Book Review: 1Q84: Book Two

1Q84: Book Two by Haruki Murakami (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 1184 pp)

Born in 1949 in Japan, Haruki Murakami studied drama at Waseda University. He began writing fiction at the age of 29, inspired to write a novel while watching a baseball game. Murakami earned literary fame with his best-selling novel, Norwegian Wood. In the wake of its success, he earned writing fellowships at Princeton University and Tufts University. Murakami has won the Franz Kafka Prize, the Kiriyama Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, and the International Catalunya Prize.

Check out my review of Book One.

Discerning Between Unenviable Options 

Often times, life does not provide a right answer. When pondering between two choices, both have pros and cons. If life was a series of obvious choices, we’d never question whether our lives are headed in the right direction. With Book Two of 1Q84, Haruki Murakami establishes one of life’s classic paradoxes where no obvious answer exists but a decision, nevertheless, must be made.

In Book Two, the reader finds the crux of the 1Q84 storyline. If you recall from my Book One review, main characters Aomame and Tengo have operated on parallel narratives seemingly intertwined in unknown ways.

A Dangerous Mission 

Photo by Marufish

Aomame, the vigilante assassin of violent men, accepts the most difficult assignment of her illegal career. Her organization learns of gross sexual misconduct from The Leader, a figurehead of a secretive, rural cult called Sakigake.

A dangerous mission, Aomame must prepare for failure. Suicide is an option.

“At least once a day she would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and put the muzzle of the loaded gun in her mouth. Feeling the hardness of the metal against the edges of her teeth, she imagined herself pulling the trigger. That was all it would take to end her life. In the next instant, she would have vanished from this world. To the self she saw standing in the mirror, she said, A few important points: not to let my hand shake; to brace for the recoil; not to be afraid; and, most important, not to hesitate” (354).

A closely guarded figurehead, the completion of this mission will result in flight for Aomame. Sakigake is an affluent organization that will stop at nothing to bring retribution for their leader’s death if the mission is successful.

In Between Fact and Fiction 

Meanwhile, Tengo receives further pressure in the wake of Air Chrysalis’ success. For starters, the author, Fuka-Eri, has run away. The longer she is missing, the more intense the scrutiny the publisher will receive and news of Tengo’s involvement as a ghost writer could ruin everything.

Even worse, the fantastical fictional narrative to which Tengo contributed is shifting into reality. He sees two moons in the sky.

“Could this mean, then—Tengo asked himself—that this is the world of the novel? Could I have somehow left the real world and entered the world of Air Chrysalis like Alice falling down the rabbit hole? Or could the real world have been made over so as to match exactly the story of Air Chrysalis? Does this mean that the world that used to be—the familiar world with only one moon—no longer exists anywhere? And could the power of the Little People have something to do with thins in one way or another” (548)?

The world of 1Q84 is becoming more influential.

A Choice 

In the process of completing her assassination attempt on The Leader, Aomame gains a fresh but unpleasant perspective.

Photo by Spreng Ben

For starters, The Leader wants to die. A window into the world for the Little People, The Leader cannot handle life anymore. As a conduit for these fantastical beings, The Leader no longer wants to carry this burden.

Even worse, the Little People are targeting Tengo for his involvement in Air Chrysalis, unknowingly cueing the public to the secretive workings of these mysterious beings.

Aomame faces an exceedingly difficult decision. Kill The Leader and ensure her inevitable death when Sakigake hunts her down and save Tengo, or release The Leader, save her life, and guarantee death for Tengo.

Having formed an irrational bond with Tengo in elementary school, her decision has no right answer.

Right, Wrong, Or Balance 

No matter Aomame’s choice, people will suffer. The ethic of good and evil carries no weight. In fact, The Leader argues,

“’In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil,’ the man said. ‘Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good. This is what I mean when I say that I must die in order to keep things in balance’” (447).

