Show Notes
On this episode of Nuance, guest host Tanner Fox is joined by Dr. Kelly Kapic, author and professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College. Together they explore the themes of human limitations, the necessity of slowing down, and the balance between productivity and humanity. They discuss how society’s obsession with efficiency can lead to dehumanization along with the importance of recognizing our creatureliness as a gift from God. Dr. Kapic advocates for setting boundaries in work culture to honor humanity and promote well-being, while also highlighting the value of proximity in fostering genuine community connections.
Episode Resources:
You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1587437031/
You Were Never Meant to Do It All: A 40-Day Devotional on the Goodness of Being Human (Embrace Your Limits and Live Authentically): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1540968987/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://wecolabor.com/
Get to know Case: https://wecolabor.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Tanner Fox
My friend and author Kelly Kapic writes, “No level of time management can put more hours into the day. Our bodies, our minds, and our relationships reflect our created limits. Keep in mind that finite here does not necessarily imply sin and death. Even before sin or the fall, Adam and Eve were limited, since simply being creatures implies limitation. In fact, being finite is part of our good. It is how God made us. Because of the fall, we all live with a disordered view of our healthy limits. Therefore, we need to appreciate anew the goodness of being creatures, which includes our physical, mental, and emotional limits. Instead of feeling like we need to ask God’s forgiveness for not being able to do everything, we may need to ask His forgiveness forever imagining we could.” Kelly, welcome. This is a faith and work in a public square podcast. You might have to defend yourself a little bit against some ideas of slowing down and efficiency, but I’m really looking forward to talking to you today.
Kelly Kapic
Thanks so much for having me. It’s really a delight to be with you.
Tanner Fox
To our friends and viewers, welcome to Nuance where we seek to be faithful in the public square. I’m Tanner Fox, a friend of the Collaborative, and I’m filling in as a guest host today so that I can bring you insights and wisdom from my friend Kelly Kapic. If you are on or new to this channel, we’d love for you to like and subscribe and even share the things that we’ve got going on here at Nuance to continue to promote flourishing goodness in the public square. Kelly and I have lots of crossover in life, whether it’s institutions of education or various friends and Facebook friends alike. But sadly, we have never sat face to face in a room. This is about as close as we’ve gotten. I booked a whole men’s retreat and I thought you were going to join me and be my speaker and it was all about these topics of human limitation and things and then the hurricane canceled that but here we are almost two years later and getting to have what I’m thinking is going to be a really fruitful conversation, so again, so glad to have you on the show today.
Kelly Kapic
Thank you. I’m looking forward to this conversation. And I love the space of faith and work. It’s one that’s been important to me in different cities, in different areas. I think thinking about vocation well is really important. How do we value work, but not make our labor everything is just a key space that’s hard for us to navigate.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, and we’ll talk about that more later. In particular, I’m going to be very curious about how you engage that with students as you kind of train the next phase of a workforce for our country. And so I’m really looking forward to hearing more about that. But before we get into that, allow me a proper introduction of you, Dr. Kelly Kapic. Kelly is a professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he’s taught since 2001. He holds a PhD from King’s College, University of London and is the author or editor of over 15 books. That is so many, by the way. Wow. And one of his most timely and tender works, and the one we’ll discuss today, is You’re Only Human, a book that invites us to embrace our creatureliness, not as a problem to fix, but as a part of a good design, a generous God. That book has received several awards, including Christianity Today’s Book of the Year in Theology. And he’s also written on a number of other topics, including grief and suffering, and has a new book coming out this month, I believe, or very soon, which is kind of a devotional version of that same book, You’re Only Human, You’re Never Meant to Do It All. And so I’m really looking forward to talking with you about all these things today. Kelly, did I miss anything? I did miss something. Your wife Tabitha and you live in Georgia, with two adult children. I think one of them is getting married soon, which is so fun. Awesome. Anything else that I’m missing?
Kelly Kapic
Yeah, coming down your direction to Orlando.
Tanner Fox
That’s great. Well, let’s get right into it then. The first question I have for you is why did you think this kind of book was necessary? What made you think to write it? What made you think it would sell, honestly, in a world that is so driven by fast pace and constant movement, productivity, proficiency, efficiency, all those things? What was the stirring in you that brought you to write about this?
Kelly Kapic
Yeah, mostly I just met a bunch of really tired people. No, actually the main thing is myself. Like I’m exhausted. I’m over, you know, unrealistic expectations. I just would so often navigate my days feeling like the way I would judge whether it was a good or bad day was, and I didn’t even really realize it at moments. I think I knew, but it all came down to, was it a good day? Well, did I get enough done? Was it a bad day? Was it unproductive? And, I’ve been wrestling with some of these questions for literally a couple of decades. And so it was me working through it and kind of coming to my end in my own ways and trying to think through it theologically though. One of the things that I’m greatly concerned about is the world, but also the church. People feel this, they feel how exhausted they are, but the answers I found in the church were no different than the world. Basically what we tell people is, you know what you need, you need better time management. And so I really have come to the belief that we don’t really have a time management problem. We don’t have a functional problem. We have a theological problem. So I really wanted to go back and revisit like, wait, have we understood God rightly? Have we understood what it means to be human rightly and getting these fundamental things wrong, which could sound abstract, have profound implications for our lives, for how we raise our kids, how we interact with our jobs, like super practical. So I do think it’s a great example of how important careful theology really can be for our everyday life.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, you’re not the only one writing about these sorts of things right now, whether it’s in spaces around AI or other technologies and things. So could you maybe lay out a couple principles that have stood out as the most significant and profound, the ones that we’ve gotten so severely wrong? Cause I know you reference a lot of, you know, let’s look pre-fall, let’s look at what humans were doing and what they looked like then. So are there a couple that kind of float to the top for you as things that we really need to key back in on to get right?
