One of our 10x investing students asked a question that I get asked quite often: Should we invest in companies that we don’t agree with morally?
This is a question that many Christians wrestle with, and we’re diving deep into it. We explore two different approaches in this article:
- Biblically Responsible Investing: Avoiding companies that don’t align with our values.
- Infiltration Approach: Buying stock in those companies to influence change.
We also want to emphasize the importance of praying about our investments and recognizing that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. It’s about what God has called you to do. And we must not forget our consumer responsibility. There are impacts of our spending habits and we need to be mindful of where we shop.
Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just starting to think about your finances, this article is packed with a lot of insights and real talk, let’s get started!
A quick parenting matter…
Bob: We have the world’s cutest four year old. I’m just gonna say it. I think so. And he, his new thing two things. Just the other day he stopped saying something and we’re all basically crying over here.
Linda: Yeah, so he used to say, he used to put a K instead of a TH. So he would count one, two, Cree, four.
And it was so cute. And now he says three and we, I almost cried. I was like, Oh no, it’s in the end of the era. Every parent knows what I’m talking about. When your kid stops saying the thing that you’re like, that was so cute. And now they’ll never do it again.
Bob: Yeah. He’s agreed though, that he’ll just do it for fun every once in a while, just to, which will be cute for the next year.
And then after that, it’ll be like, don’t do that anymore. But the thing that he is still doing. What was he just saying when he came in here?
Linda: We’ve got them in rest time, so it’s not quite a nap, but it’s just sit in your room for an hour just to have… Read, chill. Yeah, just chill out, just have a little downtime and get away from each other so you’re not fighting.
Yeah. Get away from me so I don’t have to break up the fights, but, he came in and he goes, Can you come out of your room if you’re starving thirsty?
Bob: That’s his new thing.
Linda: He needed a drink. Yes, you can go get a drink. We were at the pool this morning.
Bob: We’re sounding like those lame and doting parents, but we are.
Linda: I don’t care. The people love it.
Bob: The people love it. Starving thirsty is funny.
Linda: Starving thirsty is funny. Yeah.
Bob: Yeah. And if you’ve had kids before, you probably have your own, right?
Linda: I know. I don’t think I’ve ever heard starving thirsty.
Bob: Yeah, that’s we got a creative kid, what can I say, starving Thursday.
Should Christians invest in morally questionable companies?
Bob: So today we’re answering a question that I’ve gotten a whole bunch and to be honest, I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about this or do a podcast specifically about this and I finally just thought, all right, we cause somebody emailed me the other day asking about this. I’m like, I’m going to make a response to you and I’m just going to turn it into a podcast.
That’s pretty much what it is. So this is me asking or answering one of our 10x investing students. She sent me an email asking this question and I recorded a response for her and I’m going to drop you into that so you can listen to my response to her on this question. Essentially, the question is because a lot of variations of this question have come in should I invest in companies that I don’t agree with morally, or how do I handle that?
And there’s a lot of questions that kind of surround this, but this is the fundamental thing for us as Christians. Should we be investing in companies that we don’t? Believe in how they do things. And I think it’s a really good question to ask.
So I’m going to drop you into that so you can hear my response to her and I will just say up front I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I will In this response I share what I’ve done what I’ve learned in my journey on this and finding an answer for this question.
Linda: Okay. So I’m not answering this question with you on that response, right? But just you talking about this is reminding me a couple of years ago when about somebody, I don’t even remember who it was at this point, but I think they were running for president. And I said so and so thinks that they might be the Antichrist. And he said, if they’re the Antichrist, as a Christian, should I vote for them or not? Because it’s you can’t stop what’s going to happen.
Bob: We all know how things are going to end, but at the same time, but that’s what this question reminds me of is all.
Linda: Right, how do we handle these things? They are, there are tough questions to answer.
Bob: Humor always helps, which is this is what I bring to the table. Keep bringing it. So with that, let’s dive on in.
My response to our reader
Bob: Hey Alina, it’s Bob. Hope you’re doing good. And thank you for asking this question, because it’s one that I feel like I’ve gotten a good bit. Or different variations of this question. And I put some thoughts together and I’m going to go ahead and answer that here for you. And I’m probably going to end up putting it back into the course because, again, people keep asking similar questions.
And I do want to address it. Yeah summing up the question as I see it, or your question combined with other questions essentially are, how do I, or should I be investing in companies that I don’t deem to be fully moral? And this question has been one that’s, I think a lot of Christians if we’re thoughtful about our investments, it is something that comes to mind.
