Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast with host Darren Scheer, an initiative of the RGW Denham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. This is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate the local values into business. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all pages of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at ChristianityInbusiness.com.
SPEAKER_00On this episode, we're joined by Leah Archibald. Leah is a content development specialist at the Theology of Work Project, good friends of the Center for Christianity and Business. We're going to hear what that's all about for those that might not be familiar. And her devotionals on topics such as how to make the right decision and when to speak up at work have been completed by more than one million people. And I think a lot of those uh accessed it through the Bible app. And I know some of our listeners are probably uh addicts to the to the Bible app's devotionals section. It's pretty awesome. How you can uh just go through a lot of amazing, amazing content right there in the Bible app. Uh Leah takes inspiration from her previous career in marketing for Fortune 500 software companies, and she's the host of Making It Work, a podcast from the Theology of Work Project and the Fuller Deprees Center. Leah, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much, Darren.
SPEAKER_00It's so great to be here. Well, tell us about the Theology of Work Project for anyone that might not be familiar. Sure, I'd love to.
SPEAKER_02So the goal of the Theology of Work Project is to help Christians connect the Bible to the work that they do every day. You know, and um most Christians fall into this very sad category of Sunday Christians, you know, or or if you go to a Bible study maybe Sunday and Wednesday night, but you have this really strong faith and um you practice it in your spare time, but you don't really know how to bring that into practice in your day-to-day, or you're trying to live out a life as a faithful Christian, but you don't really know how to bring your deep Bible study devotional practice into your day-to-day. So the goal of the Theology of Work project is to make scriptures available to Christians in their day-to-day life as they're going to work or as they're in the workplace and really hone in on what the Bible says about work. How do those scriptures connect to the day-to-day decisions that we make in the workplace? So that's the exciting work that I get to do, both um writing articles about how the Bible connects to work and producing a podcast where we talk about Christians' uh biggest challenges in the workplace and how scripture relates to that.
SPEAKER_00And there's been commentaries written on pretty much the entire Bible, right?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So if you go to the Theology Work Project website, which is theology of work.org, you can search through, and it's all free. You can search through a commentary of the entire Bible. What does every book of the Bible have to say about work? What does Song of Songs have to say about work? Actually, it has a lot to say about a family starting a business together. Who knew? So we have um, you know, an article on every single book of the Bible that you can read. You can do it as a devotional. You know, we also we also have devotionals um that you can go through on your phone, as you mentioned. But really, the Bible has a lot to say about the work that we do in the modern workplace. It just takes changing the way you see scripture a little bit to relate it to your work.
SPEAKER_00So beyond like Genesis one and two, which is an off-sited uh passage in this conversation, what what are you? You said Song of Solomon. That's that's amazing. Like it talks about a family business. What are some of the other areas in the Bible that are some of your favorites where uh the Theology of Work project has has tackled the commentary?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll I'll hang out on Song of Solomon just a little bit because I bet your listeners are going, wait, what? Did she really just say that? You know, um, because it's a it's a piece of the Bible we often read at weddings, right? You know, because it's this beautiful love poem about a man and a woman describing each other and you know being so in love with each other. But they also describe the work there's all of a family business. There's all this vineyard imagery in there, you know, and um they the man and the woman want to be together and they're saying, we don't want anything to come between us, we're gonna like chase away all the little foxes that are disturbing the vineyard, right? For example, um, is is is a part of that. But, you know, what they're really talking about is not only they're are they coming together in this marriage, in this love relationship, but they're also coming together to start a business, you know, and in many books of the Bible, the work of family and the work of production and renumerative work is not separate, right? So this husband and wife are coming together to start a business, and they have like pressures, pressures that compete with their love pressures, right? So they they want to be together and have these intimate moments, but they also like their actual animals that are gonna destroy their crops and they have to go chase them away, right? So even in that um beautiful piece that you might only think of as love poetry, there's this work-life balance element, right? Like, how do we, how do we as a new husband and wife make time for each other, but also make time to like uh, you know, support our nest egg, you know, like tend our farm, chase away the foxes. Like that's actually um, you know, it might be a metaphor for things getting in the way of your love relationship, but it's also a very real pressure that you face if you're running a business together. So um it's just something that's been very interesting for me to look at as uh a way of seeing the Bible differently. You know, you you hear these this passage read over and over at every wedding you go to, and you go, Oh, I got it. I got Song of Songs Pegged. I know what that's about. But really, if you go back and look um through a workplace lens, you can say, actually, there are some, there's some really modern uh uh links to my work today. I know those are questions that I face. How do I balance my work versus how do I balance my relationship with my husband? The worst, the work of family versus versus the work of earning an income. So I think those issues are uh are very live today, even as they were in biblical times.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And as Solomon is writing this, you know, there's we're probably not just talking about a man and a wife uh operating this business, probably a lot of other people involved in the in the operation, right? So they probably got employees and and all of this going on. I mean, have you found that in the in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, that the concept of family really is not just a nuclear family, like is a really a concept born out of the 1950s where it's just mom and dad and the kids. Absolutely. But it's it's an entire household of workers and and everybody that's involved in the in in the overall household operation.