What would you do in Aomame’s shoes? Is self-preservation worth someone else’s life? Is balance a better question than right and wrong? We all face unending choices every day. While most of our decisions do not possess the same onus, choices are rarely clear.

Book Two progresses the 1Q84 narrative nicely and I eagerly look forward to Book Three.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5.

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: Spiritual Enterprise

Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch (New York: Encounter Books, 2008. 300 pp)

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is Chairman and CEO of Global Fiduciary Governance LLC, a leading strategy and thought leadership company. Ted founded Spiritual Enterprise Institute in 2005 and serves as a research professor at Yale University.

The Rabbit Trail 

It endlessly frustrates me when an individual soils a valid argument by injecting needless rabbit trails. For example, someone could contend that they dislike country music as a whole because they don’t favor the drums. Yes, drums exist in country music, but it doesn’t mean that quality of country music is defined by the drummer. In a similar manner, Ted Malloch ruins an interesting argument in Spiritual Enterprise by continually framing his statements in a conservative versus liberal, capitalist versus communist approach.

Virtuous Business and Spiritual Capital 

In essence, Malloch argues that businesses should shift from a strictly profit-oriented approach to a virtue-oriented approach. Granting the detrimental effect of profit maximization philosophies, Malloch believes that virtue provides a long-term framework for business success.

“The bold idea that the creation of wealth by virtuous means is the most important thing we can do for ourselves and others, for our society and for the world at large” (xix).

Typically, the modern business analyzes itself in terms of economic capital. It utilizes metrics to understand growth and success. Malloch, on the other hand, recognizes that business establish many forms of capital. For instance, the humans that comprise a firm create social capital and even more, the religious values of employees construct a spiritual capital. Malloch defines spiritual capital

“as the fund of beliefs, examples and commitments that are transformed from generation to generation through a religious tradition, and which attach people to the transcendental source of human happiness” (11-12).

Using less “Christian” terms (Malloch believes that spiritual capital assists a firm whether or not an employee aligns with a specific religious tradition), Malloch suggests that a business ought to act virtuously. Defined as a set of principles constituting proper character, virtue functions as the glue that keeps business functioning.

Support Your Thesis! Forget the Rabbit Trail! 

Truthfully, I appreciate Malloch’s insights on virtue. As an ethical position, virtue seems to flourish as a middle ground between hard-lined deontology and utilitarianism. While one side seeks principle-based living and the other urges outcome-based living, virtue requests character building.

Despite the positive claims of virtue on business, Spiritual Enterprise becomes bogged down in Malloch’s acrid view of liberalism and communism. Too often, Malloch’s thesis drowns in the vitriol of politics. As an example,

“Only the discredited caricature of business—as a zero-sum game in which every person’s profit is someone else’s loss, and in which the ruthless pursuit of profit is the sole purpose of the game—persuades people to overlook what surely ought to be obvious: that in business you expose yourself to criticism, take risks, acquire heavy debts of responsibility and accountability, and are thrust into moral relation with others, in ways that demand a far more robust and serious morality than is needed to survive in some cushioned state bureaucracy or in a comfortable academic chair” (16-17).

At its core, Malloch argues that wealth creation helps everyone. Yet by belittling the positions of people in “cushioned” and “comfortable” places, Malloch’s argument feels slightly trollish. If I want to learn about the way to manage a business virtuously, I don’t need to know why liberalism and communism exist as grave evils to society. Of course, connections exist between politics and the marketplace but virtue deals with character and thus, liberalism and communism are not in the scope of this book.

Spiritual Enterprise carries an intriguing premise, but Malloch’s venom deters from the overall aim. For views on business management, take your eyes somewhere else.

