Whole Life

I went to a seminar today by a man called Will Day entitled "My first 100 days at the Sustainable Development Commission". Not the most exciting title, but it was absolutely fascinating. This guy has worked for and managed some of the biggest NGO's in the world, including being one of the main guys behind Comic Relief, and now he's working advising the government on sustainable development. It was fascinating hearing how our current economic model of growth is not only completely unsustainable, as we've already seen with the recession, but not even necessary: it is possible to have prosperity without growth. It really struck a chord with me, as I am convinced in my heart that the answers to the world's problems do not lie in pure financial gain, but, as Will put himself, living within the environmental limits of our world to secure a future for everyone (or something along those lines).

Then in the question time, somebody asked what he thought about sustainable development as a 'holistic' way of seeing development. Holistic is a word that many people dislike, treating it like a meaningless jargony buzzword. Actually, holistic really means encompassing the whole of the spectrum of life, ie, not focussing on one driver for change, eg, economics, but including the broad range of important factors that need to be considered: environment, social prosperity, climate change, personal wellbeing, etc.

Living a holistic Christian life is really important too. Too often we can separate our lives into 'sacred' or 'secular', and see the latter as the unimportant bit, whereas the former is what God is really interested in. 'Sacred' activities include our private prayer life, reading the Bible, going to a bible study, church, helping out with youth group, or kids club, or whatever. 'Secular' basically means everything else, including school, or uni, or work. It's just stuff we do, but there's a lack of real connection between our faith and those activities. Actually, secretly deep down I think a lot of us enjoy the 'secular' activities more than the 'sacred' sometimes! But here's the Big Secret: there's no such thing as a sacred/secular divide!

It comes down to worship, I think. That word for a lot of people means singing, or playing in a band, or something you do along to a Matt Redman CD. For quite a few more, it means involving God in some way in our everyday lives, but we're somehow unable to quite connect it all up. Here's a tip: start viewing your mundane (or slightly more exciting) everyday life as something that God has given you to bring him glory in, as something that is meant to be as much a part of your spiritual life as the obvious stuff. In fact, we spend about 2/3 hours in "Christian" activity every week, but 30/40 hours at work, or in school, or...no, for uni it's about 15, but you get the picture. The place you're spending most of your time is your primary environment for worshipping God. I don't mean dancing around the open plan office whilst singing "Undignified" at the top of your life, but that actually the normal activities become a way of worshipping God as you pursue being excellent, or as you relate to your colleagues, or as you begin to see His hand in your circumstances, or begin to see how His message is relevant to what you're doing. I'm starting to see it, and today was a major step forward, realising there are those in the 'secular' world who are seeing through the darkness, and for me that's proof that God works His plans through the lives of those who don't even know Him yet, it's grace in abundance.

I've probably done the idea of holistic living a major underwhelming disservice here, but I'm just trying to convey the heart of it simply: everything you do matters, don't promote certain things over others because they all count. Priotise, sure, but don't see some things are completely unimportant because they have no easy connection to spiritual things. All things are spiritual to those who follow Him!