SPEAKER_02Right. Oh, absolutely. I mean, the ancient um Israeli idea of a household was so different from my our idea of a household today. You know, you think of Proverbs 31, where it talks about the valiant woman rising in the morning and providing food for her household. Like she wasn't the only like cooking eggs for 2.3 kids, right? She was providing food for the the word for household really meant this whole entire economic unit of production that was not only, you know, um your spouse and your children, but extended family who would also live and work with you. There would be servants, so there would be people, you know, Israelites, people who are not Israelites who are also working with you. And um, there would be the household extended beyond the walls of where you think you live, but you know, into the fields, into the grazing lands, into the units of production. If you're if you're uh raising grain, then you're grinding the grain, you're selling it in the marketplace. So it's really, you know, the woman in Proverbs 31 is not just managing her own household. She's really like an entrepreneur managing a whole business that has employees, you know, that has lands, that you know, has um capital involved in it, you know, and and uh plants of production. Um, so and also with that, she had help, right? So sometimes we think of that Proverbs 31 verse as a bludgeon to hit women over the head, like you're not doing enough, you know, you're not getting up early in the morning and making everyone food and also going out to work and also investing in a field and um all those wonderful things that the valiant woman does in that uh last uh stanza, the across the poem of Proverbs, um, which I really respect. But, you know, she had help. She had this household behind her, right? You know, and uh she had extended family, she had, you know, people who are in this servitude role, you know, and she um managed them as well as got help from them. So I think that's definitely you mentioned the 1950s, is something that we've lost in our uh new concept, a relatively new concept in terms of the course of our human existence with God. It's been a new concept that we all live in our own houses and we keep them spotlessly clean and we all by ourselves, you know, and we raise our children by ourselves. I think that's a very difficult predicament that uh modern couples are in today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And particularly for women, I think Proverbs 31 can, like you said, it it can be a very discouraging passage to read as a woman. Uh, but really have you found that she really is a more of a composite character, kind of an i kind of an ideal, not not like an actual person, but more of a more of an ideal uh um or or more of a celebration of of women and all of the different things that that women do um versus like here is your this is what you should replicate in your it's not a to-do list, it's not a daily to-do list that you get from the Bible.
