Should a Christian Own Companies That Oppose What They Believe?

There's a stewardship question I've worked through over many years in portfolio management and financial markets. It comes up in client conversations, in men's groups, and late at night in my own head:

Should a Christian avoid owning companies whose values run against a biblical worldview?

There are two genuine positions on this. Both are sincere. Neither one is lazy. And I think anyone who has actually wrestled with the question will admit the other side has a real argument.

Start With Where They Agree

Before the disagreement, there's a wide patch of common ground, and it's worth naming.

If a company's core business is built on gambling, tobacco, or pornography, Christians largely agree we should avoid it. When the core business itself is destructive to God's people, cut it out. You don't need a complicated framework for that one. If the product harms the people God loves, you don't want to be an owner of it.

That's not a small agreement. It rules out a whole category of enterprise, and it establishes the principle both sides are working from: ownership is not morally weightless. What you own says something.

Now the Divergence

The first position says ownership equals participation. To hold shares is to share in the profits and, in some small way, to lend your endorsement. So if a company advocates for what dishonors God or advances what Scripture opposes — abortion, for instance — a believer should decline to own it, whatever its core business happens to be. Better a clear conscience than an optimized return.

There's real weight here. Scripture takes seriously the idea that we can be complicit in what we fund, and a conscience is not a nuisance to be argued out of. Paul is blunt about this: "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23, ESV). If you cannot own it in good conscience, then for you, owning it is wrong. Full stop. That's not weakness. That's obedience.

The second position starts from Christian liberty. It says the line belongs at the core of what a company actually does, not at every position it takes. It says that in a fallen economy no holding is truly clean. And it says that profit drawn from imperfect enterprise can still be stewarded toward eternal ends.

This position also has Scripture behind it. When Paul told the Corinthians not to associate with the immoral, he immediately clarified that he did not mean the immoral of this world — "since then you would need to go out of the world" (1 Corinthians 5:10, ESV). And on the genuinely disputed question of his day — meat that had been offered to idols — his instruction was remarkably free: eat what is sold in the market, without raising questions of conscience (1 Corinthians 10:25).

I've landed on the second. Here's the honest reason why.

The Test I Ran on Myself

Take Google. Not as an investment, and I'm offering no opinion on it as one, but as a test of my own reasoning.

Google funds causes I would never fund and takes public positions I disagree with. That's not in dispute.

And yet look at how deep the roots go. Search. Gmail. Android. Chrome. Maps. YouTube. A decade of your family's photos. Many of our businesses run on Workspace — our calendars, our documents, our client scheduling. This is not a company you can simply decline to interact with. It's woven into the fabric of American life.

So to be consistent with the first position, you wouldn't only have to abstain from owning Google in your portfolio. You'd also need to abstain from using its products as a customer. Because if ownership is endorsement, what exactly is patronage? The customer is the one actually handing over the revenue.

Or put it closer to home. If I won't invest in Amazon because of its advocacy, but I still order the umpteenth package delivered right to my door, am I really abiding in the fullness of my conviction? Or have I just found the version of the conviction that costs me the least?

I just haven't been able to make it hold in my own life. If my conscience won't let me hold the shares, what is it doing while I use the email, carry the phone, and order the next package?

The Consistency Problem Cuts Both Ways

Now, I want to be careful here, because this argument can be misused.

"You can't be perfectly consistent, so don't bother trying" is a terrible conclusion. That's not what I'm saying. Some believers have made this consistent. They've left the ecosystem, changed their email, switched their phone, stopped the packages, and screened their portfolios to match. I've met them. I respect them enormously, and I'd never talk one of them out of it.

What I'm saying is narrower: if you hold the first position, the line has to run through your whole life, not just your brokerage statement. A conviction that only applies to the part of your life nobody sees isn't yet a conviction. It's a preference.

And if you find, as I did, that you can't make it hold everywhere — then the honest move is to say so, rather than to keep a symbolic version of it in the one place it's easy to maintain.

Where That Leaves Me

So I've landed here. We live and work in a fallen economy, and there is no clean corner of it. The dollar in your pocket has passed through hands you'd never shake.

What we can do is two things.

Refuse what is plainly destructive. Where a company's core business exists to harm people God made in His image, don't own it. That line is clear, it's holdable, and I hold it.

Then take the profit this world produces and aim it at something eternal. Paul's instruction to the wealthy of his day wasn't to withdraw from the economy. It was to be "rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future" (1 Timothy 6:18–19, ESV). Worldly gain, repurposed for Kingdom good.

That isn't a compromise position. It's a commissioned one.

A Word for the Person on the Other Side

If you've read all of that and you still land on the first position — good. Hold it. Romans 14 exists precisely for questions like this one, and its instruction to both sides is the same: don't despise the brother who abstains, and don't pass judgment on the brother who doesn't. "Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind" (Romans 14:5, ESV).

What I'd ask of anyone wrestling with this — whichever way you come down — is that you actually wrestle. Don't inherit a position because it's what your circle assumes. Don't adopt one because it's cheaper. Take it all the way through your life: your portfolio, your purchases, your subscriptions, your business vendors. See if it holds.

Because the real question underneath this one isn't which companies do I own? It's who owns me? And that question has only ever had one answer.

Disclaimer: Google and Amazon are referenced solely for illustration and discussion purposes. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security, or an endorsement of any company. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. This article is general commentary and is not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional regarding your particular situation.

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