Faithfulness—not achievement—is success
How to guarantee eternal success in any endeavor, the 6 criteria Eventide uses to evaluate investments that “make the world rejoice,” and how to stop thinking selfishly about your investments, votes, and time.
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Eventide Disclaimer:
This communication is provided for informational purposes only and expresses the views of Eventide Asset Management, LLC. Assets under management as of 9/30/24 are 6.80b. This does not constitute investment advice nor is it a recommendation or offer to purchase or sell or a solicitation to deal in any security or financial product. Eventide does not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. Eventide's values-based approach to investing may not produce desired results and could result in underperformance compared with other investments. There is no guarantee that any investment will achieve its objectives, generate positive returns, or avoid losses.
[0:00:05.4] JR: Hey friend, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast, I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren’t pastors or religious professionals but who work as floor layers, search marketing strategists, and judicial law clerks?
That’s the question we explore every week and today, I’m posing it to Robin John, CEO of Eventide Asset Management, this pioneering asset management firm that seeks to make the world rejoice through their investments and they’re doing that at a remarkable scale with more than seven billion dollars in assets under management.
Robin and I sat down to talk about how we can guarantee eternal success in any endeavor, right at the onset. We talked about the six criteria that Eventide uses to evaluate investments that make the world rejoice, and how we can stop thinking selfishly about our investments, our votes, and our time.
Trust me, you are not going to want to miss this conversation with my new friend, Robin John.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:17.3] JR: Robin John, welcome to The Mere Christians Podcast, brother. So thrilled you’re here.
[0:01:22.0] RJ: Thank you so much, Jordan.
[0:01:24.4] JR: This is super fun, I’ve been reading your story for a long time, you’ve been reading my kid’s book to your kids for a long time, and now we get to hang live, right? And hey, listen, I got a story here because I hate it when podcasts assume that everybody in the audience understands the job that people do. So, before we talk about Eventide specifically, let’s start with the 60-second synopsis of what an asset management firm does. Explain it to my 10-year-old, Robin.
[0:01:50.6] RJ: Yeah. So, really, we are allocating capital. So, the question is, where should capital be allocated, and ultimately, when you’re allocating capital, you are allocating capital into real companies, real businesses that are either serving real needs of the world, or they are just allocating capital into businesses that might be trying to generate profit through exploitation, and what happens is the way that the stock market has been setup over the past 30 years or so, really, going back to the 70s, the last 50 years or so, what’s really happened is that people have forgotten the true purpose of investing, which is the allocation of capital.
And the focus has been about owning the market, diversification, minimizing standard deviation and sharp ratios and beta volatility, and ultimately, people no longer, including Christians, no longer know what they’re investing in. Recently, I was talking to one of my cofounders at Eventide, and we were talking through the Book of Revelation 18, where the Apostle John tells the church to come out from Babylon.
And it’s interesting when you study that because in Babylon, the merchants were trading good things and bad things, right? So, you see the trading of olive oil and bread but you also see the trading of men and their souls, the trading of slaves, and John is telling the church to come out from Babylon. So, my co-founder, one of the co-founders was asking me, “Robin, imagine if there was a Babylon 500.”
“Would God be pleased if the church was investing in the Babylon 500?” So, really, we as Christians should think carefully about our work and about our investing, and the impact that we’re having on the world.
[0:03:53.8] JR: It’s really good. I’m excited to dig into how Eventide is doing this differently but first, let’s back up a little bit. We probably don’t have time to hear the full Robin John story today but what’s the founding story of Eventide?
[0:04:06.7] RJ: Yeah, so 2007, I started praying with Finny, the co-founder of Eventide, there are three founding members, and before that, I was struggling with the sacred secular kind of mindset, and I was praying that God would call me into ministry because the understanding that I had about work was that, that work that mattered to God meant work of a pastor, work of a missionary, and I would pray for a calling.
