Integration
My life is multi-faceted and I'm juggling multiple concerns all the time. This isn't unusual and I'm sure you can identify with what I'm saying. What I find interesting about this is that while I'm simultaneously trying to master balancing multiple concerns, my culture is trying "disassemble" me in order that I might fit into the "compartments" that my life is chopped up into. The "compartments" are things like family, friends, work, hobbies, God, politics, and etc. Culture tells me that each "compartment" has a different set of rules and values.
As human beings we have many domains of concern that range from simple, but important things like breathing and eating to more complex and intangible things like meaning and fulfillment. In between these extremes are a multitude of additional concerns that we stack up in order of importance. We carry multiple domains of concern simultaneously whether we realize it or not and the order of these domains of concern is not static as we might like to think, but it is quite dynamic.
For example, I listen to my wife tell me about her day because within my domains of concern is the concern for a healthy relationship with her (family) and this requires certain physical and emotional responses from me. I listen when she talks; I connect with her emotionally and physically; I make time for her and communicate with her frequently; I weigh what she says carefully it frequently causes me to act or stop acting in a certain way. This is an over-arching domain of concern that is very high up the chain in the hierarchy of my concerns. However, if while I'm engaged in a conversation with my wife my bladder tells me its time to take care of some business, I momentarily rearrange my domains of concern and reprioritize my relationship with my wife in order to take care of an immediate physical concern. After my physical concern is taken care of I resume talking with my wife and again re-order my domains of concern.
Have you ever been talking with someone when your phone suddenly rings and the person on the other end is someone you need/want to talk to. What happens? You instantly rearrange your domains of concern. The person with whom you are talking gets moved down the chain to make room for the person on the phone. So you politely excuse yourself from the face-to-face conversation and take the phone call. Why? Because you have greater concern at that moment for the person on the phone than you do for the person you're in conversation with.
So what? Why is this important?
The point I'm making, and perhaps not very well, is that we quite naturally, are masters of balancing multiple domains of concern because God created us this way. We are constantly - and mostly subconsciously - caring for an extremely wide variety of things all at once - all the time. We are in a perpetual state assessing situations, evaluating, and re-ordering our concerns in order to take care of them all. Here is a narrative that might explain what I mean better.
A man wakes up in the morning and immediately takes care of some basic physical concerns, bathroom, brush teeth, shower, shave, hair, dress, and etc. After this he grabs some coffee and a bagel. He kisses his wife, kids, grabs his bag and heads out the door to work. At work he looks at his calendar to see how his day and week are shaping up, checks email, makes some phone calls, talks to co-workers, does paperwork, and etc. At some point during the day he refills his coffee several times, grabs a quick snack here and there, has lunch, bath room break, then back to work. After work he heads home, bath room break, kisses kids and wife, calls a sitter for the kids, and takes his wife to dinner and a movie and then out for a drinks, then home, then to bed. The details vary a bit, but for the most part this describes the daily/weekly/monthly/yearly ritual for many people I know.
Within this narrative, you can see how this man is balancing multiple domains or concern all the time. What I've come to realize is that this "full integration" is by design. I have physical concerns, ethical concerns, relational concerns, social/political concerns, spiritual concerns, and the list goes on.
What I've also come to realize is that our modern culture is constantly attempting to get me to divorce myself from certain domains of concern in certain contexts. For example. I have a domain of concern that includes family relationships and care for my wife and children. Our modern culture is fine with that until I engage in a career (in order to satisfy my domain of concern for fulfillment in work and for the physical concerns of shelter, food, clothing, and etc.) at which point it subtly - and at times perhaps not-so subtly - tries to get me to de-prioritize my concern for my family, or even abandon it all together.
Our modern society is filled with people who've been asked to "make the choice" between family and career and have chosen work at the expense of family relationships. Why does our culture do this? Does culture not realize that we are fully integrated people and that asking us to abandon one domain in favor of another is like asking us to cut off our arm in favor of our leg?
And what about the more private, yet profound domain of spiritual/ethical concerns? In the business world I frequently encounter people who would call themselves "ethical and honest people", some are even bold enough to call themselves "Christians" and incorporate their beliefs into their marketing and sales approach, and yet they demonstrate a willingness to abandon basic spiritual/ethical domains of concern in favor of the domain of concerns related to money, profit, and power.
I have had many Christian business associates with high spiritual and ethical principles justify the necessary existence of a lower standard of ethics for business compared to their own personal ethical beliefs. For all their seemingly infallible wisdom and eloquent arguments, what I gather from these conversations is simply that they feel it necessary and acceptable to engage in a certain level of deceit, theft, manipulation, exploitation of power, bribery, greed, self-protection, and etc. in order to survive and thrive within their businesses or industries.
