Explainer
Comment
Economics
Hinduism
Monastic life
6 min read

The Merc, the monks, and the pursuit of excellence

Exploring the roots of the work ethic.

Rahil is a former Hindu monk, and author of Found By Love. He is a Tutor and Speaker at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

A large sculpture of the Mercedes Benz three-point star stands in front of a large, low glass fronted showroom.
Mercedes Benz visitor centre, Sindelfingen.

I visited the Mercedes Benz factory in Sindelfingen, Germany, back in 1999.  It’s an event that etched a profound impression on my mind. I would even go as far as to say one of the most overpowering “Godly moments” of my life. Hold on! Before you shun me as a “materialist” or silently mutter “of course you love a Mercedes…you’re Indian!” Let me crawl out of your assumptions and rescue myself with an explanation. 

Entering the grounds of the Benz factory that cold October afternoon, my guide said that the car park alone was eight square miles of brand-new Benz’. “A robot takes each car from the factory to the car park” I was proudly told. “Germans usually don’t like any mileage on their new cars before they come to collect them, so we’ve made this arrangement to suit their needs.”  

“Of course you have,” I muttered cheekily whilst fumbling to hide my astonishment. “Is that a railway station?” I sounded like an eight-year-old who had just entered Disney World.  

“Yes, the cars are placed on the train by robots too! We send 1,860 cars via train to the river port city of Hamburg every day. From there they are then shipped to the rest of the world.”  

“Ah…,” I nodded pretentiously, as if this was something I frequently witnessed. I was in my late 20s and so trying to hide my feverish temperament was failing as each minute ticked by.  

Inside the factory the technology (even in those days) was out of a sci-fi film. A human-like robot calmly held the windscreen of an E-Class Mercedes whilst another robot released a gluey paste around the edges with precision and fluidity. It was like watching a heart surgeon operate on a human but only smoother. 

“The dashboard you see arriving on the belt above will be fitted into the main body here below within 30 seconds.”  

For a moment I thought my guide was joking with me, as back then I was a monk, dressed in orange robes and looking as if I might be resident in a cave somewhere in the Himalayas. But then I saw the robot in front of me pick up the dashboard at hand and fit it into the mainframe in 20 odd seconds! It was like a quiet day of strawberry picking on a farm for these machines.  

After being guided around the gargantuan and astounding array of technology, efficiency and elegance my guide introduced me to the General Manager. I shared my impressions with him with a tad of excitement after which he said, “thank you, yes…we tend to gather together every day for 30 minutes or so, after we close, to see where we can improve on all of this!” After that calm and casual response, I wasn’t sure whether I ought to be impressed with the staggering sophistication surrounding me…or his statement!  

Something significant happens in you when you are in the presence of excellence and those who are insistent to pursue it. 

There’s something annoyingly attractive about those who are persistent in their pursuit for excellence. It’s as if they are resiliently refining something at hand in the hope of fulfilling another deeper search in the human heart. For these enthusiasts for excellence, a beautiful Mercedes Benz is but a by-product. I’d like to say that it's the outworking of a deeper search.  

We are drawn to the beauty of detail. This impalpable gravitation can be attributed to the Divine, as many around the world do. With the precision and detail of that world around them making it possible. 

I once heard that a Book of wisdom in the Bible called Proverbs could be categorised into three parts: integrity, creativity and excellence. Although I wasn’t a follower of Jesus back in 1999, I can go back to that factory experience and call it a ‘Godly’ moment because something significant happens in you when you are in the presence of excellence and those who are insistent to pursue it.  

Luther’s understanding of the Bible and its implications on work ethic should not be underestimated. 

Nearly 350 miles north of the Mercedes factory lies the university city of Wittenberg. The home of another monk, Martin Luther, and Katherine Vona Bora, his wife – and an unexpected champion of excellence.  