SPEAKER_02I sure hope not. No, I think when I think of Proverbs 31, um I think of the embodiment of wisdom. You know, in the whole book of Proverbs, wisdom is embodied as a woman. You know, when we think of wisdom, we don't think of an actual woman, right? We know we think of all the um virtuous sayings, all the right teaching, all the knowledge that comes from growing in relationship with God, right? That's wisdom. And in the book of Proverbs, it starts off with saying Lady Wisdom shouts from the street corners. You know, she's calling people to know her. So in that book, wisdom is um personified as a woman, like not an actual woman, but here's a woman, we call her Lady Wisdom. So when I think of the um last chapter of the book of Proverbs, I I could think of the woman of Proverbs 31 as being this allegory for wisdom. Like, what does it mean to be wise? And that means that this verse is applicable not just to women, but to men and women, to all of us. You know, what does it mean to be wise? Well, all the things that the woman does in Proverbs 31 are traits that um, you know, all good workers can have when they go to when they go to work. You know, for example, she's shrewd, she looks to the future, she um, you know, plans her investments wisely, she doesn't rush in, you know, and uh, and by the first field, she sees she considers her investment shrewdly and she plans for the future. You know, she's she's uh diligent, she goes by her work well, she starts rising early in the morning, she her light doesn't go out at night, you know, she stays up late, she is um uh you know doing her work diligently um so that she can get everything done. And it can't be a to-do list for us, for each of us, because if it were, we'd be exhausted. Oh my goodness. If I rose if I rose first thing every single morning to, you know, cook food for everybody and stayed up all night, you know, um weaving wool and flax, I don't think any I I couldn't do it, certainly, and also work in the marketplace. And I don't think anyone in ancient Israel could do either do it either, honestly.
SPEAKER_00And now it says that she was never never idle. I mean, if you were to take that that one statement and go build your theology of work-life balance, I mean, yeah, you could run way far in the wrong direction. In some trouble, right?
SPEAKER_02You could. And I don't think, you know, I don't think if you use it as a to-do list, you'll get to that bit of wisdom that the Bible is trying to communicate there. You know, so the the Bible is trying to communicate what I believe is that here's a picture of wisdom involves all these different activities in your life, right? You're not just all in making money or just all in running your home. You know, it involves like sometimes you're out in the marketplace selling, sometimes you're home providing for your family, you know, sometimes you're looking to this moment that you're spending with them, sometimes you're looking to the future, you know, and all those come into a balanced life, but it's not a task list of 25 things to do in the day, because then you won't get to the promise of that verse. I really see the promise of Proverbs 31. Um, in in the last part of that chapter, it says, Her children arise and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. You know, and I think that's the promise that we have in that verse is that the other people in our family, you know, if we practice wisdom, will see that wisdom and be blessed by it, you know. And um, if we're running ourselves ragged by not resting, by not taking Sabbath, there's no way we're gonna get to that promise, you know, of a blessed family life. We're just gonna, I am, just gonna blow right past it into burnout and exhaustion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. So what is the relationship between, because wisdom seems to be we're talking about Song of Solomon and Proverbs and Solomon said to be the wisest man to ever live. Um what what is this relationship between wisdom and work-life balance for uh for a business professional?
SPEAKER_02It's a great, it's a great question, Darren, because I think business professionals need an extra dose of wisdom to get that work-life balance because it's it's so hard, isn't it? I mean, the pressures, the pressures of modern life, you know, you go into work and your boss is screaming and needs five different things today, and social media is screaming in your other ear, and they're the kids at home and screaming, you know, there's so many um competing demands for your attention. And it's very compelling to just say, I'm just I'm gonna deal with the emergencies that are right in front of me. So it takes a lot of wisdom to be able to set boundaries on your work. Um, and I think that, you know, that's one of the reasons I think it's so important for Christians in business to get a daily dose of the Bible, right? To be bringing scriptures into their life and wondering how does the scripture apply to my work? Because it's so easy to blow past. I mean, that's why God needed to give Moses, um, you know, for the Israelites the commandment to rest one day out of seven. If people were doing it anyway, they wouldn't need a commandment, right? It wouldn't, if it were easy for us, it wouldn't be hard, but it's so compelling for us to blow past, you know, what's God's wisdom for us into what is urgent, you know, what's the emergency. So I think we so, we so do need that wisdom um to be able to, you know, put into place some practices that bring work life value.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it it's really the wisdom to know what to say no to, right? I mean, because there's there are plenty of things that are clamoring at us to get us to say yes and to take on these new responsibilities. And yet every time we're just saying yes to one thing we're saying no to, everything else, it doesn't seem like that's really the key to work life balance is what are you gonna say, what are you gonna say no to about?