Verdict: 1 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: Zone One

Zone One: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (New York: Doubleday, 2011. 272 pp)

Colson Whitehead was born in 1969 and raised in Manhattan. He attended Harvard College and afterward he began working as a reviewer for The Village Voice. Out of the gate, Whitehead’s fiction gained acclaim when his first novel, The Intuitionist, won the Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award. His work has earned him the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/Oakland Award, and a Whiting Writers Award. Also, Whitehead has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Knives and Reason 

Aristotle, when expanding on his defense of virtue ethics, contends that humans act ethically when they maximize the function for which they were created. Just like a knife acts “virtuously” when it is sharp enough to cut, Aristotle suggests that humans act virtuous when they engage in reasoning. The ability to use the complex human brain for social ends allows humans to act ethically in comparison to other animals.

Supposing Aristotle is correct in his assertions, do we, then, act immorally when we refuse to use our reasoning faculties? Or do we act amorally? What happens when external forces cause humans to act strictly on instinct? While reading Colson Whitehead’s post-apocalyptic zombie novel, Zone One, I couldn't help but consider ethics in dystopia.

What Happens After a Zombie Outbreak?

Zone One's Gary from The Composites 

Set in Manhattan, “Zone One” signifies a section of the city zoned for rehabilitation. The book’s protagonist, Mark Spitz—not the Olympic swimmer, this Mark Spitz earned his nickname fighting zombies—works on a three-person sweeper team with Gary, an ADD and trigger-happy individual, and Kaitlyn, the team leader and rule abider. The sweeper team searches every nook and cranny of building after building searching for zombie stragglers.

Before the book’s narrative began, an army of marines choppered into Manhattan on a mission to retake the city. During this time, wave after wave of zombies perished under heavy machine-gun fire. While Uptown remains infested with the undead, “Zone One” holds a minimal number of stragglers. While most malicious zombies instinctively ran into the teeth of the machine gun fire, a select few “malfunction” serenely remaining in places of supposed importance in their former lives. These stragglers are the zombies that the trio is charged to kill.

If You Look Back, You’re a Pillar of Salt 

Throughout the novel, Mark Spitz pauses to recollect the carnage that has occurred after “Last Night”—the name for the day that the zombie infliction took hold. We learn of the standard zombie narrative through his clouded memory. A disease breaks out; panic ensues; and everyone learns to fight for themselves. Often times, Mark Spitz cannot fathom how he has made it thus far:

“He was a thorough, inveterate B. It was his road. He studied for hours and there it waited for him, circled in red ink, oddly welcoming, silently forgiving. Or he refused to open his books and gorged instead on a prime-time platter of sitcoms: he’d still get a B. It was a little play he performed each week and he hit his marks instinctively, stalking the boards of mediocrity. He was not unintelligent; in fact, his instructors agreed that he was often quite perceptive and canny in his contributions to discussion, a ‘true pleasure to have in the classroom.’ The adjectives in his report cards, drawn from a special teachers’ collection of mild yet approving modifiers, described an individual of broader gifts than implied by the grades delivered at the end of each term. All the parts were there. Extra screws, even. There was just something wrong in the execution” (56). 

A Phoenix Rising from the Ashes 

Years after Last Night, organized reconstruction begins. Somewhat comically, the headquarters of the “American Phoenix” buds in Buffalo.

“He’d never been to Buffalo, and now it was the exalted foundry of the future. The Nile, the Cradle of Reconstruction. All the best and brightest (and, most important, still breathing) had been flown up to Buffalo, where they got the best grub, reveled in 24-7 generators and uncurtailed hot showers on command. In turn, they had to rewind catastrophe. Rumor was they had two of the last Nobel laureates working on things up there—useful ones, none of the Peace Prize or Literature stuff—chowing down on hearty brain-fortifying grub, scavenged fish oil and whatnot. If they could reboot Manhattan, why not the entire country? These were the contours of the new optimism” (35).

Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder 

Photo by Andrew C. Mace

However, the characters in this rebuilding state live in a daily stupor. Having learned to survive by instinct, the people—Mark Spitz included—in a certain sense have lost a part of their humanity. Whitehead introduces a term early in the novel called PASD.