Then, I ended up losing a job and I found myself in my parent’s basement, next to the washing machine and dryer, just praying that God would call me into ministry because I didn’t think that like, everyday work mattered to God. I thought that I was a second-class citizen, and I was longing for something greater in terms of purpose, and it’s that prayer that ultimately led to the founding of Eventide.
We prayed for Finny, myself, my brother, Jason, we would fast and pray once a week for months and we had different ideas on how we can maybe do something together to honor God. But ultimately, we agreed that starting this investment firm was the thing to do for us.
[0:05:23.4] JR: I love that so much. I want to read something that I loved, in the tone of the founding story on yall’s website. It says, “What if we underperformed or failed? With continued prayer, we came to a conclusion, the question was, whether we would follow God’s calling or not follow,” and here’s the part I loved, “To follow was success, regardless of what else happened.” And you're talking there about the risk, right?
The very real risk that you guys could start this thing and fall flat on your face, and I want to hear you talk more about this because I think a lot of Christians who experience failure after taking a leap that they felt God calling them to take, have interpreted that failure as missing God’s call on their life but God doesn’t call this a success necessarily. He calls us to faithfulness and it sounds like that’s what you guys were saying at the beginning of this journey. Am I reading this right?
[0:06:20.9] RJ: Yes, and you know, sometimes, there are entrepreneurs that will reach out to me. I find myself speaking to entrepreneurs as much as I do investors, and they’re often dealing with anxiety, worry, and asking me how I dealt with that in my early years. Maybe it was unfair because I mentioned losing a job. I was actually fired from a job, just to be clear. I last – another job lasted for maybe two months or three months.
And you know, so from a worldly perspective, I was already a failure and you know, that was very embarrassing for me because I’ve always excelled, you know, in school and whatever and – but that prayer in my parent’s basement was a time of just secretly praying at first, and that’s why I would sit by the washing machine and dryer because I didn’t want anybody to see me crying and praying before God late night because they didn’t even know I was fired.
And so, for me, at that point, I already saw myself as a failure and through the prayer, what I understood is that worldly success and failure really is not the goal anymore. The question is, “Am I doing what God wants me to do, and if I am, walking that every day?” Because if we aim at something that is, anything other than faithfulness to God, making God happy, then ultimately, it’s the wrong goal at the end of the day.
So, really, there is still a question of failure and success but the failure and success really comes back to faithfulness. If I’m not being faithful, if I have not honored and kept the commandments or kept the promises I’ve made to God even, recently, my mom came to me and said, “Robin, I saw you one night praying by the washing machine, I came down to wash clothes and I just walked away because I saw you there.”
And she said, “Whatever promises you made to God during that prayer make sure you keep it.” And so, even as we deal with worldly success, we have to remember to continue to be faithful, continue to remember why God has given you the success in the first place. Like, Deuteronomy 18, God talks about wealth creation, but then He says, ultimately, from that point on when you read it, there’s a reason why God has given people the ability to make wealth. It is ultimately to be a blessing in the world.
[0:08:53.1] JR: Yes, yeah, which brings us to Eventide. You guys, this is all over the website and all over your interviews but you said many times that Eventide is on the pursuit of investing that makes the world rejoice. In other words, we are blessed so that we might be a blessing to the world. Talk more about this. What do you mean when you say “You’re on a pursuit of investing that makes the world rejoice.” This sounds like Proverbs, it sounds like an old Tim Keller sermon that I love. What’s going on here?
[0:09:21.7] RJ: Yup, definitely comes from Proverbs. Proverbs has two verses, actually. One says, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices, and when the wicked prosper, the people groan.” The other verse says that, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices, and when the wicked are defeated, there are shouts of joy.” So, why is that? It’s because the righteous of people that prosper by taking care of the city and the poor in the city, right?
It’s not just, yes, and so they look out for those that they are supposed to look out for. The wicked are people that often prosper through exploitation, through plunder, by taking advantage of somebody else. So, when the wicked are prospering, the people are groaning under the weight of that oppression but when the righteous are prospering, the city is shouting for joy because when the righteous prosper, the whole city is prospering.
