When the Apostle Paul was writing letters to churches in the first century, they hadn’t come up with the clever idea of underlining words for emphasis. He could not italicize or make words bold or change the font color to draw special attention to a very important idea. So, he repeated himself.

For example, near the end of one of Paul’s letters, he writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4).

There’s a place in one of his letters where Paul wants to emphasize his point so much that he virtually repeats himself three times:

“And whatever you do…”

That’s pretty all-inclusive, wouldn’t you say? But just in case you missed his point, he continues:

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed…”

That just about covers all the bases, doesn’t it? But Paul pressed on because he really wants his readers to get it:

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all…”

There’s no room for anything to be left out. Paul is making this wedge labeled “Spiritual Life” the whole pie. Nothing you do falls outside the bounds of this category.

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

I said it before; I’ll say it again. For Paul, there is no such thing as a “spiritual life”. There is only life, and it’s all supposed to be spiritual.

Ironically, the Jewish people had a greater understanding of this than most Christians do. They knew that working in the field was a spiritual activity. They considered where they dug the latrines a spiritual activity. Sexual expression was spiritual.

They realized there was nowhere they could go and no activity in which they could engage that did not interest God.

Christians profess a belief in the Emmanuel presence of God — the idea that God is always with us — always in us, having taken up residence in our hearts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We read his promise to “never leave us” — and yet we operate as if we can dismiss him from the room with a closing prayer.

Nearly 350 years ago a man simply called Brother Lawrence learned how to live with a sense of God’s pervading presence in every waking moment and every mundane activity. In fact, he realized that — because of God’s presence — there is no such thing as a mundane activity. Peeling potatoes in the kitchen where he worked was every bit as much of a spiritual activity as kneeling in prayer — if it’s done the right way.

When we try to balance out our lives — neatly compartmentalizing things into categories and limiting “spiritual life” to one wedge — we attempt the impossible. We try to squeeze God out of certain areas, limiting him to a time and place of our choosing. This has been a problem for churches since we bought God his first house.

We bought you a house, God. Stay there, and I’ll come visit you every Sunday.

We gave you a day, God. You have your day, and I have the others.

We gave you a servant, God. If you need to get a message to me, send it to him. I’ll pick up my messages from you on that one day in that one place.

Leave me alone, God.

Here’s the biggest problem with all that: sometimes God takes us up on it. If you keep trying to squeeze God out of things, he’ll eventually leave. He’s not content to remain in a single wedge of your life. But when he’s out, he’s all the way out. With God, it’s all or nothing. He’s not really all that in to the concept of a balanced life.

There’s no such thing as a “Spiritual Life”. There’s just life, and either it’s all spiritual — or none of it’s spiritual.

In my opinion, the greatest danger that comes from our misguided idea of balance (when it’s mixed with the equally bad idea of compartmentalizing life) is that we think spiritual maturity means having to make the wedge labeled “Spiritual Life” bigger than all the other wedges.

Churches are especially bad at selling this idea. We often give people the impression that there are spiritual activities and there are secular activities. There are things like prayer, Bible study, worship and volunteering at church to serve others. These all go in the “Spiritual Life” wedge. Then there are things like work, exercise, shopping, watching television, playing with your kids, volunteering at the fall festival, going to the movies, etc. These do not go in the “Spiritual Life” wedge.

If you’re really serious about becoming spiritually mature, you’ll do more things that fit into the “spiritual” category and fewer things that fit in the other categories. If you have to do something that doesn’t fit in the “spiritual” category (we all have to earn a living, right?), at least do something “spiritual” while you’re there — like lead a Bible study, or leave evangelistic tracts at other people’s workstations.

In other words, work itself is not a spiritual activity, so you have to import something spiritual into your work to make it worthwhile.

Then, if someone asks you how your spiritual life is going, you can rattle off a list of all the spiritual things you’ve done that week. It makes it easier to measure your spirituality that way.