“One canny psychotherapist—Dr. Neil Herkimer, who’d made a fortune in the days before the flood with a line of self-help books imparting ‘The Herkimer Solution to Human Unhappiness’—delivered the big buzzword of the moment: PASD, or Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder… Everyone suffered from PASD. Herkimer put it at seventy-five percent of the surviving population, with the other twenty-five percent under the sway of preexisting mental conditions that were, of course, exacerbated by the great calamity. In the new reckoning, a hundred percent of the world was mad. Seemed about right” (54).

With the entire world living in PASD, has humanity lost the defining quality of humanness? At one point, Mark Spitz proclaims,

“He missed shame and guilt and a time when something higher than dumb instinct directed his actions” (161).

Would Aristotle conclude that humanity has lost its ability to act virtuously? I would think so. Without the guiding conscience of reason, the basic survival instinct has altered what it means to be human in Zone One. Humanity, as always, reveals itself to be a persevering bunch, but PASD makes reconstruction all the much harder.

Difficult to Remember 

On the whole, Zone One left me entertained. But I felt that it was weak in a few places. Most glaringly, when Whitehead directs the reader into the past dissecting the events around the apocalypse, the narrative becomes confusing. Many seemingly insignificant characters receive detailed passages while the stories of some seemingly significant characters fizzle without resolution. Perhaps Whitehead intended to display the corroded nature of human reasoning in these flashbacks. If you encountered multiple years of hell where each day could realistically be your last, would you remember specifics from the past? Even if this motif was Whitehead’s intention, the confusion of the flashbacks hinders the overarching narrative.

But despite my reservations, I enjoyed this book. If you love the zombie genre, speculative fiction, or a literary master jumping into genre fiction, Zone One is an excellent choice for your to-be-read pile.

Verdict: 4 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: The Ultimate Question

Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth by Fred Reichheld (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006. 224 pp)

Born in Cleveland, Fred Reichheld is an author and business strategist employed by Bain & Company. Holding a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, Reichheld writes on the loyalty business model. His most popular books are The Loyalty Effect, Loyalty Rules!, and The Ultimate Question. In 2003, Consulting Magazine named Reichheld one of the world’s top 25 consultants.

Good Ethics Is Good Business?

Spend any time with a business executive and you might hear the cliché, “Good ethics is good business.” Setting aside the clear disassociation between this statement and the way American businesses operate, the philosopher in me reacts negatively to such statements. Often times, good ethics does equal high profits, but such a statement should never paint broad strokes. Occasionally, the right decision costs a firm extensive money.

However, Fred Reichheld’s The Ultimate Question might offer a key to translating an overused cliché into a tangible metric that links profits with good ethics.

Rethinking Profits

At its core, The Ultimate Question proposes that business managers rethink the ways they evaluate business success. Since financial metrics are easy to produce and easy to read, managers often make decisions strictly based on financials.

Reichheld, however, believes that these profit-oriented measurements force business leaders to become addicted to bad profits. Reichheld says,

“Bad profits work much of their damage through the detractors they produce. Detractors are customers who feel badly treated by a company – so badly that they cut back on their purchases, switch to the competition if they can, and warn others to stay away from the company they feel has done them wrong” (6).

To reorient business decisions, the author argues that managers ought to measure customer satisfaction instead of financial performance. If a company creates loyal customers, it produces good profits.

“A company earns good profits when it so delights its customers that they willingly come back for more – and not only that, they tell their friends and colleagues to do business with the company. Satisfied customers become, in effect, part of the company’s marketing department, not only increasing their own purchases but also providing enthusiastic referrals. They become promoters” (9-10).

The Ultimate Question

After years of research, Reichheld and his consulting firm, Bain & Company, found that highly satisfied customers offer a direct link to profitable long term growth for a company. In order to find out whether a company holds satisfied customers, only one question needs to be asked. That question is:

“How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague” (18-19)?