After running away from her nunnery Katherine married Martin Luther and changed the work style and living standards of their lives almost immediately. Katherine had learned how to grow fruits and vegetables in the nunnery and applied this skill to the small piece of land surrounding their residence and turned it into a profit-making farm. The local Prince in Wittenberg witnessed her innovative skills and gave a small monastery for Luther and his wife to live in. Katherine used the profits of the first investment to invest in another farmland and produced profits once again- and this continued. By 1542 the Luther’s owned more land in Wittenberg than any other citizen! She had initiated such a change that sociologist Max Weber discussed it in his classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

When Luther published Table Talks (based around the discussions in their home when students came to stay or visit), scholars understood clearly how his Biblical exposition (and the indirect defence of his wife’s economic model) created Europe’s spirit of free enterprise.  

Katherine’s work ethic was influenced by St. Benedict’s monastic biblical tradition which St Paul had also taught (whoever does not work, shall not eat). A bit like the General Manager at Mercedes Benz who felt that there was still room for improvement in work.  

Luther’s understanding of the Bible and its implications on work ethic should not be underestimated.  He states that a skilled mechanic “steals' ' when he underperforms at his work for which he is being paid! Not giving your best at something is also called “stealing.” Luther also writes that those who are lazy at work or unfaithful with their work are “worse than sneak- thieves.”  

One can argue that Katherine and Luther’s understanding of work ethics from the Bible gave rise to the enthusiasm for excellence across many spheres of western culture and industry.  

For me, it’s still a chuckling moment to see the often but obvious impression upon the face of a fellow Indian when they read a label marked, ‘Made in Germany.' It says something… let me just say, with all due respect that it doesn't say the same as “Made in India.” At this point in world history my fellow friends in India would agree.  

 I have known many Indians who would buy a Mercedes Benz however old or broken down it may be. On the other hand, in 2023 the German manufacturer broke all its sales records in India, growing 10 per cent year on year. (Mind you, some Benz models in India are twice the cost as those in the USA or UK)!  

So, is it just status? Or Class? No. There may be an element of wealth display, but the deeper desire is the association with excellence, hard work and efficiency. All of which Luther drew from his own Biblical comprehension as well as his creative wife Katherine Von Bora. 

Hindu Monks are not drawn into a far-off corner of Germany to see a luxury car being made. They are drawn (unknowingly) by those of us who are pursuing excellence, elegance and efficiency all of which are tied richly in the wisdom of the Bible.  

Yes, I know what you might be thinking and yes, I have visited other luxury car factories. Aston Martin is a case in point. But on returning to my fellow folk thereafter in 1999 I was surrounded by monks whose faces were struck with awe and wonder and they asked,” did you really go? How was it?” That’s the exclusive magic of Mercedes Benz. Or should I say, Martin Luther and Katherine. And how they understood the Bible.

Article
Comment
Community
Migration
Politics
5 min read

Our problem with immigration is not open or closed borders but the decline of Christianity

Christianity doesn’t provide immigration policy, but it could still unite our communities

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron in front of flags.
Starmer and Macron announce their deal.
10 Downing Street.

So Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have done a deal on migrants. One in, one out. The EU might yet block the plan, and it may fail as many have before it. The Conservatives’ Rwanda idea never got off the ground. Will this one? Labour hail it as a breakthrough with the French agreeing to take back some migrants for the first time. The right-wing media complain this is a drop in the ocean and will make precious little difference. 

What interests me is the role Christianity plays in this debate, invoked as it is on both sides of the argument.  

On the right, the argument runs like this: Britain is (or used to be) a Christian country. It is now in danger of being overrun by people who do not share that faith, or the values that are rooted in Christianity. Therefore, we must put a rapid halt to excessive immigration, especially migrants from conservative Islamic countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia or Pakistan. If we don’t, we will see the UK change dramatically and lose its distinct Christian identity.  

So, in a speech last year, Reform leader Nigel Farage claimed that “Judeo-Christian values” are at the root of “everything” in Britain. These values, he said, were that “the family matters, the community matters, working with each other matters, the country matters.” 

