Today's headlines continue pounding us about conservation. While the New York Times reports on Southern Baptists strengthening its convention position on the subject, The Telegraph reports that the Vatican wants us to recycle or find ourselves on the way to hell. The same article goes on to say that we'll go to hell if we are greedy.
Well, I'm not buying it. I have already written that small business owners are the original, old-fashioned environmentalists. We have been doing all of this so long we used to call ourselves conservationists. My husband writes and prints on both sides of every sheet of paper. We are conservationists because we know deep in our hearts it is good for the earth and good for our pocketbook. Another way to say that is most of us small business owners are cheap. We have to hold the line on waste and costs because as one of the fathers of the great American experiment, Benjamin Franklin said, "a penny saved is a penny earned."
Or, a mug reused is better than a paper cup tossed in the trash. It is so funny to me to hear the 20 somethings advocate shunning plastic and paper as dinnerware because when I was growing up we didn't have plastic and paper. I have never wanted to waste anything just so I wouldn't have to wash it.
I am confident that all small business owners will go to heaven because we try not to waste anything. However, according to the Telegraph, the Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti head of the Apostolic Penitentiar at the Vatican said, "genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy and taking drugs were all mortal sins."
I want to know who gets to define "obscenely wealthy?" I say that if you are creating value for customers and employees and along the way you happen to land in the top income tax bracket, you are not going to hell.
The business owners we know are like the founder of Ziba Design. They are generous not greedy. They are more concerned about the success of their employees than they are themselves. They are striving, trying, risking and pushing to help everyone in their world have a better life tomorrow than they have today. I am Baptist and I have great respect for the Vatican. However, I believe that every honest owner deserves to be obscenely wealthy. Why? Because most of them turn around and give out of their generous hearts to those in need.