By answering that question on a 0-10 scale, a company can truly gauge the satisfaction and loyalty of its customers. Those that answer in the 9-10 range are considered promoters; those in the 7-8 range are passive; and those in the 0-6 range are detractors. Thus, a company will know the satisfaction of its customers by subtracting the detractors from the promoters. This equation gives managers a net promoter score (NPS).

If the company’s NPS is high, it has delighted customers who buy multiple products and encourage their friends to do the same. A company with a low NPS, on the other hand, is addicted to bad profits and is holding its customers hostage. Whenever the customers have an opportunity to leave this company, they will.

Theory aside, Reichheld’s metrics hold when applied in business settings. The industry leaders in NPS are also growing exponentially and making large profits.

TOMS: Good Ethics Equaling Good Business

Considering the angle I presented at the beginning of the review, where are the ethics in this book? At first glance, NPS is a customer satisfaction metric, an equation with little connection to ethics. A business need not be overtly ethical in order to serve customers; it only needs to practice the golden rule of treating others as it would wish to be treated in order to obtain a high NPS.

But I argue that serving customers is a task that orients a company toward ethics. By thinking of the needs of the customer, a company cannot act selfishly because a selfish action results in bad profits and customer detractors.

Photo by Sharmili R

Furthermore, I hypothesize that a business which promotes its ethical practices as a core reason for operating have a high NPS. For example, TOMS shoes illustrates the significance of promoters. With its one-for-one social enterprise model, the company relies on customer promotion for its advertising. In fact, TOMS dedicates a portion of its website to customer testimonials. Without the social ethics surrounding the business, TOMS is just another shoe company. Knowing that a shoe purchase helps a child in need, customers take great joy in wearing and promoting the product. Thus, TOMS success relies on a high NPS for profitability.

So perhaps, advertised good ethics does equal business. More research is in order, but a link between ethics and high profits seems plausible.

With bad profits leaving most companies middling around a 0-10% NPS, the search for ways in which a company can raise its NPS, and therefore grow, is extremely important. If you manage a business, you owe it to yourself, your employees, and your customers to read Ultimate Question.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Guest Film Review: In Time

In Time directed by Andrew Niccol (Regency Enterprises, New Regency Pictures, Strike Entertainment, PG-13, 109 minutes)

Starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, and Cillian Murphy

Science without Morals

In Time, the newest work from writer-director Andrew Niccol, is a thoughtful addition to the genre of dystopian futuristic films. Niccol wrote and directed Gattaca, which is easily one of the best science fiction films ever created, and he returns to the theme with a film about a society that has embraced science and technology to the point where it loses its moral compass.

In Time shows us a society where genetic engineering has effectively solved the problem of aging and death — everyone is immortal and stops aging beyond their 25th birthday. Thus, we are presented with the situation where sons and daughters appear to be the exact same age as their biological parents.  

Population Control

A society that has achieved immortality must deal with the problem of finite resources for an infinitely growing population. This "near-futuristic" society has chosen, at birth, to give each person a glowing digital clock on his or her forearm. Everyone is given exactly one year to live and that year starts counting down at exactly 25 years. When the clock reaches zero, the person receives a jolt and instantly dies.

A result of this innovation is that "time" has supplanted money as the effective currency — workers are paid literally by the hour, a coffee is 4 minutes, service by a prostitute equals one hour, and a bus ride costs the time it takes to walk to your destination. Time can be transferred to others through a special handshake or collected by various portable and non-portable scanners.

Minutes before Clocking Out

Justin Timberlake plays Will Salas, a 28-year-old factory worker living day to day with rarely more than 24 hours on his clock. At a bar he encounters a rarity, a man with more than a century of time stored up, whom he saves from a gang of time-stealers. This rich man in return gifts all but a few minutes of his time to Will before "clocking out", content with the life that he has lived, and depressed at the inequality within his society where many involuntarily clock out each day so people like him can live forever.

