Bible in the Boardroom?

Stories

Whatever outrage you've experienced in business pales in comparison with stories told in a book written more than 2,500 years ago

For the past seven years I have been leading nondenominational Bible-study groups in boardrooms. The participants have been CEOs in both large and small companies. Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, you name it: they've all sat around the table to discuss the stories of Genesis and Exodus. While I recognize that there is a place for doctrine in Bible study, that place is in the mosque, the church, or the synagogue. When we study in the boardroom, the Bible becomes a secular document rich in moral quandaries that allow every member of the group to take the risk of learning. If there is a price of admission to my groups, it is this: the realization that there is no right answer in this particular form of study.

Over the years we have met in midtown Manhattan, usually at the end of the workday. We share a light meal and then spend an hour or so studying. Each businessperson comes for his or her own array of reasons. For some, this kind of study enables them to exercise their intellect in a way they have not done since reading King Lear in college. For others, the community that forms around the study of a text is essential to their sense of well-being. Still others come to the groups to network.

I come to the groups as a facilitator more than as a teacher, and I constantly learn new ideas. If I bring my expertise in the Bible and its history of interpretation to the table, the other members come with life and business experiences to teach me the realities behind the text. We have learned over the years that Genesis and Exodus, the first two books of the Bible, are full of stories that afford opportunities for conversation about marriage, children, family, and community. And Genesis and Exodus are replete with tales that illustrate the moral questions that beset business folks on a daily basis. Trouble with the boss? Bargaining in an uneven negotiation? Getting an edge in the real estate market? Passing on your business to an unscrupulous child? Those situations are the very predicaments found in the Bible's first two books.

Let's begin with one of the most famous narratives of negotiation in all of Western literature: how Moses set about to persuade Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. You may remember that Pharaoh seems to have held all the cards in this particular negotiation. He was an absolute ruler who used the Israelites as his slave force to build garrison cities. Although Moses had grown up in the Egyptian court, he had to flee the country when he killed an Egyptian. He was sent back to Egypt by God to ask Pharaoh to free the Israelites. Imagine, then, how Moses would have approached those negotiations. There was no apparent upside for Pharaoh here. Still, Moses had his orders, so when he appeared before Pharaoh, what did he demand of him?

"Let my people go, so they may hold a festival for God in the wilderness" (Exod. 5:1). When Pharaoh dismissed Moses' demands, as he would those of any other erstwhile union organizer for the slave local, Moses pressed him: "Allow us to go just three days' distance into the wilderness and sacrifice there to the Lord our God, lest God strike us with plague or by the sword" (Exod. 5:3). Pharaoh responded by increasing the work burden on the Israelite slave force.

The Israelites, none too pleased, complained to Moses, "You've made us reek to Pharaoh and his servants, you gave them a sword to kill us!" (Exod. 5:21). It seemed Moses had failed. All he could muster before mighty Pharaoh was a meek request for a three-day weekend? "What kind of a wimp way was this to bargain, anyway?" I asked my CEO study group. It's like some office Milquetoast's working 40 years and finally screwing up the courage to ask the boss for a week of vacation time.

But what do I know from bargaining? The host of my study group, a real estate developer, totally approved of Moses' technique. "You have to open with something they can swallow, get them saying yes," he said. I countered that Pharaoh had hardly said yes. Another group member, in advertising, said, "No, but he reacts, and that's good. Had Moses started with asking for the whole hog, Pharaoh would have thrown him out, maybe killed him. The fact that Pharaoh ups the work quota is just a negotiating strategy on his part. There's definitely movement here."

Wow! Those executives played hardball. And they were right. Moses asked Pharaoh for something small, an idea he could possibly consider. Maybe a day off was conceivable; the slaves could have come back to work refreshed and more productive. There were lives and empires at stake. Moses' negotiations with Pharaoh are a primer in major-league bargaining.

When it comes to bargaining, the other famous head-to-head match was that of Abraham and God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, the twin peaks of corruption in the early biblical world. But Abraham had a stake in the city of Sodom. When, in Genesis 18, God told Abraham that Sodom was about to be destroyed, Abraham was desperate to save the condemned and evil city, for his orphaned nephew lived there with his family. Abe bargained with God about sparing the city, asking, "Will the Justice of the world not do justice?" God was willing to entertain an offer for saving Sodom. Would he spare it if Abraham could produce 50 righteous people from the city? God agreed, and Abraham immediately countered, "Forty-five?" God concurred. "Forty?" Yes. "Thirty?" All right. "Twenty?" OK. "Ten?" Here, God finally abandoned the negotiations. The bitter irony was, Sodom and Gomorrah still get nuked in the end, but Abraham's nephew and his family were saved.

What are we supposed to learn from this Bible story? That even God has to hew to justice? Or that it's fruitless to argue with a power who's holding all the cards? I suspect the answer depends on what, exactly, Abraham was bargaining for. If it was an abstract principle of justice, the moral of the story is somewhat shaky. Shouldn't God save a city for even one righteous person? But what if Abraham was, in fact, trying to save his nephew and that's all? Maybe the point of the story is that you have to know what you want in a negotiation, especially a negotiation as uneven as the one Abraham entered into with God. Set modest goals. Have a plan to achieve them. Let everything else go for the sake of that one goal.

In our study group, after reading that story two lawyers got into a heated debate about whether bargaining can ever achieve justice. If justice is an absolute, then by definition no bargained compromise can achieve it. If justice is black- and-white, no amount of gray should be admissible. But if justice is in fact compromise, then it is achieved when both sides are satisfied. If that's the definition, then Abraham went a long way toward his goal. Both he and God seemed satisfied by their bargaining session. There is another possibility, though. Abraham was not interested in justice at all. That was just a red herring to get God bargaining. What Abraham was doing was playing the lawyer to save his nephew. If so, Abraham won. Justice be damned: put the client's interests first.

Another example, from Genesis 23, illustrates the proverb that crisis equals opportunity. Abraham's wife of many years, Sarah, died at the ripe old age of 127 in Qiryat Arbah--that is, Hebron--in the promised land, Canaan. Abraham arrived on the scene "to eulogize Sarah and to weep for her." Then the bargaining began as he sought a grave site for his departed wife. He was but a sojourner: no real estate was yet owned by Abraham in the very land God had promised to him and his offspring. Abraham had his eye on a certain cave for Sarah's final resting place. He turned to a Hittite named Ephron, who generously offered him the cave and its surrounding fields as a gift. Abraham replied that he really wanted to pay for the land. Ephron then asked for 400 shekels. Abraham counted out the outrageous sum, and the Bible lists the details of the real estate he had just purchased, as in a deed of sale.