Anyone see why this might not be such a great idea?

When we fuse the goal of balance with the idea that life should fit neatly into compartments, we do some pretty serious damage to ourselves — and usually to others as well.

For example, lots of people think that there should be a compartment labeled “Spiritual Life.” That compartment may be next to “Finances” or “Recreation” or “Career” or what have you, but it may not bleed over into any of those other compartments. There can be no overlap. That would wreck the whole idea of balance and defeat the purpose for having compartments in the first place.

From there, it’s a pretty short step to “God is only interested in my ‘Spiritual Life’. He doesn’t really care what goes on in any of the other compartments.”

Here’s a simple but profound truth: There’s no such thing as a “spiritual life”; there’s just life, and it’s all supposed to be spiritual.

In my opinion, the biggest danger of our quest for balance is that it tends to lead us to compartmentalize life. We tend to think of life like a game piece from Trivial Pursuit: a pie with wedges that need filling in.

There’s a “financial” piece, a “work” piece, a “relationship/family” piece and so on. For many people, they believe that one of the pieces should be labeled “faith/spirituality”.

This mindset has led to all sorts of misery and misunderstandings of what faith is and how it intersects with real life. I can think of a couple of dangerous implications of this paradigm that I’ll explore in the coming days. For now, you tell me:

Have you ever thought of life this way?

What might be wrong with this kind of thinking?

Roger Clemens is not a good all-around baseball player. Sure he’s great on the mound, but have you seen him hit? He’s a lifetime .173 hitter.

Roger Clemens cannot even hit his own weight (which is reported to be 220).

He’s a decent fielder with very limited range. He does not run the bases well.

In a world that prizes 5-tool players (think Ichiro or A-Rod or Francoeur), he’s a 1-tool guy — maybe a 1 1/2 tool guy. He’s not what I would consider a balanced ballplayer.

And yet he’s going to be paid $28 million by the New York Yankees this year. Heck, he’s a no-brainer, first-ballot shoe-in for the Hall of Fame.

Q: How often do you hear of a guy who can’t hit above the Mendoza line, has never stolen a base and can’t field anything that’s not hit directly to him making millions of dollars as a professional baseball player?

A: Whenever you find a guy who can throw in the mid-90s with control.

I’m mentioning this to highlight another problem with balance: it fails to consider how we each may be uniquely gifted and called.

Some of us are called to a lifestyle of study and introspection; others are called to engage in activism. Some are great in front of a room of strangers; others are better one-on-one. There are some people you want to call when you’re sick and need someone to cheer you up; they’re not usually the same people you call when you need help filing an itemized tax return.

Sometimes, in our quest for balance — and in our misguided notion that everyone else around us must also be balanced, we end up making a very great pitcher who is a lousy batter into a guy who is mediocre at both.

This mentality (that balanced people are better people) is killing our educational system — and it’s wreaking havoc in churches, too.

A couple of years ago, my friend Steve got a call at 3:00 in the morning from a doctor in Macon, GA. Steve was told that his daughter had been in a major car accident and was being rushed into emergency surgery.

“How bad is it on a scale of 1 to 10?” Steve wanted to know.

“Sir, this is a 15,” was the doctor’s reply. “Your daughter’s not going to make it through the night.”

I thought about that last Sunday as I watched Steve lead worship at The Bridge — with his daughter singing background vocals. And I thought about how inbalanced their lives have been over the last two years.

It reminded me of another problem I have with this whole concept of balance: it doesn’t take into account the seasons of our lives.

Balance doesn’t mean a whole lot to someone who just heard the word “cancer” from a doctor. Life suddenly becomes all about one thing: beating the disease.

Balance seems like a joke to a mother of young children.

Balance isn’t on the radar screen for newlyweds.

A church planter preparing to launch. A farmer during the harvest season. A runner in training for a marathon.

There are seasons in life when balance is not and should not be the highest goal.