So, the tagline, “Investing that makes the world rejoice,” we came up with that because we believe we are participating in a form of investing that is about uplifting the needs of the world, right? Uplifting the poor, uplifting – basically, we look at six stakeholders, six neighbors to a business when we invest: customers, employees, supply chains, host communities, environment, and society.
So, we want to be investing in companies that we believe are loving those stakeholders, those neighbors well. The “love your neighbor” principle is the second great commandment in the Bible. I think the first time that verse was found in the Bible is Leviticus 19. It’s speaking of business people, it speaks to farmers, vineyard owners and tells them to love their hired servants.
Love the poor in the community and basically, it says, love your neighbor as yourself. So, as business people, we all have neighbors that we are responsible for, and at Eventide, as we are investing capital into businesses, we’re trying to find the businesses that are doing that well.
[0:11:31.5] JR: It’s really good, and man, when you're reading those verses from Proverbs, the wicked, the description of the wicked, man, it sounds like something straight from a Hollywood script of all these you know, Wall Street movies made in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, where I think investors have become one of Hollywood’s favorite villains in our global narrative.
[0:11:55.2] RJ: I recently was telling a group of investors that we need to write a new script for Wall Street for Hollywood, where investors are heroes and not the villains anymore because in all of the movies, Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps, Other People’s Money, The Wolf of Wall Street, Boiler Room, Margin Call, every single movie made about investors is pretty bad.
[0:12:17.1] JR: It’s pretty bad.
[0:12:18.2] RJ: Yeah, and I think we, as Christians, we have an opportunity to bring redemption to Wall Street.
[0:12:22.5] JR: Because that’s a biblical narrative, there’s a biblical narrative that says that investors can be, when following the righteous ways of the Lord, recast as heroes, rather than villains in these stories. Can you make that case here?
[0:12:34.0] RJ: Very much, and you know, ultimately, when we study the Bible, starting in Genesis one, you see that God is a worker, He is a creator, and He calls good in everything He creates, and Genesis 1:26, it says, “We were made in God’s image so that we can have dominion, and we can rule.” And King David writes about that later that we have been given dominion over the work of God’s hands.
So, as investors, we have dominion over the work of God’s hands. It’s incredible to think about that, you know, I recently took my family to Italy and I was looking at the Statue of David by Michelangelo and I was just thinking to myself, “Imagine if Michelangelo said, “Robin, I am giving you dominion over the work of my hands.” I would mess up the Statue of David.” You don’t even want me to like, touch his lock of his hair.
I would totally mess that up. Yet, the God of the universe has given us dominion over the work of His hands, which means that He has uniquely gifted us and trusted us, and equipped us to carry on the good work that He started, and I think that’s why he had to make it in His image, right? He made us in his image so that we can reflect His image and not work, and as investors, what does that mean?
How do we reflect God’s image in our work? So, that’s a big question that I’ve had in my mind, ever since the founding of Eventide, like, what does it mean to really reflect God and His image in our work?
[0:14:06.0] JR: I think you could do worse than summarizing as it as investing that makes the world rejoice. That’s a pretty good start. Let’s talk more about how you guys do this differently, at Eventide, right? And from what I could tell navigating through the website, it’s really this business 360 framework that’s a big part of the “how” you guys execute that vision. Can you talk us through that framework? I think you touched on it a couple of minutes ago but can you go a little bit deeper in how you guys think about investment opportunities that make the world rejoice?
[0:14:33.0] RJ: So, first of all, we have an, avoid, embrace, engage framework. So, we want to avoid ill-gotten gain. Proverbs one speaks about avoiding ill-gotten gain, it tells us not to share a purse with people that are plundering and that’s really where Eventide started. As Finny and I were praying, we said, “Okay, we have to avoid ill-gotten gain.” So, we’ve made a list of things that we just didn’t want to profit from, or support by the allocation of capital, or through the allocation of capital.
That included things like abortion, pornography, tobacco, weaponry, violent video gaming, environmental harm. So, we had a – gambling. We had a whole list of things that we wanted to avoid investing in but what happened is I really believe that God was answering prayer, and right before the founding of Eventide, the founding of our first fund, a person named Tim Weinehold came into our lives.