They quite naturally and subconsciously draw a sharp distinction between how deal with customers or vendors as compared to others close to them such as their family. If pressed for an answer I doubt any of them would ever dream of treating their family like those with whom they do business and are blind to the hypocrisy of it all. Some even would claim that they're acting righteously as if to say, "I'm a great model of virtue because I'm only willing to steal from that other person's mother, but I'd never steal from my own mother".
I'm not interested in diving into a full-on discussion of business ethics here. I just wanted to show an example of this phenomena of how the world attempts to force us to compartmentalize.
It is healthy to have my concern for fulfillment in work balanced with my concern for family relationships or I might become a raging workaholic.
Its healthy to have my concern for ethics/spiritual/relational matters balance my concern for the acquisition of money, power, and possessions or I would likely become a lying, cheating, stealing, self-centered, tyrant who would use any and all means necessary to acquire that which I desired.
The point is that we need to remain integrated if we are to remain balanced, healthy people who function like we were created to function. Our domains of concern fit together appropriately to form who we are. Over time the ways that these concerns manifest themselves in our lives shape our identity and will eventually create our legacy. A person who consistently allows their concern for acquisition of money and power to run unchecked will leave a legacy of broken relationships and ruined associates.
Integration of our concerns is appropriate and necessary for healthy balance and a healthy life. I'm trying to resist the insistent urging of culture that tells me to contextualize myself and instead attempting to be fully "myself" in all situations. I think this is how I was made to be.
Make no mistake, this is a spiritual fight. The Devil and his demons are fixated on destroying us and in our culture, one of the best ways to do that is to get us to compromise in one or two areas of life at a time. Their cunning voices tell us that we need to compromise in this or that situation for the good of our family, or our happiness, or whatever. But that compromise offers them permission to sink their claws into our lives and over time they'll sabotage other areas as well.
The ultimate war is for territory, our hearts are the battle ground, and we control who wins the every individual battle based on who we agree with in the moment - the voice of the Holy Spirit who leads us to freedom and life, or the voice of the Devil who puts us in bondage and breaks us down.
Grace gives us permission to fight, and sometimes lose. My goal is to string together a long line of good decisions as I submit more territory to the Holy Spirit in hopes that one day, the whole of me becomes the fullest expression of what God created.
As human beings we have many domains of concern that range from simple, but important things like breathing and eating to more complex and intangible things like meaning and fulfillment. In between these extremes are a multitude of additional concerns that we stack up in order of importance. We carry multiple domains of concern simultaneously whether we realize it or not and the order of these domains of concern is not static as we might like to think, but it is quite dynamic.
For example, I listen to my wife tell me about her day because within my domains of concern is the concern for a healthy relationship with her (family) and this requires certain physical and emotional responses from me. I listen when she talks; I connect with her emotionally and physically; I make time for her and communicate with her frequently; I weigh what she says carefully it frequently causes me to act or stop acting in a certain way. This is an over-arching domain of concern that is very high up the chain in the hierarchy of my concerns. However, if while I'm engaged in a conversation with my wife my bladder tells me its time to take care of some business, I momentarily rearrange my domains of concern and reprioritize my relationship with my wife in order to take care of an immediate physical concern. After my physical concern is taken care of I resume talking with my wife and again re-order my domains of concern.
Have you ever been talking with someone when your phone suddenly rings and the person on the other end is someone you need/want to talk to. What happens? You instantly rearrange your domains of concern. The person with whom you are talking gets moved down the chain to make room for the person on the phone. So you politely excuse yourself from the face-to-face conversation and take the phone call. Why? Because you have greater concern at that moment for the person on the phone than you do for the person you're in conversation with.
So what? Why is this important?
The point I'm making, and perhaps not very well, is that we quite naturally, are masters of balancing multiple domains of concern because God created us this way. We are constantly - and mostly subconsciously - caring for an extremely wide variety of things all at once - all the time. We are in a perpetual state assessing situations, evaluating, and re-ordering our concerns in order to take care of them all. Here is a narrative that might explain what I mean better.