In fact, sometimes our quest for balance is really a mask hiding what we’re really questing after: a more manageable life, a more comfortable life, a life ordered according to our own priorities rather than God’s.

In my last post I told you that I somehow picked up the idea that balance was the key to life. Some of you chimed in and said you’d learned the same thing in the form of a well-known Greek maxim: All things in moderation.

But there are some things you can’t do in moderation. You can’t experience a moderate amount of ecstasy. You can’t be moderately heartbroken. You shouldn’t be moderately involved in the lives of your children, and you can’t moderately follow Jesus.

So, I’ve come up with a list of problems I have with the concept of balance.

First, it’s difficult. Have you ever seriously tried to balance all the competing demands of life? Work and play, spouse and kids, prayer and study, solitude and service, family and career, evangelism and activism. I can never get it to balance out properly, and — far too often — my quest for balance leaves me an exhausted, stressed-out mess. Just because something is difficult, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, but real balance isn’t just difficult; it may be impossible.

Second, it’s not really biblical. I remember having a conversation with Rick Duncan (Sr. Pastor of Cuyahoga Valley Church). I have a ton of respect for Rick. In fact, there was a time when I thought I might go up there to Cleveland and join the staff of the wonderful church he serves. But I remember talking to him about this quest for balance, and I was totally shocked when he suggested that the idea isn’t biblical and reflects more of a suburbanite, comfortable, manageable lifestyle than anything we read about in the Bible. I have been to countless retreats and read dozens of articles in Christian magazines touting balance as the Holy Grail of the Christian life. He might as well have questioned the deity of Jesus!

But the more I thought about it, the more I began to suspect that my friend Rick was right. If you just go through a list of the great bastions of faith in the Bible — say, Hebrews 11 — you’re not going to find many characters who are good examples of balance. Abel did not have a very diversified portfolio. All his eggs seemed to be in the one basket, leaving his brother to farm the land while he tended animals. Maybe he and his brother would have gotten along better if one of them had been more balanced in his interests. Noah built a nice boat but had some pretty serious dysfunction in his family. Abraham tried to balance his affection for his two sons and ended up alienating his one wife. Isaac didn’t balance his affection between his two sons and ended up alienating his second son. Jacob. Joseph. Moses. Gideon. Samson. David.

Do any of these guys strike you as particularly balanced?

And then there are the folks in the New Testament, most notably Peter and Paul. Some of you suggested that Jesus was a good example of balance, but I’m not sure about that. He told a guy to go and sell everything he owned in order to follow him. He didn’t have a wife or kids or a steady job, never bought a house of his own or did any of the things we normally associate with a well-balanced life. There was a certain rhythm to his life, but it looks more like shifting from one out-of-balance activity to another (plunging into a prolonged season of ministry and then suddenly withdrawing completely into solitude).

I have a few other problems with balance, but I don’t want this post to get too much longer. For now, I’ll close with a disclaimer and a few questions I’m noodling over.

DISCLAIMER: I am not advocating the pursuit of an unbalanced life. In our society, we often wear busyness as a badge of honor — as if being overwhelmingly busy equals being important. Marginless living is the bane of our existence, and it leads to burnout, frustration and the loss of joy, peace, patience and a whole host of other things that ought to characterize the life of one who follows Jesus. I am merely suggesting that the pursuit of balance may not be as virtuous as we’ve been led to believe.

And that leads me to my questions for today: Why is balance such a big deal in Christian circles? Why do so many preachers and teachers and writers tout it as the cure-all, when it doesn’t have much in the way of biblical support? And can you think of any potential dangers that may result from our desire for balance?

There are phrases that have gotten stuck in my head. I can’t always remember where I picked them up, but they’re in there — rattling around consistently, surfacing periodically to leap from my mouth when the filters are down. These messages are programmed into my brain and may or may not reflect what I really believe.