And he ultimately said, “I know what it means to be a Christian, I know what investing is, put that together for me.” Finny and I talked about avoiding ill-gotten gain, and he said, “That sounds great but why are you only asking the question about what you’re avoiding? Why are you not asking the question about where you should be allocating capital? If investing is the allocating capital, shouldn’t the question be, where should Christians allocate capital?”
And I think that’s the most important question ever asked in the history of Eventide. So, we started with an avoidance framework. So, now, it’s a void, embrace, embrace good companies that are doing good things in the world that are loving their neighbors, that are creating compelling value. We want to try to lean into the companies that are promoting human flourishing.
So, we start with themes of human flourishing, whether it’s like healthcare, cyber security, clean water, safer transportation but whatever the themes are, we look at all the industries, and that we’re trying to find the best themes that we want to partner with, within those industries, and that’s where our investment research starts, and then once we start investing in a company, there’s an engagement process as well.
So, we continue to engage the management teams, and there are times where the engagement will not go in our favor and we will have to divest from the company. An example of that recently was, with the Uyghur people in Western China, we found that we were investing in solar panels –
[0:17:10.3] JR: Yeah, I was hoping you were going to tell the story, you told me this before, this is good.
[0:17:13.5] RJ: Yeah, we were investing in solar panels and we love the theme of clean energy, but then after investing, we found out that there was slave labor in their supply chains. So, you know, in Western China, there’s a group of people called the Uyghur people. They are ethnic and religious minorities. They’re Muslims living in Western China that the government is trying to reeducate and convert into being communist, ashiest.
And ultimately, these men were being locked up in internment camps, reeducation camps, soldiers were living at homes with their wives and children, rape was happening, torture was happening, and American companies were benefiting from the slave labor. We ultimately reached out to companies and there was – we wrote white papers, reached out to other asset managers, reached out to Washington DC even.
And ultimately, I don’t want to take credit because I know others were you know, also putting pressure on these companies, many of these companies created bifurcated supply chains so that the clean supply chain was coming into the US. So, just to be clear, these companies were mining polysilicon, metallurgical polysilicon, and there were slave labor within the supply chain from the creation of the cells, the way first in God’s, all the way to the creation of the panels.
And, so these companies, they started sending the tainted supply chain to the rest of the world and the cleaner supply chain into the US. That was not sufficient for us, so we ultimately had to divest from a number of those companies.
[0:18:56.7] JR: How do you communicate that decision in a winsome way that glorifies God?
[0:19:02.1] RJ: Yeah, one of the things that we’ve been mindful of since we started was we’re trying not to be antagonistic. We’re trying not to show up at annual shareholder meetings, holding up signs and you know, what we really try to do is to be good partners with the companies we’re investing in, and ultimately, we don’t invest at all if the company’s products and services are not in line with our biblical views and values.
But once we’re invested, if we see management practices or something like what I just mentioned that surprise us, that’s when we start engaging. We will engage you know, like as partners, and ultimately, we are investing as ownership and we treat these companies as though they are, you know, we are owners in the companies. We will engage the management teams.
It’s also a good opportunity for us to engage from a faith perspective as well, just to – there have been times where companies will be promoting an agenda, in order to promote what they believe is loving for their employee base, and at times, we will engage the companies and advocate for religious views as well, and ask the company, whether a certain decision is fair and loving to the Christian or the Muslim or the Hindu employee. Fairness to all the employees is something that we also promote through our engaging companies.
[0:20:31.8] JR: Yeah, that’s good. What I am hearing you saying is the products and services these companies produce, the what matters but so does the how, right? So, solar panels, the what of that business are good, how they’re going about business in the solar panels through slave labor, not good. Do you ever think of the other way, Robin? Like, look within Eventide, what you’re doing is clearly God-honoring, right?
