Biblical Business Radical: Don’t Harvest to the Edge of Your Fields

[Reprinted here with author's permission and minor editing]

I admit, even though I’ve spent most of my life in the Midwest, I’ve never had to walk a bean field or detassle corn or any of the other typical crop-related tasks/chores for teens. Nor have I driven a combine or a tractor for more than 5 minutes. I grew up on military bases so my agricultural knowledge is sparse. I think I can still detect the difference between a pig farm and cow farm by its smell, however.

Recently, in conversations with friends, we were talking about gleaning. If you don’t know, it’s a biblical practice dictated by God to help the poor in a dignified manner. Gleaners—and there are some modern practitioners—go through the fields after the harvesters have done their work to pick up what was missed or dropped. God’s command came from His heart that people should have a means of being cared for that didn’t reduce their esteem or indicate that they were incapable. My friends and I were discussing modern equivalents in non-agrarian circumstances. We had been shown some examples of neighbors hiring sole proprietor/solo entrepreneurs to do work on their houses, in their yards or catering group meals that they would have done themselves normally. Examples were given of temporarily paying the poor/homeless to do work around businesses and churches.

For me, this wasn’t gleaning. This was passing along our earned income—subcontracting. It was like harvesting thousands of bushels of corn and setting aside some of those to pay people for mucking out the stables. Not quite the pure example of gleaning. The key, I believe, to gleaning is that we are passing on the opportunity to get more revenue. I’m not even sure individuals can offer gleaning opportunities; I think it has to come from ‘field owners’ aka businesses.

I think I have inadvertently practiced gleaning with some manufacturing companies I’ve owned and operated. Here are a few of the practices:

• Letting disadvantaged people haul metal scrap to the salvage yard for cash
• Letting disadvantaged people take good or scrap pallets for their small business use or to be used as firewood in their wood stove/fireplace
• Giving away past-their-prime-but-not-dead tools to people who use them in their money-making hobbies or small businesses—this was hand tools and larger equipment like welders, drill presses, etc.
• Giving away product ‘seconds’ that others could use or sell

In all of those cases, people had to transport the stuff themselves. There may have been other ways I accidentally practiced gleaning but I can’t remember them. I’d love to hear how your business does it. I know restaurants and grocery stores pass along ‘expiring’ food to food shelves, shelters to be given away, and maybe small neighborhood stores to be sold at a great discount.

I really struggle to figure out how service companies could do it. My only thought is that we pass on a certain percentage of contracts, really small contracts that our customers bring to us and let small businesses ‘pick them up’. We should also offer to help them win the contracts by introducing them to our customers and providing a guarantee...but in no way should we operate as the contractor and the smaller business as the sub-contractor. They win the contract, they develop the relationship with the customer directly and perhaps enjoy growth potential with that customer and any referrals from that customer for the work done. If we subcontract, we still hold the earning potential for future business, future referrals, etc.

What are your thoughts?

God set this up, not only to take care of the poor, but to remind us that He’s given us all the blessings and to remind us not to get too big a head thinking we’ve solely created our success. Even on the secular level, we know that we wouldn’t be as successful if we didn’t have all of us aggregating efforts for education systems that have trained our employees, building roads for transporting them and our goods...and so on. We have not made our own success. Let’s help our neighbor...be a Good Samaritan (which means helping those that you may not even like)...let’s figure out how to practice gleaning.

Leave Your Offering Behind If...

 Over the past few years, I’ve really dug into historical church responses to racism and it hasn’t been pretty. Just read some works like The Color of Compromise, Jesus and the Disinherited, The Cross and the Lynching Tree...If you’re reading (or listening) with God’s eyes and ears, I’m believing your heart will be broken.

But here’s one of the hard sayings of Christ I don’t hear many sermons about: Matthew 5.23-24 says, “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

Who’s responsibility is it to reconcile with the other? The accused or the accuser? Christ says the accused is the one to initiate reconciliation. Doesn’t matter if the accusation is true or false. If you’re being accused, you are told to leave your offering behind and go be reconciled. And what is your offering, your gift? Money, yes. But also post-Pentecost, we also know our gifts are spiritual: preaching, teaching, evangelism, hospitality, etc. Thus we should be putting our gifts on hold until we are reconciled.

How do we do this? In public scenarios, preachers like Bill Hybels and Ravi Zecharias should have been taking a leave of absence from their ministries when accusations came forth. Each of us in our vocations and volunteer efforts should be taking a leave of absence if accusations are made against us.

Now, the challenge is this: we know our minority brothers and sisters have accused us in the majority of systemic bias over the past generations. We in the majority are not doing anything to restore or repair the effects of economic and spiritual disparity. We haven’t changed our attitudes—e.g. we look for justification of police brutality by focusing on any wrongdoing of the victim. We have ignored the “innocent until proven guilty” mantra of our law and order system. We are guilty of poor attitudes towards our brothers, sisters, neighbors. 

We might be accused because we don’t vote a certain way, apply scripture a certain way—head coverings, prosperity gospel, etc—honor public health dictums or execute civil disobedience. We too need to reconcile with our brothers and sisters who believe and live differently from us. Doesn’t mean we come to agreement, but we need to come to a loving position towards one another. “They will know you are my disciples if you love one another.” (John 13.35)

If we live by Christ’s standard, we then should cease making an offering—money and talents—until we have accomplished reconciliation. Right?

I’m not sure yet how I’m going to do this, but I’m going to try. It might mean that my charitable giving is limited to international efforts and reconciliation efforts. It might mean that I need to volunteer in a way that is invited by my brothers and sisters in struggling situations. I don’t know what else it might mean but I’m open to hearing and learning.