Bible on BusinessMuestra

Noah’s Competitive Advantage

Noah is given the highest of all accolades – the biblical testimony that he was “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time…”

Compared with our day, we may be tempted to think Noah had it easy, that he lived in “a simpler age”, without “the good, the bad and the ugly” face of globalization, without “destructive innovation” and without our breathless pace of change affecting everything from labor to finance, supply chains to margins.

Noah’s generation, we imagine, was without the gut-wrenching ethical, emotional and practical challenges of stem-cell research, dealing with Alzheimer’s, workplace morality, parenting, and human sexuality. He didn’t have to live with the fear of terrorism, climate change or nuclear devastation. Bureaucratic complexities of taxation, visas, and other regulatory impediments were unknown, we gather.

However, a more careful reflection on Noah’s generation – to which the scriptures also testify – reveals murder, rape, unbridled revenge, cruel labor, religious pluralism, the gender wars, terrifying tribal conflicts, environmental degradation, and sinister, poisonous thoughts pitting one man against his fellow, whether family or neighbor. Hardly an idyllic, pristine living situation!

As with Noah, we live in a unique generation, with unique challenges. We don’t get to choose the cards we are dealt, yet all of us are called to be blameless among the people of our day. What was Noah’s secret – and what can be ours?

It’s so deceptively simple that we convince ourselves it can’t be enough: Noah walked faithfully with God. Surrounded by men, he “practiced the presence” as Brother Lawrence would put it.

It wasn’t that he was so heavenly minded, he was of no earthly good. Among his other skills, he made a decent wine! And leading the construction of a ship 1 ½ football fields in length, and proportionally wide and high was no easy feat, either.

Noah lived his conscience, shaped by a relationship with God. In capturing and living the mystery of “being in the world yet not of the world” he is an example for us as people of business, in any season of our lives.

Craig Shugart is the CEO of a global investment fund operating throughout Asia.