I think God smiles upon your desire to invest to make the world rejoice but where are you most tempted personally within the business to dishonor God in the how? Like, what’s most challenging in how you’re building this business to ensure that you’re following Christ’s commands?
[0:21:08.1] RJ: Yeah, that’s a difficult question. For me, just knowing my personality, I think it’s just impatience at times and you know, maybe I could lose patience with people more quickly than I should and sometimes I have to remind myself that I am the founder or the cofounder and maybe not everyone will share this level of passion that I might have for this work, and so I think the area where I need to constantly be reminded in terms of just loving others is just having patience with others and believing the best in others.
[0:21:49.1] JR: Yeah, it’s really good. You mentioned both success and failure come from the Lord, right? He uses all things for our good. You talked about being fired earlier in your career. Can you look back on that experience now and praise the Lord for it and if so, why? What specific good have you seen come from that?
[0:22:07.7] RJ: Yeah, very much. So, first of all, I just feel like God is used to that situation to do something amazing and I look at every like small part of it and there’s no way I was smart enough, just even the word Eventide means evening, the coming of the night –
[0:22:30.5] JR: It’s an old English word, right?
[0:22:32.7] RJ: Old English and Jesus said, “I must do my Father’s work while it is still day before the night comes,” because no one could work when the night comes. So, whenever I say the word Eventide is a reminder to me that I am doing good work and I mean, like to be honest with you, I’m not smart enough to come up with that name, Eventide, but like that’s just one example.
I just feel like God has brought the right people here and really, you know, blessed this company and blessed the work that we’re doing and when I look back in what I was doing and what we’re doing now, it’s just incredible what God has allowed us to do and I have such deep, deep purpose now, and I feel a sense of calling, and I am not implying that I did not have calling in last work.
But I had not understood it at the time and I would also say, now, just to give a small example, I remember at our ten-year mark, I looked back at the job I was fired from, and on our ten-year mark, our company here was giving away a hundred times more than what I was making from the job I got fired per year and I look back on all of this, I’m just so thankful to God for just letting me be a part of this.
[0:23:50.3] JR: Yeah, it’s so good, I love that so much. You said before, I can’t remember if I read on the website or if it was in a – our pre-interview but you hope to, quote, “Inspire other Christians to think about the power of their work to promote human flourishing and the global common good.” And I love that you are being explicit about this because, in my experience, man, many Christians I know do not feel the call to promote the global common good.
They feel the call to personal righteousness and sanctification, they feel the call to share the gospel and “save souls” but not seek the welfare of the city, not seek the global common good. So, beyond what we see in Proverbs and the past that you already mentioned, make the case here. Our listeners are called to be engaged in making the world rejoice that we are called to lean in and seek the welfare of the literal cities we’re in and the global common good.
[0:24:46.6] RJ: Yeah, you know even when the exiles were called back, well, when they were exiled, we see the Bible verse that says, “Seek the welfare of the city for in its welfare, you will pretty much find your welfare.” So, I do think that the Bible is very clear that God has made us in His image so that we can promote the common good. We see, you know, Paul writes to the Colossians, he writes, “Work not as unto human masters but as unto the Lord.”
We are working as unto, we are working for human master but Paul is saying, “But still work as unto the Lord.” And you see that principle throughout the Bible and one of the things I also want to say is that when we are working just everyday work, we are – this principle of Avad in the Bible in Genesis, in Exodus, you see that Avad is a work for human work, and we see that Pharoah is asking for the people’s Avad and God is asking for the people’s Avad.
Avad in Exodus means worship, service, and work, and so there’s a competition between Pharoah and God for Avad, for Avad, is done properly, our work, our worship, our service all belongs to God and not to the world, not to Pharoah but I think, one thing I wanted to say also in response to your question is yes, I agree with you. I think most Christians today focus on righteousness, integrity, and they forget about the common good and human flourishing.
But I would say that even when it comes to righteousness and integrity, the focus at times is too much on this idea of giving, right? So, make all you can to give all you can mindset.
[0:26:41.4] JR: Yes, come on, go there, yes.