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I mean, God, our God is a God who set limits, you know, even from the beginning, in the beginning of Genesis, um, you know, he said, here's some fruit you can't, here's some food you can eat, and here's some food you can't eat, right? You know, he said it um in Exodus in the Ten Commandments, he said, Here's our six days where you can work, and here's one day that you can't work, you know, and and Christians can take a Sabbath different ways, you know, there are many different practices um to take Sabbath. So I'm not saying you have to be resting one day out of seven. You know, there are different ways that business people can do it, but but the bottom line is that God set limits, God set limits on his own time, you know, and God set limits on our time. And I think that can be very freeing, you know, because when God made all the earth, each day, he didn't make all the earth like, and I gotta do this thing, and then this, and uh then my work is never done, you know. Every day he looked at his work and said it was good. You know, and so I think uh we can look on these limits, not like, oh gosh, what am I saying no to? Oh, they're all gonna hate me, but this is good. Like a boundary line has good, is good, you know. Some say the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Like there's something very pleasant and pleasing and good about setting a boundary around work, even though it's so difficult to do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And the wisdom is to know where those where those boundary lines have fallen, right? You know, they've fallen in pleasant places, uh, but we can have a fulfilled life given the the constraints that we have. I mean, it's like uh a picture without a frame. I mean, it's it's just all over the place, but there's something about those boundaries that makes that the the focus adds to the to the beauty, it doesn't take away from it. And you're a mom with with young kids. What is the what is this Sabbath? And I'm I'm a father with young kids. Uh you're you're in it too. Yeah, my we're we're just a little bit behind where you guys are, but um what is your Sabbath look like? I mean, yeah, is this uh is this a hard and fast rule of okay, everybody, uh just so you know, on Sundays, mom's gonna be taking a nap. Mom's out.
SPEAKER_02Like is that what it is? Take care of yourselves, make yourselves dinner. No, I you know, I don't know, I don't know any moms who uh completely stop working for uh for 24 hours. I don't know that that's possible. Um, and uh and certainly there are different kinds of work. So one thing that I do is I think of a Sabbath from a particular type of work, right? So um when I go into my place of work on Monday morning, I actually um there's a part of my heart that is so grateful to go because it's a Sabbath from the work of my home, right? Which is a different kind of work, right? And the work of my home is there's a lot of um, you know, uh physical labor demands and you know, interpersonal demands with very small people, with very small, unreasonable people, right? There's there's like there's a particular uh head space where you're managing tantrums and and dirty things, very dirty things in my household. And um, so when I go into my in my office in the morning just to see everything clean and neat and a blank computer screen, like, oh, there's a there's a certain element of rest there, you know, and then I work a full day and then um at the end of eight hours or whatever, is there's there's a certain element of rest to get in my car. Oh, now, you know, so I think there's a rhythm of the different types of work that we can do that can feel like a rest just between alternating between different types of work. Now, I'm not gonna say that because that sounds like I'm I'm like shirking my responsibilities of the commandment to rest, which I don't want people to do, and I don't want me to do either. So, you know, so I also um make sure, though it never takes a full 24 hours, but I do have time in my schedule that I make sure I get to rest, do something that's restful for me. That's not a uh, you know, where I'm not being an agent of production, right? Because whether I'm in the workplace um and being paid or I'm at home and I'm doing the work at the home, there's some sort of there's this burden of being an agent of production um there and and knowing there's always work. So um I think all parents should definitely have time to do something that feels restful to them, like going for a walk in nature. For me as a busy mom, I'm not able to take 24 hours off one day a week. I mean, it's as you know, it's just not possible with the work of the kids. And I and I can't tell them, hey, you guys go make dinner for yourselves and uh and give yourselves baths, and you know, I'm gonna sit over here and read the Bible in a corner. I mean, as much as I would like to one day maybe. Um, but I find other pockets of time where I can take my Sabbath. So for me, you know, going to the gym and swimming for an hour is a Sabbath, or you know, when I commute to to and from work, that's even a kind of a Sabbath for me because it's time alone in a car and I can pray or I can listen to a podcast, or I often talk on the phone with friends who are, you know, other moms who work who understand the challenges I'm going through. Um, and you know, there's certainly times um that I make it a point to unplug, whether I'm working or with my family or doing something else. You know, I make sure I have set times where um I'm unaccessible by the phone. Because I, you know, or I silence my phone, because that's one of the things that can really intrude on our peace and our time with God is the feeling that I can be interrupted by work all the time. Right. So I think carving out that time, even if it's not a full day, if it's an hour or if an hour every night after the kids go to bed, um, you know, or sometimes where uh you're uninterruptible and you're doing this thing that God, you know, sets apart, which is just rest. The definition of rest is you're not doing work. Just you know, there's there's time for just doing, oh, just doing nothing. Um Because it gives you the a real physical understanding that the provision comes from God. It doesn't come from my effort. It doesn't come from me running around making sure you know I've got all my ducks in a row. It really does come from God. And that's something I can only experience when I do take that deep breath.