Will uses his newfound time to cross "time-zones" to utopian New Greenwich where nearly all its inhabitants have centuries or even millennia of time, acquired through skimming time off the multitudes of lower classes.

In New Greenwich, Will is introduced to Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried), daughter of one of the richest men in the world, but also is confronted by a Timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) who wants to pin the theft of the rich man's century on Will. Rather than go into custody, Will kidnaps Sylvia, evading the Timekeepers, and going on a journey where the couple explore the morality of a society where the deaths of millions prop up the immortality of a few.  Along the way, the characters learn the value of time, since in New Greenwich, the “time-rich” leisurely enjoy every activity, unlike in the slums where eating, drinking, and walking are done as quickly as possible. This dichotomy clearly illustrates the truth that the greatest resource one possesses is time — if it is used well.

The Morality of Redistributionism

It's easy to see this film as an allegory where time is equivalent to money and feel either vindicated or disappointed when the film explores the morality of redistributionism, similar to the folktale of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. I think this film goes deeper than that. Much like how Gattaca displayed a society whose genetic discrimination seems horrific to the audience while the characters largely did not notice the injustice right before them, we see in Will and Sylvia an awakening of senses to the injustices of the status quo.  

The deeper meaning is to remove the blinders from all our eyes, to look for the injustice that may be right before us, and to respond to the call to make society a better place. Who knows what modern practices will seem horrific to our future descendants?

In Time is a well-executed and thought-provoking sci-fi/action film that appeals to a wide audience, even those who generally don’t appreciate sci-fi. Nearly all aspects of the film’s production are good, the acting is acceptable, and it is noteworthy that Justin Timberlake has made a successful career transition from music and comedy to dramatic acting to the point that he feels quite natural in this type of role. If you are looking for a good sci-fi/action film, I recommend checking out In Time.

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Robb Stankey is a graduate student in Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to his interests in genetics and science fiction, he enjoys homebrewing and cooking with his wife, Jessie. More content from Robb can be found at http://r.robbplusjessie.com/.

Book Review: Just Business

Just Business: Christian Ethics for the Marketplace, 2^nd ed., by Alexander Hill (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008. 276 pp)

Alexander Hill is the President and Chief Executive Officer of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, joining in 2001. Under his leadership, InterVarsity successfully operates a publishing company and the world-renowned Urbana Student Missions Conference. In his previous position, Hill served as the Dean of the School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University. Hill earned both his B.A. and M.A. from Seattle Pacific University before attending the University of Washington School of Law receiving his J.D. Over the years Hill has published numerous articles on top of his internationally published book, Just Business. Mr. Hill and his wife, Mary, have two daughters and live in Madison, Wisconsin.

It’s Because We Can Ask, “Why?”

The exploration of meaning in the lives of individuals provides a fascinating difference between human beings and other living organisms. Instead of engaging in simple reactions to stimuli, human beings possess the capacity to ponder these actions at a deeper level.

While a bird eats for sustenance, humans can not only ask but also reason to an answer concerning why the consumption of food is vital. In the case of living in a community, humanity enjoys the ability to question the way we interact and to create structures that help society function on a level playing field.

Although questions of ethical action remain arguably unanswerable in a conclusive form, many find ethical structures helpful in governing difficult quandaries.

In Just Business, Alexander Hill spends the first portion of the book outlining a Scripturally-based ethical structure of holiness, justice, and love for business practices. During the second section, Hill relates his Christian ethic to the dominant forms of ethical practice in the business world. And, finally, Hill utilizes the third section of Just Business as an extended analysis of case studies in light of his proposed Christian ethic.

Holiness

Hill begins his pursuit of an ethical framework by proposing the concept of holiness as a critical component of an ethical lifestyle. He argues that the definition of holiness comprises of four parts: zeal for God, purity, accountability, and humility. Hill writes,

“The crucial point is that holiness is fundamentally about priorities. So long as a business is a means of honoring God rather than an end in itself, the concept of holiness is not violated” (25).