[0:26:44.0] RJ: Yes, so I really do believe that if a Christian person is truly a person of integrity and truly living our righteousness in our work that we will be promoting the common good. If we are, if we in fact do truly walk in integrity across all of our life, across our work not just our giving but also how we make our money, then the world will naturally become a better place because when the righteous prosper, the city will rejoice.
That’s why John Wesley preached, “Make all you can to give all you can but make all you can without hurting yourself or your neighbor in body or in soul.” So, we have to think about both, both about how we make our money, what we do with the money after we make it.
[0:27:26.0] JR: I think there’s been perhaps an overemphasis in what we do with the money once we make it in Christian communities, right? Listen, I’m all for financial generosity, there’s clear commands in the scripture to this but I’ve seen too many Christian entrepreneurs justify this trimming their employees, not caring about the supply chain, not care about the details of justice and how they're making the products, all in the name of, “Well, I am doing this for the Lord because I’m making a lot of money, so I can give it outside of the business,” right?
And I think it’s a really, really dangerous place to be. In a way, I think it’s just another form of workspace righteousness, right? It’s like, “Yeah, I am not concerned about what’s going on within the business but Lord, look at how much I am doing for you by writing this big check to this ministry.” I think it’s a really dangerous place to be spiritually.
[0:28:16.6] RJ: I agree. I think there’s a lack of integrity there and you know integrity means wholeness. I think it’s very easy to kind of fall into that trap, that is what the world teaches us but you know, Romans 12 verse one is about worship. Verse two says, “Do not be conformed to the patterns of the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may test and approve the good pleasing and perfect will of God.”
So, we have to stop conforming to the patterns of the world, the teachings of the world, and we have to renew our minds and the chapter goes on to say, “Let your love be without hypocrisy, hate what is evil, cling to what is good.” So oftentimes you know, even when I talk to Christians about investing, first question is, “Will it lead to underperformance?” because like everybody is just thinking about investing as a personal thing, right?
No one thinks about investing as a way to bless others, everything becomes a very selfish, self-centered my own retirement type of a conversation that I think Christians have to be nonconforming ourselves in this way.
[0:29:25.8] JR: How do we move the horizon of possibility there? I mean, to ask a massive question that’s impossible for you to answer, how do we get Christians thinking in that way? How are you thinking about that as an investor of like, “Hey, this isn’t just for your pocketbook but for the good of – the global common good.”
[0:29:42.3] RJ: It’s hard because I am conflicted, like because I run an investment firm.
[0:29:46.2] JR: Yeah, exactly.
[0:29:47.1] RJ: If I preach this message, if I say this, it sounds like self-serving.
[0:29:51.8] JR: Biased and selfish, yeah.
[0:29:53.0] RJ: Yes, exactly. The issue is most pastors haven’t thought about this enough when it comes to the topic of stewardship, the teaching, the preaching is generally about giving and you know, where to give, how to give, how much to give. There isn’t enough of a preaching or teaching about where one should work, how they should work, how they should think about their employees, their customers, their supply chains, their local communities in how they work.
Ultimately, if you talk to many pastors, they probably don’t even know what their church members do Monday through Friday, so they are not properly equipped to lead that part of the Christian person’s life and so, I think it really starts with equipping pastors properly to teach because I am conflicted, you know if I am preaching this message.
[0:30:49.0] JR: Yeah, but I think you had said a deeper theme and I’m glad we’re releasing this, we’re planning on releasing this episode after the election day so I can go here and hopefully not get political, right? But like, I do think there’s a deeper issue, like when we talk about selflessness and we preach out of passages like Philippians two, the application is almost always just in dollars donated and time spent but we’re called to be selfless in all things.
I believe I’m called to be selfless with my vote. I believe I’m called to be selfless with my investments, right? This life isn’t about me, right? Like, the gospel frees me from the need to be selfish because I have all I need and more in Christ so that, go back to Romans 12, I can be a living sacrifice. Jesus was a dying sacrifice so that I am free to be a living one and yes, I sacrifice my time selflessly.
