While I was speaking at a church in Cincinnati, a visitor from India walked by the auditorium and heard me. He took a seat in the back.
On Monday morning, he called to ask if we could meet for lunch. I discovered this man was a PhD. in chemistry and a devoted follower of Gandhi.
I asked, "What have you observed about Americans?"
"Well," he said, "you Americans are segmented. A large segment of your life is devoted to making money. You have another segment for family, another for social interaction, and yet another segment for religion. But they're not tied together with any philosophical thread. Each of them stands alone, almost as if you are a different person in each of these roles."
'Tell me about Dr. Gandhi," I asked.
"Dr. Gandhi had all the areas of interest I have just mentioned, but in his life, each was an expression of his religion."
I realized this chemist had made a profound observation about American life. I also realized his comment about Gandhi was one of the greatest compliments I had ever heard paid to a person. The focused, unsegmented life is a rarity today.
Even the church, at least in our culture, sometimes has a tendency to segment persons. We take the segment of a person's life called "spiritual" and dress it up differently from the rest. We bring the person into a different culture on Sunday, seat him with people he may not see during the week, and use a particular vocabulary. All this has little to do with his job at the canning factory or computer terminal. Few people think of their business as an expression of their religion. Few think about time spent with family as a religious act, or social occasions as religious experiences.
This segmentation traps even some of our best-intentioned leaders.
After speaking at a seminary chapel service, I met with the faculty, and the first question someone asked was, "How long have you been bi-vocational?" "What do you mean?" I asked. The person said, "How long have you had a ministry as well as a business?"
"I'm not bi-vocational," I said. "That term suggests one interest is above the other, or that I stop doing one temporarily while I'm doing the other. That's not so; I carry them simultaneously. Hopefully I am a whole person—a Christian. Both my speaking and my business are expressions of that wholeness." I could tell even these sophisticated professors had a segmented concept of the Christian life.
I once saw William F. Buckley talking to Malcolm Muggeridge on television. Buckley said, "I would find it very difficult to talk to my compatriots about anything spiritual." Muggeridge replied, "I find it difficult not to." Obviously, Buckley accepts compartmentalization. He is brilliant, articulate, attends mass regularly, and is ready to write or get on national television and talk about spirituality— but not in normal conversation.
The ultimate goal of a church leader, as I see it, is to lead people to maturity in Christ. This, of course, starts with their salvation, which opens the possibility of maturing the saved. And what is maturity if not living an integrated, consistent life? Maturing Christians are people who are becoming less and less compartmentalized. All of life is an expression of their faith. Scripture is for permeating, not segmenting.