In other words, business means more than a competition around the highest profits, when a business person prioritizes holiness, that business is reoriented around its usefulness for others, not merely a way to make money.

However, the principle of holiness can be misapplied. When holiness becomes a set of rules, it becomes a harsh form of legalism; if holiness is used as a means to point out the flaws of others, it is merely judgmentalism; and, finally, when holiness becomes an excuse for roping off one’s self from society, it functions as a false ascetisim.

Justice

For the second foundational principle, Hill suggests the biblical notion of justice. In the business world, sadly, any action within the opaque legal framework is morally permissible no matter the injurious outcome on other people.

“Justice,” Hill pens, “provides order to human relationships by laying out reciprocal sets of duties and rights for those living in the context of community – business partners, employees, neighbors and family members” (37).

In other words, justice functions as a communal code that allows a society to function.

Similarly to holiness, the excessive application of justice leads to possible mishandling. More specifically, when justice is applied as the letter of the law, it can be exceedingly harsh and condemning. Hill asserts,

“Justice tends to be cold and dispassionate, lacking the emotional heat and relational passion of holy love” (48).

Love

Thus, it is important to buttress holiness and justice with the spiritual virtue of love. Acting as the glue between holiness and justice, love anchors these virtues in relationship. Hill argues that the definition of love includes empathy, mercy, and sacrifice.

As with holiness and justice, the biblical virtue of love carries potential difficulties.  Hill notes that clergyman Joseph Foster proposed love as the only Christian ethic. Taken to extremes love alone allows people to act in immoral ways for the sake of loving relationships.

Additionally, such positions offer ambiguity. When love is the only moral beacon, what should an individual do when a difficult choice means loving one person and “unloving” another?

Lastly, when others in society understand your single-minded loving ethic, they find opportunities to take advantage of your loving-kindness. 

Therefore, it is important for holiness, justice, and love to act in unity because each virtue acts as a check and balance against the potential abuses of the other virtues.

The Space Between Duty-Bound Ethics and Virtue Ethics

While the rest of the book discusses both the comparison between holiness-justice-love and its application in specific case studies, the root of Hill’s argument resides in these Christian virtues. As Hill compares and applies this framework, his ethic meanders between a deontological and a virtue ethic position.

On one hand, Hill argues that the holiness-justice-love ethic provides absolute answers in particular scenarios. Yet on the other hand, Hill wants his position to maintain the fluidity of virtue ethics as difficult scenarios require nuanced decisions.

Where’s Grace?

Additionally, Hill spends one paragraph at the end of the book discussing the role of the fallen world in the holiness-justice-love rubric. Although the themes of holiness, justice, and love ought to inform our decision making, do they apply equally to decisions after a mistake is made?

In his one paragraph on the matter, Hill argues that no one is able to fully apply the holiness-justice-love ethic; we, thus, must all accept God’s gift of grace.

I question, however, the way the notion of grace is applied practically. In the business world, is grace a possibility when the Fall influences someone to make a decision with drastic consequences for the company? Is grace unconditional within a company? Lastly, how do holiness, justice, love, and grace apply to theories of termination? Does the Christian ethic argue against terminating jobs? It seems to me that Just Business remains silent on these issues.

The Verdict Is

By nature, any attempt at the deeper meanings behind human interaction will always fall short. As such, the holiness-justice-love rubric is useful but incomplete. Nevertheless, humanity is capable of pursuing these deeper questions significant meaning results from such inquiries.

Hill’s Just Business is an admirable effort at applying biblical principles to business practices. Readability makes this book an excellent read for Christians in the business world. Hill carefully and accessibly categorizes his argument. Additionally, he inserts case studies and business stories to keep the reader’s attention throughout the discourse.

While I have my reservations about the conclusivity of his arguments, this book is a must read for anyone considering a Christian ethic for the marketplace.