SPEAKER_00Yes. There is something very powerful about just doing nothing, just going for a walk, or you know, and and for you, and I going to the gym is recreational and that's that's rejuvening rejuvenating and everything, but still that can feel like yes, I accomplished my workout. Um as rejuvenating as it is, but just in the nothingness and in the just completely disconnecting and just really vegging out for lack of a better term, is is just so powerful and and so difficult to do when you have kids. The kids are they don't uh as you said before, they're they're uh quite unreasonable.
SPEAKER_02Uh they don't Yeah, they don't have a pause button for some reason. They didn't come with a pause button installed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I w sometimes I wish they did. But you you know, you bring up a really interesting point, Darren, which is even doing something restful, even like going to the gym, can feel like oh, a checkbox that I'm checking off. I mean, I can take that's a temptation I think we all face, you know, especially in our modern accelerated, you know, do do do accomplishment culture. Like I can take any spiritual project, you know, and turn it into a trophy that I'm making for myself. You know, if I if I set out a goal of sitting in quiet time with God for 30 minutes every day, you know, as soon as I do it, I'm like checking off a box. Like, I am the awesomest spiritual giant ever, you know, you know, like have you done your quiet time? Like I can very quickly take something that's meant to be for my benefit and turn it into um, you know, a checkbox or a trophy, which is I, you know, I think what the Pharisees did. You know, I think we have like this good example in scripture of how to take the good wisdom of God and turn it into something bad if we think it's something that we're doing and not something that God's doing.
SPEAKER_00And I've heard Christians take the Sabbath principle of work six days, rest on the seventh as, well, that means I get to spend Saturdays at the office. So I'll spend Monday through Saturday. Like they that would literally take it that way. Um, but not realizing that there's probably some things you're gonna end up having to do on Sunday that are like taking dry cleaning or whatever, that it's gonna be somewhat labor or working in the yard is a big one. Um like what do you what do you say to that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, well, there you can get really, I would hate to come up with a list of rules that drove us away from the principle, yeah. Right. You know, so that so God's principle is hey guys, depend on me. I'm telling you guys I got this. You don't have to work every single day. I gotcha. I'm providing for you. I'm God, you know, and so the principle behind that is you don't have to um work up to the last minute. I you know, I remember there was one season in my life um that my husband and I decided we're gonna take a real Sabbath and we weren't gonna do any work on Sunday, and we're gonna do it old school, like we're not gonna run any appliances, you know, we're like we're not gonna do the laundry, we're not gonna do, we're gonna cook dinner, like have some dinner in the crock pot or something the night before. So we're really not gonna, we're not gonna do anything. You're not gonna heal anybody. We're not gonna do anything. You know, we had we had this like whole exactly. You're funny, you're funny, Darren. You know, I don't know where we're getting this old testament. But um, so so this was our idea for Sabbath. And what we found very quickly, it got, you know, and just after a few weeks, it would be like 9.30 at night, and it would be like, oh no, I have to get the laundry into the machine right now because tomorrow is Sunday. And I would be like hustling and bustling around the house at 9:30, 10 at night, you know, with a puss on my face, like just really grumpy and resentful because tomorrow is the Sabbath, you know, and like, oh, I have to stay up so late doing this laundry because we need it and I can't do it tomorrow, grump, grump, grump, grump, grump. You know, and um, you know, Jesus said, is the Sabbath made for man or is man made for the Sabbath? You know, like are we servants of our rule, or does God provide the rule so that we can connect with him? So, at any rate, once we found that both me and my husband were very grumpy because of the no laundry rule, you know, we uh chalk that up to a learning experience and stopped doing our uh our rule-based Sabbath. Because really, I, you know, I do believe what Jesus said that God provided the Sabbath because for us, for our benefit, because we just don't know how it's so hard for us people to rest. You know, it really is. We really do over and over again, every single day, want to take over running the whole world. We want to take that job away from God, you know, and whatever practice, whether it's resting one day out of seven or you know, resting several hours out of the day, or doing a devotional practice, or dedicating work to God, whatever practice it is that lets you connect with God and his sense of provision, um, that's really the gist of the Sabbath rule in my mind. