Work and Wealth in Scripture

Publisher Marketing: What do you do with your money? What do you think of your boss? Do you like your work? Is it satisfying? Are you satisfied with your answers? Do you know that God, through Scripture, offers us answers? Two of the most fundamental challenges for all humankind are deciding how to live and, if we accumulate riches, deciding how to use them. Did you know that God expects all humankind to work? For the Christian, all work is part of your Christian calling, whether you collect garbage for a living or sit in Washington deciding affairs of state. And what does Scripture have to say about riches? Did you know that Jesus directed more attention to the question of how to deal with wealth than just about any other subject he addressed during his three-year ministry? Join me in this short journey as we explore work and wealth in Scripture and seek answers to the above questions and others. We travel from the first work recorded in the Bible to our own time, when leisure competes with work for our attention and wealth gives us a false sense of security that puts us in danger of replacing God with self. Lawrence Clayton is Professor Emeritus of History, University of Alabama. His latest books include Bartolome de las Casas: A Biography (2012), Bartolome de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas (2011), and Cleared for Landing: On Living a Christian Life (2008). He has taught in the Tuscaloosa County Jail Ministry on a weekly basis since 2000 and done missionary work, evangelizing, and preaching in Spanish in the Dominican Republic and Honduras since 2010. Contributor Bio:  Clayton, Lawrence A Lawrence A. Clayton attended Duke University (BA, 1964) and earned his MA (1969) and PhD (1972) at Tulane University in Latin American History. From 1964 1966 he served as an officer in the US Navy on the USS Donner (LSD-20), cruising both in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean with the 6th Fleet. He was on the faculty of the University of Alabama from 1972 2013, before retiring in 2013. His specialties focused on Latin American history and the history of the Christian church, and he directed the Latin American Studies Program (1980 1992), and acted as Chair of the Department of History (2000 2007) and Interim Chair (2009 2010). He also held two Senior Fulbright Lecturing Awards, one in 1983 to Costa Rica, and one in 1988 to Peru, lecturing at the University of Costa Rica and the University of Lima respectively. In 1983 he served as President of the South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies, and in 1999 held a year-long Pew Evangelical Scholars Fellowship. His publications include Alabama and the Borderlands: From Prehistory to Statehood (1985), Grace: W. R. Grace and Co., The Formative Years, 1850 1930 (1985), The Hispanic Experience in North America: Sources for Study in the United States (1992), The DeSoto Chronicles (1993, prize-winning), A History of Modern Latin America (2nd edition, 2005), Peru and the United States: The Condor and the Eagle (1999) and Bartolome de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas (2011). Three of his books have been translated and published in Peru and Ecuador. He is presently engaged in writing a book, The Battle for Cuba: Air War over the Bay of Pigs, April 1961, and is working on the script to a new movie on the Doolittle R.