Compassionate Capitalism
By Editorial Staff
Published April 21, 2008
By Rich DeVos
Don’t misunderstand. This rush to free enterprise is not just about making money. Of course people want financial security for themselves and their families. Why shouldn’t they? But they want more, much more.
People in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and China, like people everywhere, want deeper satisfaction as well. Not just material freedom, but freedom of the spirit. The freedom to become complete and whole persons. The freedom to become what God intends all of us to be. The freedom of mind and imagination that can only exist in a truly democratic society. The freedom not just to scrape by, but to find genuine satisfaction in life.
At the heart of the deep desire for change being experienced in Marxist-socialist countries is one simple fact: communism experienced a profound crisis of the spirit. It was not just communist economics that were bankrupt. The poverty of communism’s values brought about its collapse. The founder of the modern communist movement, Karl Marx, had an impoverished view of the human spirit. This view has not proven to be an adequate foundation on which to build either nations or individual lives.
On July 18, 1969, Jay Van Andel, my lifelong friend and partner in this business, demonstrated the compassionate capitalist’s view of people when an explosion and fire in our plant in Ada, Michigan, almost destroyed our dream. The deadly blast occurred just before midnight. A large building that housed both office and assembly lines was almost engulfed in flame when Jay arrived on the scene. Employees had already risked their lives to climb aboard tractors to pull semitrailers and a tanker from the blazing warehouse. Others were about to enter the 14,000-foot burning building to rescue files loaded with important documents. Jay stopped them with these unforgettable words: “Forget the papers! Get the people out!”
What we think about people matters a great deal. If we think of them as children of God, possessing a divine spark and having God-given worth, it follows that we ought to treat all people with respect and dignity. But if we think of people in a strictly material sense, devoid of any spirituality and gaining worth only through the state, then what happens? We need only to look at communist history to answer that question.
From Compassionate Capitalism, by Rich DeVos, © 1993, Compassionate Capitalism Foundation and Dutton Books, Muskegon, MI. Used with permission. Available from your local bookstore or the Compassionate Capitalism Foundation, (800) 367-2892.
Rich DeVos is co-founder of the Amway Corporation, an American company that has two million independent distributors in 70 countries around the world, including China.
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The Abortion Matrix: Defeating Child Sacrifice and the Culture of Death (DVD)
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Is there a connection between pagan religion and the abortion industry?
This powerful presentation traces the biblical roots of child sacrifice and then delves into the social, political and cultural fall-out that this sin against God and crime against humanity has produced in our beleaguered society.
Conceived as a sequel and update to the 1988 classic, The Massacre of Innocence, the new title, The Abortion Matrix, is entirely fitting. It not only references abortion’s specific target – the sacred matrix where human beings are formed in the womb in the very image of God, but it also implies the existence of a conspiracy, a matrix of seemingly disparate forces that are driving this holocaust.
The occult activity surrounding the abortion industry is exposed with numerous examples. But are these just aberrations, bizarre yet anomalous examples of abortionists who just happen to have ties to modern day witchcraft? Or is this representative of something deeper, more sinister and even endemic to the entire abortion movement?
As the allusion to the film of over a decade ago suggests, the viewer may learn that things are not always as they appear to be. The Abortion Matrix reveals the reality of child-killing and strikes the proper moral chord to move hearts to fulfill the biblical responsibility to rescue those unjustly sentenced to death and to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 24:11,12; 31:8,9).
Speakers include: George Grant, Peter Hammond, RC Sproul Jr., Paul Jehle, Lou Engle, Rusty Thomas, Flip Benham, Janet Porter and many more.
Ten parts, over three hours of instruction!
Running Time: 195 minutes
$19.95 — ORDER NOW!
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Go Stand Speak (DVD)
With “preaching to the lost” being such a basic foundation of Christianity, why do many in the church seem to be apathetic on this issue of preaching in highways and byways of towns and cities?
Is it biblical to stand in the public places of the world and proclaim the gospel, regardless if people want to hear it or not?
Does the Bible really call church pastors, leaders and evangelists to proclaim the gospel in the public square as part of obedience to the Great Commission, or is public preaching something that is outdated and not applicable for our day and age?
These any many other questions are answered in this documentary.
$19.95 — ORDER NOW!
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Dr. Francis Schaeffer - A Christian Manifesto (DVD)
That Swiss Hermit Strikes Again!
Dr. Schaeffer, who was one of the most influential Christian thinkers in the twentieth century, shows that secular humanism has displaced the Judeo-Christian consensus that once defined our nation’s moral boundaries. Law, education, and medicine have all been reshaped for the worse as a consequence. America’s dominant worldview changed, Schaeffer charges, when Christians weren’t looking.
Schaeffer lists two reasons for evangelical indifference: a false concept of spirituality and fear. He calls on believers to stand against the tyranny and moral chaos that come when humanism reigns-and warns that believers may, at some point, be forced to make the hard choice between obeying God or Caesar. A Christian Manifesto is a thought-provoking and bracing Christian analysis of American culture and the obligation Christians have to engage the culture with the claims of Christ.
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Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism (DVD)
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Just what is Calvinism?
Does this teaching make man a deterministic robot and God the author of sin? What about free will? If the church accepts Calvinism, won’t evangelism be stifled, perhaps even extinguished? How can we balance God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility? What are the differences between historic Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism? Why did men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Whitefield, Edwards and a host of renowned Protestant evangelists embrace the teaching of predestination and election and deny free will theology?
This is the first video documentary that answers these and other related questions. Hosted by Eric Holmberg, this fascinating three-part, four-hour presentation is detailed enough so as to not gloss over the controversy. At the same time, it is broken up into ten “Sunday-school-sized” sections to make the rich content manageable and accessible for the average viewer.
Running Time: 257 minutes
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Freedom: The Model of Christian Liberty (DVD)
“Give me liberty or give me death!”
Patrick Henry’s famous declaration not only helped launch the War for Independence, it also perfectly summarized the mindset that gave birth to, and sustained, the unprecedented experiment in Christian liberty that was America.
The freedom our Founders envisioned was not freedom from suffering, want, or hard work. Nor was it freedom to indulge every appetite or whim without restraint—that would merely be servitude to a different master. No, the Founders’ passion was to live free before God, unfettered by the chains of autocracy, shackles that slowly but inexorably bind men when the governments they fashion fail to recognize and uphold freedom’s singular, foundational truth: that all men are created in the image of God, and are thereby co-equally endowed with the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
This presentation is a similar call, not to one but many. By reintroducing the principles of freedom that gave birth to America, it is our prayer that Jesus, the true and only ruler over the nations, will once again be our acknowledged Sovereign, that we may again know and exult in the great truth that “where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).
Welcome to the Second American Revolution!
This DVD features “Liberty: The Model of Christian Liberty” along with “Dawn’s Early Light: A Brief History of America’s Christian Foundations.” Bonus features include a humorous but instructive collection of campaign ads and Eric Holmberg’s controversial YouTube challenge concerning Mitt Romney’s campaign for president.
$14.95 — ORDER NOW!
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I just fell into my hands Polish version of this book. Rich DeVos opened my eyes to the essence of capitalism. Here in Poland, which was for decades a socialist state, an understanding of what capitalism is the key. Without understanding this, people who had overthrown communism are now ready to take to the streets to fight the system, which not long ago they introduced themselfs.
I am very impressed with this book.
Posted by Jacob on 07/18/2011 07:44 AM #