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One scientist wakes up in the morning, easily faces another day of invigorating, engaging work. This scientist sees what they do as well-aligned with personal values, identity, and purpose. Another scientist awakes dreading the meaninglessness of the day ahead, wondering whether the work is worth the effort and struggling to see how it matters to the rest of their life. This second scientist is at risk of general frustration, anxiety, and burnout.
At Blueprint 1543 we are working to help sciency people become more integrated. Integrated people are those people’s whose lived faith and professional work have no separation, no distinction. Integrated sciency people see how their faith motivates and impacts their work and they also allow their scientific understandings to enrich their faith. We believe that a world with more such integrated people in churches and in the science and tech world is a world better positioned to address thorny challenges facing it, now and in the future. Being an integrated person is also a very good thing in and of itself.
Biblical and scientific evidence both point to the goodness of an integrated life. Many different biblical passages suggest that an integrated life is a part of the abundant life (John 10:10) that Jesus calls us to. A fine example is the book of James, attributed to Jesus’ half-brother and one of the leaders of the early church in Jerusalem.
A recurrent theme of this short book is that our faith should generate actions that cohere with our Christian values and faith commitments. James teaches against being two-faced, inconsistent, fractured, and hypocritical. These teachings are prefaced with the charge to let challenges be faced with endurance, with the result “that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing,” (James 1:4, NASB, NKJV, RSV). Some English versions of James 1:4 translate “perfect and complete” as “complete and whole” (CJB), “fully mature, complete” (CEB), and “mature and complete” (NIV). The Greek word translated as “perfect” in some versions is teleois, related to the word telos, meaning (among other things) an aim or purpose. A perfect meal is one that was right for the occasion, lacking nothing, whole and complete. A perfect play in football or baseball is when all of the players involved do what they are supposed to, working together in harmony, so that they accomplish the task or purpose. We might say, then, that James is challenging us to be complete and whole in relation to our aim or purpose. Likewise, the idea of being integrated is that all of who I am is synthesized, whole, and united for a common purpose. The opposite of integration is dis-integration. Falling apart! The life to which Jesus calls us and directs us to pursue is one that is whole, complete, and integrated in following him.
Many scientific clues point to the importance of an integrated life, too. Those who study wellbeing in people note that those with strong meaning-making systems and a high-degree of coherence in their values, actions, and relationships tend to be happier and healthier, mentally and physically.
To unpack just one example of such research, in his book The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns (Guildford, 1999), psychological scientist Robert Emmons describes a series of studies of university students with different degrees of conflict or coherence among their day-to-day goals. Emmons calls these day-to-day goals “strivings,” what a person is typically trying to do. They are the objectives that people pursue on a daily basis such as trying to be a good friend, be professionally successful, or to conform to the likeness of Christ. Most people can generate about 10-15 strivings that ordinarily guide them. These strivings can then be scored for the degree to which they facilitate or conflict with each other as well as how meaningful they are. Those with matrices of strivings that are higher on meaning or that tend to support each other tend to show signs of poorer physical and psychological health. That is, a more highly integrated life is a better, happier, healthier life.
And so, at Blueprint 1543 we want to support sciency people in becoming integrated both for their own sake and for the sake of the world that they can positively impact. An integrated life is a good life, the life we were made for.
