Age (The Penguin Press, 2007) to be such a good read, because I had never thought of America”s leading economist as a particularly engaging personality.

I did the man wrong. In his televised appearances before Congress, Greenspan always looked and sounded exactly like what you”d (or at least what I”d) expect from a prominent practitioner of the “dismal science”: stooped, balding, somewhat gaunt, Greenspan delivered his reports in language both obtuse and frustrating. A far different man emerges in these pages.

The workaholic son of lower-middle-class parents scratched his way to the zenith of his profession, and there he stayed, perched atop the Federal Reserve Board for more than 18 years, held in place by both Republican and Democratic presidents. It was, as his title indicates, an “age of turbulence” in which he and his country came through (as his subtitle tells it) “adventures in a new world.”

Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the Fed in August 1987; presidents Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II kept reappointing him until January 31, 2006. There were, during that period, few men in the world whose words held greater sway than his, although his auditors weren”t always certain what those words meant.

His autobiography, on the other hand, is a model of clarity, even for an economics innocent like me. No stereotypical bean counter in a green visor, this man plays tennis, loves and makes music, enjoys his happy marriage with NBC”s Andrea Mitchell, intelligently (and lucidly) converses on the most arcane matters of global finance, and does so with wit, as in this 1988 quip, “I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you”ve probably misunderstood what I said.”

Sometimes Greenspan”s verbal caution wasn”t enough, as on February 26, 2007, when he spoke of a possible recession before or in early 2008. The very next day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 416 points and lost 3.3 percent of its value (the worst one-day loss since September 17, 2001, when it lost 684 points””7.1 percent””after reopening following the 9/11 terrorist attacks). It was proof he had to speak softly””he carried a big stick.

Amazingly, by the way, the economy did not collapse after 9/11. Greenspan points to its resilience as proof that this is indeed, economically speaking, a new world. He addresses that new world in the second half of his book, after telling his own story in the first. He applies lessons his broad practical education has taught him in a sweeping survey of the world economic hot and cold spots. In the final chapter (“The Delphic Future”) he employs a lifetime of learning to peer into the next quarter century.

A Cautious Assessment

But he does so with his trademark caution. He cannot “reasonably project” anything for the U.S. economy in 2030 without answers to some basic questions. These questions indicate the values he believes must be affirmed for America to remain economically competitive in the new (as Friedman would say, flat) world.

1. Will the rule of law still be firm?

2. Will we still adhere to the principle of globalized free markets, with protectionism held in check?

3. Will we have fixed our dysfunctional elementary and secondary school systems?

4. Will the consequences of global warming emerge slowly enough not to affect U.S. economic activity?

5. Will we have kept terrorist attacks in the United States at bay?

Greenspan writes clearly””but he remains cautious. The complexities of our era are too great for the economist to predict the future with confidence. This caution frustrates some of his critics; I applaud his humility. You can trust a man who knows what he doesn”t know.

 

 

LeRoy Lawson, International Consultant with CMF International, is a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and a member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee. His column appears at least monthly.