By Dylan Pahman and Alexander William Salter

When discerning how to approach wealth and commerce, American Orthodox Christians have their work cut out for them. Should we embrace the “Protestant work ethic” of righteous enterprise? Or does the Apostolic witness shun “filthy lucre,” instead favoring a communitarian path? We need more than simplistic answers. The “one thing needful” is Christ Himself, Who reveals to us our vocation to serve God.

Thus, we cannot discover what we should do with our possessions without knowing who we are: Persons created in God’s image, called to communion with our Creator. In regard to the resources of the earth, we fulfill this calling through stewardship, as in Jesus’s “Parable of the Talents” (Matthew 25:14-30). Three stewards are entrusted with a sum of gold they must invest, becoming bountiful on behalf of their master. By gratefully receiving all things, fruitfully increasing them, and lovingly offering them back to our Creator, we bring God’s grace to all human affairs. But when we hoard what we are given, like the bad steward in the parable, we deprive the world of the blessings God intended for it.

When God gave man “dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26), it was not an invitation to subjugation but an offer of partnership. Whatever portion of the world we possess—materially or otherwise—are the talents God has given us.