Sometimes these are relatively harmless sayings that no one actually believes. For example, when I was growing up I once heard someone say, “Never trust a man with two first names.” For some reason, that stuck in my head, and I’ve found myself saying it more than once, though it is always in jest.

Could you imagine incorporating something as silly and arbitrary as this into your core values and beliefs? Some of the most trustworthy men in America have two first names: Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, Billy Graham (I’m relatively conservative and a huge baseball fan, so I might add George Will to that list).

Whether you like their theology (or politics as the case may be), would you really be willing to disqualify them simply because they have two first names? Of course not!

That phrase is just a goofy saying that got stuck in my head a long time ago. It leaps to mind every so often. I have a chuckle and move on with life, making decisions with better criteria than that.

But here’s one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: “Life is about balance.”

Where did I pick that up? Is it true? Do I mean it? Should I live it?

What do you think?

Just wanted to post a little note to let people know I’m still here. It’s been a crazy busy time!

The girls are in school and seem to be doing well. Amelia started five-day preschool this year. It only goes from 9:30am until 12:30pm, but she’s still in the process of adjusting.

Jill is busy writing. It’s either curriculum for 252Basics or the small group study guide for Hearts and Minds. I can’t remember which it is this week! She’s also doing some volunteer work for the preschool ministry at The Bridge.

Speaking of The Bridge…we are officially in our new building now. In fact, this Sunday will be our grand opening. We’re expecting a big turnout, so — if you’re in the Atlanta area — we’d love to see you there this weekend. You should probably get there early, though. Service times are 9:15am and 11:00am. I’ll be speaking at both services.

I’m still working through my travel schedule for the upcoming year. If you’re interested in having me come visit your church, leave me a comment or fill out this request form.

My father-in-law’s health has improved some over the past couple of months. I think it did him good to have Jill and the girls out there for five weeks. It created a huge strain on our family (logistically and financially), but it gave Jill the opportunity to show her father the love of a God he’s not even certain exists. Please continue to pray for a softening of his heart.

My very good friend Hal Runkel is going to be on The Today Show tomorrow morning at 9:05am. His book ScreamFree Parenting is in stores now, and we’re excited to see him on the tv. I’m going to call his cellphone during his interview to see if he remembered to turn it off. If you’re looking for a great book on parenting (besides mine of course), I recommend Hal’s. It’s fantastic!

Another good friend of mine has a big weekend coming up. Jerry Dingmore has been working for months now, preparing to launch a new church in Macon, GA. Pray for Jerry and his crew at Piedmont Church to have a great Sunday. I’ll be speaking down there a few times in the coming months.

Some of you have asked about the television show I taped recently. It was for The Coral Ridge Hour (the television ministry of D. James Kennedy). Some of you are by now aware that Dr. Kennedy passed from this world this morning around 2:15am. He had a major heart attack last New Year’s Eve and had never fully recovered. Our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Kennedy’s family and church. Needless to say, they are scrambling to figure out how this will impact their upcoming broadcast schedule. I’ll keep you posted as I find out more details.

My friend Ken Boa is in India right now. He’ll be teaching at the Hindustan Bible Institute for several hours each day there and will come back with terribly funny stories! Unfortunately, his absence makes my writing load a little heavier as we attempt to finish this manuscript for our upcoming book. I am concerned that I may not be able to finish on time, but so many other things seem to have conspired against my writing this time. I am grateful for all those who have offered encouragement to me in the process.

All these things and more have kept me from communicating with you as often as I would like. The rhythm of life has changed somewhat, and it is taking me a while to find the beat again. (I am listening to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers as I type this, and Horace Silver’s gospel-influenced piano solos always help me with that!)

I suppose my “little note” turned into a longer post than I initially thought it would.

Suffice to say: Things are going. My children are healthy. My wife is lovely. My house is stately. My clothes fit. I don’t have much money in the bank right now, but I’ve got some intangibles that money can’t buy.