In God We Trust — All Others Pay Cash.” The amusing sign in the delicatessen caught my eye and started me thinking — What place does God have in the marketplace today?
Ohio is the most recent state to come under attack for references to God. A challenge to the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to remove the phrase “With God all things are possible” as the official state motto for Ohio, suggests just one more step in the process of removing any mention of deity in our lives.
The first step is removing God from our government and schools. Will the next step be to remove God from our businesses? Will faith be outlawed as a guiding principle in our daily affairs as religious references are erased from public view?
In our rapidly changing, high-tech culture, we are so crowded with our own inventions that we have no need for dependence on, nor accountability to, a Supreme Being. But can success, material wealth and power give ultimate meaning to our lives? In our shift from the spiritual to a more secular world view, our appeal to higher standards of love, virtue, compassion and positive traits in general have lost their point of reference.
There is a growing sense of frustration that achieving The American Dream does not fulfill our deeper longings. We spend years building businesses, growing market share and watching the bottom line. After years of struggling to climb a mountain of obstacles, we get to the top, only to realize that success can be an empty feeling.
We have it all, but we are not satisfied.
Peggy Noonen, former speech writer for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, spoke about our national spiritual crisis in the Sept. 14, 1992, issue of Forbes magazine: “ … We are beginning to lose God — banishing Him from the scene, from our consciousness, losing the assumption He was part of the deity drama or its Maker.
“And it is a terrible thing when people lose God. Life is difficult and people are afraid, and to be without God is to lose man’s great source of consolation and coherence.”
From Moses to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn have come dire warnings of the consequences of a nation that forgets God. Without God, our business endeavors have no reason or meaning. It becomes a game of wealth accumulation and power struggles.
Some will demand evidence before allowing God to guide their daily affairs, but there are compelling reasons that a belief in a Supreme Being is not so farfetched. Consider:
- The “outer” evidence. Look at the order, beauty and intricate design of nature. Could all of this happen by chance or accident? I think not, any more than an explosion in a print shop could result in a book of poetry!
Abraham Lincoln said, “All that I see teaches me to believe in a God that I do not see.”
- The “inner” evidence: The inner longing of every human being to be loved and to express love, to know truth and the desire for peace — where do these come from? A higher being? To come to the realization that we are created for a purpose will influence our personal, family and business worlds. The more we seek to be in a right relationship with God, the more we come into right relationships with our fellow human beings.
It will pervade every area of our lives as we remember that in all matters — however, great or small — it is “In God We Trust.”
Fred Koury ([email protected]) is president and CEO of SBN.