It’s like, all right what do I do here when I have this company who I just don’t agree with their policies or I don’t agree with how they do things? Should I be investing in a company like that? And there are two, I’ve observed that there are two prevailing approaches to answering this question.
1. Biblically Responsible Investing
Bob: And so the first one and I don’t necessarily have names for these. Maybe the first one is a biblically responsible investing. That’s the name of the movement. It doesn’t have a name, and that is essentially, trying to create some sort of criteria for all the different companies that we invest in or that you choose to invest in.
And it’s what you’re talking about, where it’s, they’re just abusive to their employees and only paying executives a lot of money and everybody else’s, getting a pittance and things like that. So this, and I don’t know where that falls into different categories or criteria because everybody has different criteria, for that.
And that’s, and I think fundamentally, that’s what makes this challenging and difficult is going down that approach with that mindset. is it becomes a matter of essentially judging morality, judging righteousness and determining, by whatever threshold at some point that I’m not going to invest in it or that I am comfortable to invest in it (investing advice I received from my millionaire mentor).
And as as you mentioned in the email, there’s no black and white here. This is not an easy problem to solve. The Bible makes it really clear that all have fallen short of the glory of God, all have sinned and fallen short. And so therefore, that’s a really tricky thing to navigate and handle.
Now I think the, when I look at that and when I’ve applied that to some of my own investments (see how to start investing with very little money), it’s very much been a yes it’s hard to land on that perfectly. But Why not try, that’s been my logic. And so with my individual stocks that I own those have been questions that I’ve asked a lot of times.
It, so one of the questions I’ve asked is if I wouldn’t start this company or the question I guess would be, would I start this company? And so maybe Philip Morris or something, for example would I in good conscience start a cigarette manufacturer whatever, doing something like that, knowing what I know and how it, harms people and kills people and whatever else.
And for me, the answer is no. And so therefore I wouldn’t just go buy that stock, so that’s fairly easy to think through that framework. But again, like where this gets tricky, another level of where this gets tricky is you might have the company on one hand who is just squeaky clean and passes all the criteria that you might set.
But. The CEO or one of the executives or really even anyone in the company. Who gets paid by that company goes and use that money for something you don’t agree with whatever goes and tries to fund abortions or whatever like supports that or whatever the thing might be and that’s where it gets really tricky because you can take this down to level and level and get to the point where you can undermine your willingness to invest in any company
Again you can go to Chick fil A, whatever, the shining star of the Christian community.And I’m sure if you dig enough and find, you’ll find reasons why you wouldn’t want to invest in it. So that’s where this whole thing is really tricky.
Faith based investing options
Bob: Now, if that is something you want to go down that path Inspire Funds, Timothy Funds, are two good options for investing and not in specific stocks, but they have specific mutual funds and index funds where they have their own criteria set up of companies that they deem to be biblically responsible or moral or ethical or whatever.
And then they have groups of those that you can invest in as a group. And yeah, so I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve ever owned any Timothy funds, but I’ve owned inspire funds. I really like what they’re doing over there. So that’s something to consider now. Talking about the other side of this this would be more of a less of a boycotting approach, which I would call the first angle is a little bit of we’re going to boycott those companies.
2. Infiltration Approach
Bob: And the second approach is more of a let’s infiltrate, rather than saying, let’s avoid those, the second approach is what if we intentionally buy stock in those companies to be able to influence what’s going on there, to be a light in the darkness and to potentially be able to change the things that are negative in that company and yeah.
And anyway, and so that’s a completely different approach and a completely different mindset for why you would or wouldn’t want to buy a company, okay? And anyway, and I’ll just say this, like the bottom line is that I know really strong believers on both sides of this fence who who just see things completely different with this.
And this is one of those things that I have wrestled with and tried to like land, figure out where I wanted to land for myself. And I. And it hasn’t been a black and white thing for me. And I, and there’ve been things where I’ve leaned more in one direction than the other and vice versa.
Prayerful investing
Bob: And really, I think when it comes down to it I think at the end of the day, we have to pray about the investments that we’re making. And I don’t know, and my thoughts on this may change, but at this point, I don’t know that either one of these approaches, that one is right and the other one’s wrong.
I think it might be a matter of what does God have for you to do? What does God have for me to do? Joe to do whatever else. And we just go with that. We do what God has called us to do specifically for whatever a season or for an individual investment or whatever that thing might be. And I think that’s why it’s so important to pray about what we’re investing in, right?
Consumer responsibility
Bob: Yeah, I think I’ll leave it with that. But one other thing that I want to mention that I don’t think enough people think about with all this is I could go buy Amazon stock and determine, wait a minute, I don’t agree with some of the things Amazon does. So I don’t want to be a shareholder.
