Love Your Neighbors Through Your Investing

When my family arrived in the United States from India, we eventually settled in Medford, Massachusetts, an Irish and Italian neighborhood, with one Indian family now tossed into the melting pot. My classmates christened my brother and me with nicknames: Apu (the Indian character from The Simpsons) and Habib (from Married with Children). They followed us around asking if our dad worked at the Kwik-E-Mart or the 7-Eleven.

The worst harassers were two brothers, Tommy and James, who lived a couple of blocks away and made our daily walk to the bus stop like a march to the guillotine. One afternoon, as I exited the bus, one of the boys gave me a fierce shove, sending me sprawling into the gravel. Tommy and James jumped on me, driving their fists into my ribs. I gasped for air and tried desperately to catch sight of the bus driver, but through the flurry of fists, I only caught flashes of yellow pulling away.

A crowd of kids circled, watching the Indian boy get pummeled. Mercifully, a mom ran off her porch and grabbed both boys by the collar.

Our neighbor Joe Platti, a retired Italian Marine sergeant with lots of stories and an unlit cigar always hanging out of his mouth, took me under his wing. Joe taught me how to throw a mean right hook, with an elbow follow-through that would shatter a jaw or nose. Joe installed a basketball hoop for my brother and me to come over and use, and he built us our first bikes.

I began to love Joe as though he were my own grandfather; his wife, Irene, baked my first-ever birthday cake on my 10th birthday. I’m grateful for Joe. Even while I was an outsider as a young boy trying to get through elementary school, Joe made me feel that I belonged.

But at school, I knew I didn’t belong. They stuck me in an ESL class with no instruction and just handed me a copy of Tuck Everlasting. I stared at the pages for hours and only saw hieroglyphics. I had a pink ticket for the cafeteria, which meant I was a free-lunch kid. I thought I’d arrived the day they handed me a blue ticket, moving me up the economic ladder to a reduced-price lunch and required me to shell out 40 cents for my corn dog, peas, and fruit Jell-O.

We lived on the first floor of a three-story, three-family house. On our floor, five of us shared two bedrooms, with my sister, brother, and me crammed into the bedroom right next to the kitchen. I didn’t realize that I arrived at school every day smelling like curry, cumin, and garlic, but I saw the curled noses and grossed-out expressions. I heard the jokes.

Help the Outsider

I’m guessing a lot of us, in one way or another, know something about what it feels like to be the outsider. And seeing others at the margins, most of us want to help. When we’re at our best, our heart responds to those who are vulnerable. We know one of our fundamental responsibilities as Christians is to love our neighbor.

We know one of our fundamental responsibilities as Christians is to love our neighbor.

However, some of us need help connecting the dots between our biblical convictions and our behaviors—including our investments, especially when those investments seem like merely numbers on a screen. The challenge is to allow our best instincts (to love God by protecting others and valuing life) to animate our investing choices.

If we want to join God in his mission to restore creation and fill the world with his goodness and beauty, this goal must affect every part of our life, including how we use our money. Our core beliefs and hopes must influence how we invest.

Do Your Research

Here’s the baseline I look for in any company before I’ll consider partnering with them: They must value each person’s freedom to live a good, meaningful life. I want to support businesses that consider those whom society often forgets and those who might not normally factor into a company’s business model.

This requires taking a hard look at a company’s workers and surrounding community. Where are the blind spots (and to be sure, I have blind spots too)? Who is being forgotten?

This value explains some of why I’m so keen on investments in companies researching cures for orphan diseases, those rare maladies that affect a tiny percentage of people and often receive little attention or funding. If a need is being overlooked, and it’s a need we can meet, it’s a thrill and joy to be part of the solution.

This value also means I resist any industry that takes advantage of the poor and the marginalized. I expect the companies I own to guard our most precious gift—human life—in every way and at every stage, whether in the womb or in an underserved school, on a manufacturing line in Detroit or in the Philippines, in accessible health-care options for the young and for aged bodies nearing their final breaths.

I refuse to profit from any business that subverts human freedom by preying on people’s addictive and destructive behaviors such as gambling, pornography, tobacco, and alcohol. Human life and freedom are our most basic rights and gifts, and we expect any business we support to value them.

Support Human Flourishing

Good investing means avoiding bad companies, but just as much it means supporting good companies. Before making any investment, I ask fundamental questions: Will this business contribute to human flourishing? Will this company do good for the world?

And at Eventide (the investment company I cofounded), we have five essentials we look for to identify those good businesses that are doing good. We want our investments to support companies that (1) respect and value the freedom of all people, (2) demonstrate a concern for justice and peace, (3) promote family and community, (4) exhibit responsible management practices, and (5) practice environmental stewardship. When we find a company doing all these, we’re much closer to finding a good investment.

Human life and freedom are our most basic rights and gifts, and we expect any business we support to value them.

These characteristics are crucial because each, in its own way, supports our core responsibility to value life. Every person. Every life. This is where good investing begins: committing to protect life. All life.

Jesus poured himself out for love of the world, and he invites us to do the same. Every life matters to God. Every neighborhood. Every story. And Jesus asks each of us to give our energy and skill in joining his divine reclamation project. When we say yes, when we follow Jesus, our arms open wide and our love expands. We do all this work with our witness and our generosity and our vocation, but also with our investments.

We really can love God and our neighbors with how we invest our dollars. Our investments really can help us to welcome and nurture and protect the lives of every human, every person God loves.