Love and Submission (6) Business

Business authority is free authority. A business begins when some people with skills and spare assets hand authority over them to a business organisation that they create. Pooling assets increases their effectiveness.

Businesses have limited and temporary authority. Investors can sell their shares in the business, at any time. Lenders can terminate their loans, when they fall due. Employees can resign from their employment. No one has to buy the goods and services produced. The temporary authority over wealth and life that has been submitted to the business can be withdrawn at any time. If the business is liquidated, the authority it exercised evaporates.

Employees have to submit to their employer’s authority, but that is the condition of their accepting employment with the business. They agree to submit to their employer for a specific part of their week in exchange for a specific wage or salary. The employer pays for the submission of their employees, so the employees do not have to love their employer. If the employer gets violent, or loses their respect, employees can resign from their position.

Many people feel like their employer has imposed authority over them, but that is not true. An employee can end their employer’s authority in their life at any time, by resigning. This is the difference between an employee and a slave. Slaves cannot resign from their owners. They are stuck under their authority. An employee can resign. It might be economically painful, if they have difficulty getting new employment, but they do have that freedom.

Businesses operate under Free Authority, which is the best type of authority. They can give instructions to their staff, but they cannot use physical force to make them do things against their will. Only governments have that power. A business can only exercise Imposed Authority if it is empowered by a government.

In the modern world, business have colluded with their government to gain additional authority that God has not given. Limited liability and other corporate laws have allowed businesses to become very large with enormous hierarchies of monopoly power. These huge conglomerates provide great opportunities for the powers of darkness. They concentrate their efforts on the senior management, because it gives them control over vast resources. These people tend to have big egos, so the power plays are usually successful.

God prefers family businesses. As the Kingdom of God advances, large businesses will be chopped up and spread around. Smaller family-owned business will abound.