The Vision
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

It appears the bears have come to dance on Wall Street. As I write the market is down over ten percent in the last two weeks. That means that I have lost money, sort of. You see I have retirement funds invested in a mutual fund. A mutual fund is when a group of people pool their money and invest in a number of publicly traded companies. I own a very tiny piece of a thing which in turn owns tiny pieces of several things which make up a tiny piece of Wall Street. But I don't know any of the people with whom I own those pieces, and I don't even know which corporations the fund has a stake in. Isn't it ironic that the more corporate the world has become, the less like a body we are?

"Corporate' is a word rooted not in business jargon, but in the Latin corpus meaning body. Corporations were once businesses in which a group of people would band together as a body to meet the needs of consumers. That is still essentially what they are. But the change in the scope of these bodies has wrought a change, that is the quantitative difference has born a qualitative difference. Now it seems that the business or corporate model for life is at polar opposites with the body view of life.

What is the business model of life? It sees all things in a context of profits and losses, of efficiencies and productivity. Success or failure in such a worldview can be measured with a calculator, or a bank statement. It is not merely focussing on the business of business, but is the misapplication of business principles to all of life. The Wharton School of Business may in awarding an MBA give one wisdom with respect to issues relating to the exercise of dominion over God's creation. Business principles, if they are grounded in the Word, do indeed have their place. But will that wisdom translate into all spheres of life, or is it out of place?

There is another corporate model, what might be called "body life." This model, however, does not come from business, but from a literal body. This is the language the Apostle Paul uses to describe the church. He appeals to men to love their wives, those with whom they are one flesh, not as they love their own careers, but as they love their own bodies. This vision of life is covenantal. It looks at ourselves, our families, our churches, our times as part of a larger whole. This view looks at all things not as brute facts, not as bits of data to be manipulated to ran a more efficient life, but in a context grounded in the One whose body we make up.

How does this latter vision work itself out at the Highlands Study Center? First, though we are a group of people working together we are not a corporation, not a business, but a ministry of the church. Those who come and study with us are not customers. The teaching we provide is not product, something to be changed or even packaged to meet the customer's desires. Our goal is not to grab a bigger market share, but to lend a hand in the process we are going through together as a body, conforming our lives to the image of the Son. Here the customer is not King, the King is King.

Secondly we teach on a human scale, a body scale. We teach face to face, personally, not because research shows that such will garner repeat business, but because this is how biblical teaching works. We strive to know and to love our students, not to process them. This is our bottom line, that we desire nothing more than to embody a body life, and thus to embolden others to do the same.