Yes, I sacrifice my giving selflessly but I am also called to sacrifice my vote. I am called to sacrifice my priorities. I am called to sacrifice the way that I think about my investment dollars. Does this make sense or am I just rambling here, Robin?
[0:31:58.5] RJ: It makes a lot of sense, Jordan, one of the things I’m working on is a book project.
[0:32:03.0] JR: Yeah.
[0:32:03.6] RJ: And in the book, I was writing a story from my own family. You know, my parents, my dad’s side of the family especially grew up very poor. You know, my grandfather was a missionary, a pastor, and my grandmother, like – so, yes, so I grew up seeing real faithfulness in them. So, I slept in the same bed, me and my brother with my grandfather and my own grandmother slept right next to us.
At night time, the electricity went out, there was no bathroom inside of the house and the like, coconut beetles will come inside the house at night time if you turn on a candle but I never experienced hunger or real poverty but I’ve heard the stories from when my dad was a child and just to tell you one quick story there, my dad’s family you know, they were starving. My grandparents had eight children.
And my dad’s older brother is 20 years older than him, his oldest brother, there’s eight kids, my dad is the second youngest and one night, my grandfather’s lying in bed crying because his children are hungry and he has nothing to give them, and the way it worked it like usually because he’s a pastor, if a visiting family from a church comes over, another pastor comes over to the house, whatever food they had would go to the other family.
They would serve, and then the family goes to bed hungry and so, my dad’s oldest brother gets a job in a different state of India, in northern India. So, he goes there and soon after he takes a job, so he was sending like 80% of his paycheck back to the house to take care of his siblings and parents and living on the 20%, he soon finds out that he has to lie about expenses because that’s expected so that they could get, like you know, reimbursements from the government.
And he calls his father, his father said, “Come home, we cannot take that money. It’s ill-gotten gain.” And so now, like when Christians are challenging me on, “Hey if we invest this way, do we lose half a percent of returns by not investing in tobacco?” It’s hard for me because like, I want to say I believe biblical principles, you know, are good for this life not just the next life. I believe that the principles in the Bible lead to a better life today.
And certainly, to better investing today and I believe that but at the same time, I don’t want to pander the greed question. I want to say to the person, “Even if you underperform, even if it means you give up a little bit of money, isn’t that worth it to be faithful to God?”
[0:34:41.5] JR: Amen, man, brother, so-so good, such a good challenge to me and to our global audience. Hey, man, four questions we wrap up every episode with. Fast forward to the new earth, Isiah 65 says, “We’re going to long enjoy the work of our hands.” What job would you love for the Lord to give you to His glory on the new earth? What do you want to spend billions of years doing?
[0:35:04.3] RJ: Oh, that’s a tough question. Yeah, so I’m going to answer the question differently. I would love to be on a team of King David and –
[0:35:15.1] JR: Come on now.
[0:35:16.9] RJ: Yeah, I would love to – whatever he’s doing, just be on his team and I would be so happy to hear King David sing Psalms 63, Psalm 103 while we work. Whatever he’s doing, I will be right next to him doing that with him.
[0:35:35.4] JR: What an answer, that’s such a killer answer, it’s one of my favorite answers to that question so far, it’s so good. All right, Robin, if we open up your Amazon order history, which books would we see you buying over and over again to give away to friends?
[0:35:48.0] RJ: Yeah. So, I mentioned to you earlier that I’ve recently bought a bunch of your – not recently, it was more than a year ago, The Creator in You. I bought it for my children, then I ended up buying it for other parents, including parents at Eventide, and I think that book is actually very powerful for the adult, not just for the child. Some books that I have given lots of copies away of is Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller, Why Business Matters to God by Jeff Van Duzer. Yes, another book I really value a lot is Work Matters by Tom Nelson.
Yeah, those are more faith than workbooks but outside of the Christian world, some books are very aligned with these principles. One is called Good Jobs Strategy by Zeynep Ton to give away, a lot of –
[0:36:32.5] JR: Oh, I love this book.
