The Whole City Rejoices

And those unable to flee, terrified of contamination, shunned those who’d fallen ill. However, compelled by Jesus’ sacrificial love, Christians remained in the cities nursing the sick, feeding the hungry, and tending to the dying. These followers of Jesus cared for the abandoned, supported the civic infrastructure, and provided the basic support that everyone—not just their fellow Christians—needed to survive. These stricken cities experienced the Christian community’s tangible impact.

Serving their neighbors and the wellbeing of the whole society, rather than thinking narrowly about ourselves and remaining insular or even combative toward supposed “outsiders,” has always been a crucial commitment for Christians. Christians were among the first to establish hospitals and stepped up as the primary medical caregivers in many parts of the world (especially among the impoverished), giving rise to the modern healthcare system. Christians led the abolition movement and established vast networks of orphanages, public-good charities, and schools. Those with resources, like Olympias and Martin of Tours, used their wealth to free enslaved persons and support the poor. More recently, R.G. LeTourneau, inventor and founder of LeTourneau Technologies, used 90% of his income to underwrite development around the globe. Convinced of the call to serve God’s world, Christians often become teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, nurses, and numerous other noble vocations, all for the common good.

These stories reflect Proverbs’ conviction: “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices” (Proverbs 11:10). Shaped by God’s self-giving love for the world, Christians have a unique responsibility to use our prosperity and resources in service to the whole world, to those who share our faith and those who do not. When things go well for us, Proverbs assumes this means things go well for everybody. Our success is not extractive but generative, increasing joy and healing for everyone our work touches.

A singular purpose guides us: to direct every aspect of our lives toward loving God and loving all our neighbors. Of course, then, even our profits should yield good for others. Any time we succumb to greed or chase only our own comfort or advantage, we abandon our calling.

The implications for investing are profound. In ways previous generations could never have imagined, Christians have dynamic opportunities to use our money to expand goodness everywhere. With our investments, we can fund medical research for groundbreaking cures, increase affordable housing for families who need a home, bolster affordable energy to support clean air and water, and catalyze hundreds of other innovative opportunities to help create a good, beautiful world.

And since investing is intricately linked to the idea of prospering (our baseline expectation is for our money to grow and earn a fair profit), Proverbs’ wisdom is poignant for every investor who is committed to God’s vision. We can never measure our success merely by annual returns or our portfolio’s upward trajectory. We will only genuinely prosper when the city rejoices too.

This Proverb offers us a crucial question to guide our investing: Does our portfolio—the companies we own and the products we support—bring the world joy?