Faith, Hope, and Love

In the introduction, the author mentions three perspectives of financial transactions, which are faith, hope, and love, and he wishes to bring more consciousness to money and its uses to an evolving appreciative economy by letting people understand these qualities. The author pictures an appreciative economy, valuing the warmth of recognition. One way the author uses to explain faith is by relating it to brand allegiance: if customer’s experience with the product confirms the promise of the brand, the product earns customer loyalty and makes itself a shopping habit of the customer. Loan transactions is another example: the lender look over borrower’s creditworthiness and financial history to establish enough faith for himself to make the decision, while borrower need a faith of himself to honor the loan commitment before he asks for the service. The author says hope is a future bearing since it processes over time and gift transaction, one example of transactions based upon hope, to charity is entirely future bearing because no one could expect what the outcomes of the charity activity are and what impact the activity sponsored by this gift could bring to the world. Purchases have values in the equality of exchange at the time and by saying purchases for need are practices for love, the author is questioning what the real needs of an individual are and whether the decision of purchases affects the needs of others. Love is refereed to the author by something that is only present, influencing transactions, happening in a single action and making us value money differently every time.

I believe that faith, hope and love are 3 characteristics that exist in most transactions that take place in our daily lives, whether it be economical or not. Faith in regards to that the idea that you must have faith that what you are doing and where you are going in a given moment will end up okay. Hope that we need to look forward and believe we can be better and work towards a goal and love in the way that you must love who you are and the process of who you are becoming. All three characteristics are intertwined in our everyday lives both personally and economically.

When we take a deeper look at our economic life, the way we conduct financial transaction is similar to the way we look at our soul. By slowing down and think carefully, we recognize the deepest meanings of faith, hope, and love in financial transactions. This allows us to transform the way we look at our economic life and to conduct businesses with faith, hope, and love. “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”