I’m sure they do. Christianity has shaped the character of the UK over centuries. And there is undoubtedly a sense in many places, especially more deprived ones, that communities have changed and are becoming unrecognisable from what they were. The chattering classes in Hampstead and Chipping Norton are hardly likely to feel the pinch, yet Bradford or Burnley can feel very different now than they did 50 years ago.  

Yet it’s hard to identify Farage’s values as distinctly Christian. Many Muslims would claim much the same, and it would be difficult to describe his list as an adequate summary of the message of Jesus. ‘Judeo-Christian values’ are often identified on the right as being the same as ‘British values’, which are defined by the UK government as “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” It’s hard to imagine anyone getting crucified for preaching that.  

Yet Christianity is also used on the left. While he was Labour Leader in 2019, Jeremy Corbyn invoked Jesus in a call to welcome migrants: “The refugee crisis is a moral test. Jesus taught us to respect refugees. He himself said 'welcome the stranger…’ And the Bible says, 'the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born'. 

He had done his homework. It’s a better account of the teaching of Jesus. Yet on the left, the welcome of the refugee is often part of a wider and deeper value of ‘diversity’ as a good in itself. Multiculturalism, the kaleidoscope of cultures found on many high streets with Indian, Thai, Italian, Moroccan restaurants, or the image of kids from different countries and religions happily running around a school playground is a beloved trope of secular progressive liberals.  

The trouble is that it is not how it feels to many in parts of Luton or Leicester. The residents of Hampstead and Chipping Norton can embrace multiculturalism because it does not fundamentally threaten their way of life.  

“The ebbing away of the faith is greeted with barely a fraction of the passion which accompanied Brexit.” 

Bijan Omrani

Embracing strangers is easier if you have a settled place to welcome them into. A home where the family gets on well, where the parents are united, the kids are content, is much more likely to be able to welcome in unknown guests with a proper curiosity to learn from them. A family full of tension and bickering is unlikely to welcome the stranger at all, as the newcomer will strain existing tensions even further. 

As theologian Oleg Dik writes: “A society which loses a sense of shared broad and strong identity is unable to welcome a stranger…. What makes us different is enriching only as long as we are all aware that we have something uniting us. In the absence of a uniting bond, difference turns out to be threatening.” 

The vision of the left – of diversity as an end in itself, held together only by a loose idea of tolerance or secularity which no-one thinks is worth dying for, threatens to erode the ties that bind us, as it gives no clear centrifugal core that can hold us together. 

Christianity doesn’t give you an immigration policy. Both left and right can claim some legitimacy in the Christian narrative. However, what Christianity does provide is a community that offers a moral schooling centred on the worship of Jesus, as the one who shows us the true shape of human life, the necessity of self-sacrifice, not self-indulgence as the key to a functioning communal life, and the sacred value of each person - beliefs which, in turn, can welcome the stranger into a secure and confident home.

These things have, over centuries, seeped out from their intense core in the Christian Church into wider society. Arguably today, they are being eroded ironically more by secularism than by Islam.  

The real problem of our time is not mass immigration (as the right would have it) or the failure to fully open borders (for the left). It is the widespread erosion of Christian faith.  

As historian Bijan Omrani puts it: “Christianity’s disappearance is being accepted with little consideration or debate. The ebbing away of the faith is greeted with barely a fraction of the passion which accompanied Brexit.” Now this may largely be the fault of the church itself, a failure of courage about its own message, and appearing like another social lobbying group for various causes rather than a community centred on the worship of Jesus. But it's also down to the swathes of middle class, educated Britons – like Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn - who like to claim the name of Jesus when it suits, and who live off the cultural heritage of Christianity without investing into its future by going anywhere near a church.  

A good immigration policy needs the compassion that welcomes the vulnerable stranger. Yet it also needs a strong united community with a shared set of values, to welcome them into. Left and right may use Christianity in their rhetoric. But both miss something vital - that Christianity has to be practiced not just argued over. 

A renewed Christianity might be the saving of both right and left - or at least offer a deeper and richer narrative than either can offer on their own, one that provides a strong core that can holds a society together, yet also welcome the stranger as a gift and not a threat. 

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