Christian character: A different approach to business ethics

The first thing Christian tradition suggests about business ethics is that there is no such thing. What this means is that neither the Bible nor the traditions which grow out of it ever contemplate the notion that there is some distinct kind of goodness or badness that applies in the area called business. In the Bible, there is simply righteousness and unrighteousness, and persons and businesses, individuals and communities, religion and morals and politics are just all in there together. Christian tradition offers a different way to think about moral life, about what is central to it, and especially about what sustains it and what may corrode it. And that is to think neither about what rules are to be followed nor about what things we set out to accomplish in the world we inhabit, but instead to think about the persons we are becoming in the lives we live. Character is formed by habit, supported by imagination, and brought to stability by the combination of mature judgment and ongoing practice.