[0:36:34.7] RJ: Yeah, a lot of those books, we’ve probably given away a thousand of those books. Another one is by Fred Reichheld, the book about the Net Promoter Score.
[0:36:43.3] JR: Oh, I don’t know this book. I mean, I know NPS but I don’t know this book.
[0:36:46.6] RJ: Yes. The book is called, The Ultimate Question. We’ve probably given away a thousand of those books.
[0:36:50.7] JR: Wow. All right, hey, I’ll cosign the Good Job Strategy. It’s been a long time since I’ve read this book but terrific. I believe it’s from a Harvard or was it from MIT?
[0:37:00.9] RJ: MIT.
[0:37:01.3] JR: Yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah.
[0:37:02.3] RJ: Yup, Zeynep Ton.
[0:37:04.3] JR: Excellent, excellent book. Man, that’s a good one. I haven’t heard that in a long time. All right, Robin, who do you want to hear on this podcast talk about how the gospel shapes the work they do in the world?
[0:37:13.4] RJ: Do you know Pete Ochs by any chance?
[0:37:15.3] JR: No.
[0:37:15.9] RJ: So, I met him in 2008 right when I was starting Eventide and I haven’t kept in touch but I followed his work. He’s doing incredible work, he’s based out of Kansas and – or he used to be, and what he does is he creates opportunities for inmates to find meaningful work, and he helps bring them back into the workforce in a very dignified manner.
[0:37:39.2] JR: Oh man, I love this. You’ve lost touch with him though?
[0:37:42.8] RJ: I could easily reach out to him through LinkedIn but yeah.
[0:37:45.6] JR: Oh, man.
[0:37:45.8] RJ: Yeah, yeah.
[0:37:46.2] JR: All right, send me his LinkedIn profile, I would love to meet Pete, that’s great.
[0:37:48.3] RJ: I will, I will.
[0:37:50.5] JR: All right, Robin, you’re talking to this global audience of mere Christians doing a bunch of different things vocationally. Some of them are investors, some of them are entrepreneurs, some of them are mechanics, some of them are retailers. What they share is a desire to glorify God and all that they do, including their work. What’s one thing from our conversation do you want to reiterate to them before we sign off?
[0:38:11.3] RJ: Yeah, I just want to say that our work matters to God. Whatever you do, if your work is creating blessing and flourishing for humanity, if you’re loving your neighbor. So, I’m the CEO of an asset management firm, in no way is my work any more important to God, maybe it’s less important than the work my mother was doing. When we came to America, she was a nursing aide for about 25 years.
She was cleaning diapers of the elderly in a nursing home, and she hardly spoke English. I’m sure, you know, she told me stories about just how people treated her at times. Maybe in her mind, she was thinking, “I have to do this to take care of my children.” But guess what? I wish she knew, maybe she did, but I wish she knew that her work matters to God because she’s not just loving her children and her husband.
But she’s also loving the elderly that she is serving each and every day. All of our work, if we are loving and serving others, immensely matters to God.
[0:39:11.8] JR: Oh man, Psalm 37:23, New Living Translations says: “The Lord directs the steps of the godly, He delights in every detail of their lives.” Every diaper your mom changed, every investment that you make, every widget listener that you’re creating today with excellence and love and in accordance with God’s commands, in a godly way, is an ingredient into the eternal happiness of God.
Robin, man, I want to commend you for the exceptional, encouraging work you’re doing every day for the glory of God and the good of others. Man, you encouraged me that there are serious followers of Jesus doing this work that makes the world rejoice. I love what you guys are doing at Eventide. Hey, listeners, if you want to learn more about Robin and his phenomenal work, check out EventideInvestments.com. Robin, thanks for spending time with us today.
[0:40:10.2] RJ: Thank you so much, Jordan.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:40:12.5] JR: Hey friends, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. If you’re enjoying the Mere Christians Podcast, do me a huge favor and go leave a review of the show on Apple, Spotify, wherever you're streaming this right now. Thank you, guys, so much for listening, I’ll see you next week.
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