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Book Review: The Integrated Life

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We used to have a saying in our house: Work to live, don’t live to work. It was our way of keeping perspective—not letting stress from work creep into our home. Maybe you’ve heard similar ideas, like imagining your work is a coat. You just take it off and hang it on a tree before you go home. The next time you leave for work, pick the coat back up and put it on as you head to the office. Makes sense, right? Not according to Ken Eldred, author of The Integrated Life: Experience the Powerful Advantage of Integrating Your Faith and Work.

This might sound like sage advice, but it leaves us with a life of different worlds, values, and rules that do not intersect. When putting on our work coats in the morning, many of us will leave behind our family and faith coats. I’ve come to realize that this is a coping mechanism that’s part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It’s called compartmentalization, and many of us reflect it without even realizing it.

Compartmentalization

According to Eldred, it’s common practice to segment our lives into spheres that have little overlap. There is the family life, the spiritual life, the political life, the work life…the divisions can go on as far as the number of different roles we play. Some spheres intersect more than others—like the family life and the spiritual life—because they have similar motivators (in this case, love). But others, such as the work life, are often run through a different set of rules. After all, if we let faith into our work, it may keep us from getting ahead. And when we let taking care of our family influence…we can sometimes justify some very unchristian actions on the job.

This type of compartmentalization is an error, says Eldred.

As a result of compartmentalization, we fail to be salt and light in the marketplace…If we’re to influence others in the marketplace to become followers of Jesus, we need to take our faith to work...When our faith is divorced from our work, we also fail to infuse industry with biblical values, practices, and views.

So what is the answer?

The Integrated Life

Everything changes when we realize what the real goal of business is, says Eldred. When we understand the real goal of our work—and it’s not anything you learned in business school—we will find new meaning in our daily grind. And we will better understand how our faith must infuse every sphere of life.

…the measure of integration in life is lordship: How is every aspect of my life (work, family, friends, faith, community) a ministry of serving others to the glory of God? When you pursue integration, you’re forced to consider the how, what, and why of your work, not simply the when. Rather than just writing off your work hours and seeking to minimize them, you will find ways for your faith to transform how you perform your work, to affect what you do at work, and to redefine why you work. You will give spiritual value to your time at work. The key to redeeming more of your time is to integrate, so that all spheres of your life move in the same direction, glorify the same God, and operate under the same values.

The real goal of our work should be to serve others to the glory of God. When we fully grasp this goal, our compartmentalized lives will naturally move toward integration.

The Bottom Line

The Integrated Life is an excellent book on work and faith. Ken Eldred shares stories from his personal experience to shed practical light on a difficult concept to carry out. We are called to be salt and light, to redeem our places of employ, and to reveal God’s character to others in the way we live our lives. The way we do our work is an important part of that.

All followers of Jesus are called to be in full-time ministry, whether they’re employed by a church, a company, or another organization. This is an important point at the heart of the paradigm shift many of us need: Our work in business is ministry. Let that sink in, because it goes far to break down the compartmentalization of work life and spiritual life.

In our house we have a new saying these days: It’s all for Him. Every single bit.

Image by Kathleen Overby. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Laura Boggess.

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