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it goes back to the first thing we were talking about is is wisdom. I mean, it really comes back to relying on the Holy Spirit's wisdom to know what how do I need to set boundaries in this particular because there's different seasons of life, there are different uh different professions, uh, what whether you have kids or whether you don't. All of those different things are we have to have his wisdom because if it's if we're just relying on a system of rules for our life, um we're we're no different than the Pharisees, like you said, and and who even came out against Jesus for healing somebody on the Sabbath. And Jesus is like, well, um if if if your ox falls in the ditch on the Sabbath, aren't you gonna help it get out? And and then the flip side, I heard this pastor say one time, like, um, well, you know, we gotta work on Sunday because we got so many ox falling in the ditch. Like, so it's like you can take your legalism to whatever uh end of the continuum you want, but the the heart of the matter is is wisdom as as you've been sharing with us.
SPEAKER_02That's you know, it's it's why I love Jesus. One, because he says those funny things like that and makes everybody think, but you know, he also said that you know, God is the God of the living, not the dead. You know, he's a living God, right? And um, and Jesus said, God is the God of the living, not the dead. And I I relate that to my understanding of scripture or the why I think it's so important what we do with the theology work project, which is make sure that we're reading scripture every day and relating it to our lives, because if we don't, we can get this dead kind of faith. You know, I know the rules. I got the rule book, I read that a long time ago. But you know, our God, Jesus, is the God of the living. And I have to believe that um, you know, he reveals himself to us anew each day through an encounter of scripture, and that's how I get to real wisdom that relates to my life today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, because I don't I don't need a rule book that tells me to shut off the laundry, you know, at 1201 a.m. You know, I need a living God that I encounter in scripture that says, Leah, is this really the gist of it? You know, is this really the heart of the law? Is this the heart of you connecting with me? You know, I'll probably change direction. You know, that's what I need. I need a living God um to keep me on task, on the task that He has for me. Otherwise, I'm gonna like drive off in a whole lot of wrong directions and I'm not gonna feel any peace at the end.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well said. Well, Leah, what's the best place for people to learn more about you and maybe leave our listeners with uh a call to action? Sure.
SPEAKER_02I really hope that folks would tune in to the new podcast I'm hosting. It's called the Making It Work Podcast, and you can find it at making itworkpodcast.org or wherever you get your podcast, you can search for making it work and click on the M inside of Circle. That's our logo. And uh on that podcast, I host conversations with Christians in the workplace who are dealing with these tough issues and you know, wrestling through what the Bible has to say for their work. So I hope um folks would check it out there and join more conversations like this.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. Making itwork podcast.com. Everybody go check it out. We'll have it in the show notes. Leah, thanks for sharing your time and your your wisdom and your passion for this uh this topic and the work you're doing with Theology of Work project and beyond. And uh, we sure appreciate you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thank you so much, Darren. Thank you for hosting these conversations. It's uh it's good to hear what other Christians are going through. I love the show and I love to be a part of it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity in Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about the HBU Center for Christianity in Business at Christianity in Business.com. Thanks for listening and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.