A man wakes up in the morning and immediately takes care of some basic physical concerns, bathroom, brush teeth, shower, shave, hair, dress, and etc. After this he grabs some coffee and a bagel. He kisses his wife, kids, grabs his bag and heads out the door to work. At work he looks at his calendar to see how his day and week are shaping up, checks email, makes some phone calls, talks to co-workers, does paperwork, and etc. At some point during the day he refills his coffee several times, grabs a quick snack here and there, has lunch, bath room break, then back to work. After work he heads home, bath room break, kisses kids and wife, calls a sitter for the kids, and takes his wife to dinner and a movie and then out for a drinks, then home, then to bed. The details vary a bit, but for the most part this describes the daily/weekly/monthly/yearly ritual for many people I know.
Within this narrative, you can see how this man is balancing multiple domains or concern all the time. What I've come to realize is that this "full integration" is by design. I have physical concerns, ethical concerns, relational concerns, social/political concerns, spiritual concerns, and the list goes on.
What I've also come to realize is that our modern culture is constantly attempting to get me to divorce myself from certain domains of concern in certain contexts. For example. I have a domain of concern that includes family relationships and care for my wife and children. Our modern culture is fine with that until I engage in a career (in order to satisfy my domain of concern for fulfillment in work and for the physical concerns of shelter, food, clothing, and etc.) at which point it subtly - and at times perhaps not-so subtly - tries to get me to de-prioritize my concern for my family, or even abandon it all together.
Our modern society is filled with people who've been asked to "make the choice" between family and career and have chosen work at the expense of family relationships. Why does our culture do this? Does culture not realize that we are fully integrated people and that asking us to abandon one domain in favor of another is like asking us to cut off our arm in favor of our leg?
And what about the more private, yet profound domain of spiritual/ethical concerns? In the business world I frequently encounter people who would call themselves "ethical and honest people", some are even bold enough to call themselves "Christians" and incorporate their beliefs into their marketing and sales approach, and yet they demonstrate a willingness to abandon basic spiritual/ethical domains of concern in favor of the domain of concerns related to money, profit, and power.
I have had many Christian business associates with high spiritual and ethical principles justify the necessary existence of a lower standard of ethics for business compared to their own personal ethical beliefs. For all their seemingly infallible wisdom and eloquent arguments, what I gather from these conversations is simply that they feel it necessary and acceptable to engage in a certain level of deceit, theft, manipulation, exploitation of power, bribery, greed, self-protection, and etc. in order to survive and thrive within their businesses or industries.
They quite naturally and subconsciously draw a sharp distinction between how deal with customers or vendors as compared to others close to them such as their family. If pressed for an answer I doubt any of them would ever dream of treating their family like those with whom they do business and are blind to the hypocrisy of it all. Some even would claim that they're acting righteously as if to say, "I'm a great model of virtue because I'm only willing to steal from that other person's mother, but I'd never steal from my own mother".
I'm not interested in diving into a full-on discussion of business ethics here. I just wanted to show an example of this phenomena of how the world attempts to force us to compartmentalize.
The Punchline
The singular greatest problem with this disassociation of my domains of concern is that they are not meant to function independently from one another, they are intended to balance and inform each other.It is healthy to have my concern for fulfillment in work balanced with my concern for family relationships or I might become a raging workaholic.
Its healthy to have my concern for ethics/spiritual/relational matters balance my concern for the acquisition of money, power, and possessions or I would likely become a lying, cheating, stealing, self-centered, tyrant who would use any and all means necessary to acquire that which I desired.
The point is that we need to remain integrated if we are to remain balanced, healthy people who function like we were created to function. Our domains of concern fit together appropriately to form who we are. Over time the ways that these concerns manifest themselves in our lives shape our identity and will eventually create our legacy. A person who consistently allows their concern for acquisition of money and power to run unchecked will leave a legacy of broken relationships and ruined associates.
Integration of our concerns is appropriate and necessary for healthy balance and a healthy life. I'm trying to resist the insistent urging of culture that tells me to contextualize myself and instead attempting to be fully "myself" in all situations. I think this is how I was made to be.
Make no mistake, this is a spiritual fight. The Devil and his demons are fixated on destroying us and in our culture, one of the best ways to do that is to get us to compromise in one or two areas of life at a time. Their cunning voices tell us that we need to compromise in this or that situation for the good of our family, or our happiness, or whatever. But that compromise offers them permission to sink their claws into our lives and over time they'll sabotage other areas as well.
The ultimate war is for territory, our hearts are the battle ground, and we control who wins the every individual battle based on who we agree with in the moment - the voice of the Holy Spirit who leads us to freedom and life, or the voice of the Devil who puts us in bondage and breaks us down.
Grace gives us permission to fight, and sometimes lose. My goal is to string together a long line of good decisions as I submit more territory to the Holy Spirit in hopes that one day, the whole of me becomes the fullest expression of what God created.
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