The myth of the neat little boxes

Right next door to my grandmother’s home was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Crawford. He was a nice old man that would let me strike the match to light his pipe. One thing I remember from Mr. Crawford’s house was a room where he kept all of his tools. He had this one particular drawer that had all these little boxes in them that were filled with screws and nuts of various sizes and shapes. It was so orderly, it was intoxicating!

Although the screws may be easy to find for Mr. Crawford, a drawer like that carries appeal for many because a lot of us like neat little boxes to separate things. (Some of us to the point that we may need counseling because we are obsessive compulsive.)

But neat little boxes may work for separating screws but they don’t work very well for organizing your life. I think men, in particular, struggle with this. I remember hearing Dr. Gary Rosberg say that men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti. Men like the neat rows of spaces where everything is in order and everything has its place. But women are a big gooey pile of noodles where everything is connected to everything else.

That may be funny, but spaghetti is a closer picture of reality for all of us. We like to try to keep certain things in their proper place. So we say things like, “Don’t bring work home.” But how well do we actually do that? We haven’t found the magic bullet to stop thinking about work or even dreaming about it.

It is certainly a worthwhile goal to not be so over-focused on work that you minimalize your time with your family. But I believe a very dangerous myth for the Christ follower is the myth that our faith can be kept in a neat little box.

We don’t want to mix “politics with religion.” We want to make sure that we do church stuff at church. And when I go vote, I do so completely void of religious influence…because those two boxes should not be mixed.

But the problem is that faith bleeds. It is fluid. It cannot be contained. Even though there are many in our culture who want to make sure we do everything we can to maintain that invisible wall of separation of church and state, the fact is, wherever there are people of faith, their faith will always be in the public sphere.

To keep one’s faith separate from work or politics or school is like trying to command the outside air from invading the inside of your home. How do you do that?

We are commanded by our Lord to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16). We have been given an ultimatum by God to not only take our faith with us into our work environment or our classroom or the polling place, but to make sure that we are ever vigilant at it.

We may try to fool ourselves into thinking that we can put our faith in a neat little box…but a person of true faith knows how foolish that truly is. Faith is not a light switch that can be turned off or on at will.

I believe that one of my callings as a minister of the gospel is to help the congregation I serve to filter absolutely all of life through the lens of Scripture. We must begin to think biblically about every situation we face.

To hold a particular political candidate for office and his or her views up to the light of Scripture is exactly what a person of faith is supposed to do. A person of faith should evaluate every task at the workplace, every classroom assignment, and every relationship through a biblical lens.

Asking what does Scripture say concerning this or that is how a Christian navigates all of life. It is a myth to think that a Christian can approach life any other way. Neat little boxes may work for organizing nuts and bolts but it is impossible to try to keep faith separate from the rest of one’s life.