So I’m not going to invest in that stock. But if I do that, and then every week I’m shopping at Amazon fundamentally, like I am contributing so much more to the success of that company by me being a regular consumer of their products than I am by me being a shareholder. And so I think for most of us being a shareholder, just This isn’t that big of a deal in terms of how it affects the success and the longevity of the company.
Whereas being consumers of the good, the goods and products and services that they sell like that is the thing that I think so many of us are not thinking about enough and paying attention to enough, which again is not super easy. But. Like when I think about so for example, this t shirt, this is something, that Lynn and I have talked about and wrestled with a little bit, there’s so many things all around our house that are being made.
By people who are being not compensated fairly, or who very well might be sweatshop type labor. And we’re just buying them from Target or from wherever, not even thinking anything about where they’re coming from and who’s going to work in them. And this particular shirt, it was a friend of mine started a company where he just got so fed up with that.
And he told me that the average. Wage of someone in the textile industry making shirts and whatever is 50 cents an hour. And they decided they were going to pay their people 15 an hour and in any way. And so I’m like, all right I’m gonna go buy all my shirts from you, and so those are the things that I feel like not enough of us think about.
And again, I’m not trying to derail this question and to point that direction, but I think it’s a really important thing that if we. If we’re thinking about where we’re investing our money (how to invest $100), we should be thinking about where we’re spending our money as well. Because for most of us, I think that’s a bigger fish to fry, if that makes sense.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on this at this point. I will expand on them as I get more. Because I’m learning and growing just like you and everybody else. And trying to trying to find where I want to land on this whole thing. But, I’ll leave it at that. And let me know if you have any follow up questions. And we’ll go from there. Alright, see ya.
Bob: All right. Hope you found that helpful.
10x investing course
Bob: Yeah. And and like I said, so she was a 10 X investing student.
And so if you are interested in finding out more about investing, learning how to invest or just learning our process that we’ve used. You can check that out in our 10x investing course, which is basically a step by step guide to get started for the basic package and then the plus package.
We go into a lot of different alternative investments, our stock picking approach that we followed that has yielded some 27x, 34x returns and has worked really well. So yeah, so you can check that out. SeedTime.com/10x if you want to explore more of that.
God’s work in the SeedTime family
Bob: Let’s talk a little bit about what God’s doing in the SeedTime family. Do we have something to share?
Linda: I do. I have this review. Okay. Great. Share it. It’s by Condo Medicine Man. That’s a cool name. I’m like, is condo part of your name? Is it because you live in a condo? Are you a medicine man out of a condo? I don’t know. But here we go. That’s the name of the user. So it says,
I really appreciate the timeless practical wisdom given by Bob and Linda Loddick on virtually every episode. They address many common financial issues and problems and are vulnerable enough to share their own mistakes.
Bob: Yes. Yes, we are. There’s a lot of them.
And what they learn from them consistently biblical advice and they walk the talk.
Bob: That’s really kind to say.
Also, they reference or provide very practical resources that Bob has either developed or researched and vetted for us.
Bob: Very true.
That can be life changing. Their real money budgeting course has allowed my spouse and I to gain better understanding of our finances and control of our money. Probably better than ever before. I’ve also been restored to living in the assurance of our father’s abundance and faithful provision for our needs and freed from the scarcity mentality that shackles faith, hope, and joy. Wherever you are in your finances, check this out.
Linda: That’s great. That is awesome.
Bob: I love it.
Linda: I love that they’re getting free like that. It’s just, it’s, I think it’s confirmation for us that it’s not what we’re doing. Like we’re literally showing up and then the Holy Spirit’s doing the work that, we want to see him do and that we’re praying for him to do.
Bob: So that’s our prayer y’all that’s absolutely, that’s the thing.
That’s what we are always praying is just that God would show up and move and do the work because you know this, we know this, it’s like we have a tiny part to play, but God’s the one who does all the heavy lifting. And your life isn’t going to be changed by us, but it is going to be changed by Jesus.
Linda: And that’s what we’re praying for you. Because you can do all the things right and still not see the breakthrough if you haven’t gotten. something from God on your situation, so that is really exciting.
Join the conversation
Bob: Anyway, thanks for hanging out with us today. If you enjoyed this episode or any others, go ahead and tag us on Instagram. Take a screenshot while you’re listening to it, tag us, let us know so we can say hi and become friends and all that stuff…and go out to dinner and then just go on vacation together and just do all this stuff. Sound good?
All right. All right. We’ll see you in the next one.