Kelly Kapic
Yeah, I mean, a couple that I would start with right away for me, kind of the most revolutionary, they kind of guide the other ones, is the idea that finitude is not sin. Finitude is not sin. Now that’s not a word a lot of people use these days. So it’s worth unpacking it very briefly, but finitude is a fancy word, finite finitude, a fancy word for limits, right? Limited in space, time, knowledge, power. Like you have a body, you have a brain, you can only know so much. You don’t have endless energy. So that’s what historically we’ve called finitude. The Christian word for that is just creature. So we are creatures and to be creatures is to have limits. And so one of my concerns is that in the church, not just in my tradition, although I see it a lot in my tradition, but in the church, even more generally, especially in a place like America, I think we’ve confused finitude in sin. So we feel guilty about not being able to do everything, be everywhere, know everything. And it’s not like, I think we say like, I don’t think we’re apologizing to God or asking for his forgiveness for those things all the time, but in our souls, there is just kind of abiding guilt and shame. And so, yeah, I think it’s really interesting to even explore like, what does God expect of you in a day, in a week, in a month, in a lifetime? And this whole idea of like, don’t waste your life. We’ve so shaped all of these things in almost purely economic categories, we don’t even know it. So the idea of wasting your life is actually understood in just these particular kind of categories, which should take me to maybe the second big principle is really efficiency and productivity can be good, but they’re not God’s highest values. And if you’re like me listening to this, I am someone who loves productivity. I love efficiency, but it can be very dehumanizing. And one of the things you discover when you actually slow down and think about it is as valuable as efficiency and productivity can be. Efficiency is often at odds with love, right? When you actually have a baby, it’s always shocking to people for their first kid. They’re like, this is so inefficient. They don’t use that language, but like all these things that they were able to do before and be to church on time or, whatever, get their job done in a certain amount, be able to sleep uninterrupted. Like this child now complicates your life. It’s not a fit, but it’s actually love. It’s quite beautiful. So love is often at odds, not always, but often at odds with efficiency and productivity. So it’s not that efficiency and productivity are all bad. The problem comes when they become our highest value. So those would just be a couple to start with. Finitude’s not sin. In my house, that’s now become a slogan for us. We say it to each other. They say it to me all the time, but finitude’s not sin and efficiency and productivity are not God’s highest values, love is. And I think just those two simple ideas can actually point us in some helpful directions.
Tanner Fox
Wow, yeah, I read the first quote that I started this whole thing with was in that space. And the other one that I had pulled that I was thinking about was that idea around efficiency and what love requires, what humans require in terms to have the experience of fullness. So I think I really appreciate those things. And then you said something that I want to come back to maybe a little bit. I think you said it tries to push things into the box and try to kind of make them about economics or productivity or the output. And so what happens to a human in your perspective when we are kind of the sum total of us is actually just our output.
Kelly Kapic
Yeah, I think it’s interesting that for the longest time we thought it’d be really cool. We’ve done movies and written books and thought about this. We thought it’d be really cool to make robots like machines. And the irony is what’s happened is we’ve really made humans like machines, right? In other words, rather than trying to make the machines like us, we’ve actually become machines. so, you know, you take, to be overly simplistic, but you take 200 years ago, 300 years ago, certainly a thousand years ago, the average person’s life is so animated, just their imagination is shaped by a very organic world where there’s horses, there’s animals, like it’s just how it works. And you know, it’s always funny. You can tell people who work with horses and people who don’t when they watch a Western because in a Western, someone who works with horses and watches it and will watch like endless day scenes of endless days where this guy keeps riding the horse. They’re like, that’s stupid. The horses can run for a while. Then they actually, you got to get off them. You got to walk them for a long time. You got to let them drink. Like it’s actually, you can only go for so long. So if your imagination has been shaped by that kind of world, you think, but if, if our imaginations are shaped by a phone that we get, we’re so happy about when we first buy it, but within two years like this, piece of junk, right? I need to charge it constantly and it doesn’t even get to full capacity after 20 minutes. Now it takes 45 minutes, right? So now our imagination is we talk about things like power naps. I’m not against short naps. I think they can be helpful, but it becomes all of this mechanistic kind of imagery that’s shaping us. And so we really do think you should be able to optimize and maximize your life in ways that are often quite dehumanizing. And that’s because the machine, I’m not a Luddite, I’m not against technology and advances, but, what’s shaping our imaginations, right? So yeah, this is a massive thing in an upcoming Christianity Today issue this summer. And they asked me to write something on efficiency because in light of the AI world and optimization, what does that look like? And I think it’s really important for Christians not to be against all of it, but to realize, we’ve got to make sure our values are not totally skewed here. What does it look like to walk at a human pace, to think within human limits and all of that? And when we don’t, we dehumanize one another and we can feel it in our souls. The loneliness epidemic is growing and is great evidence of this.
Tanner Fox
Indeed. Yeah, I think that’s extremely helpful. And so I want to kind of move us from the general ideas into a more specific opportunity for application with the audience that we have, which is a group of people for the most part, who are accountable to results and productivity in the various spaces where they work and the people that they manage and all of those things. So as you have these ideas of not being sin and efficiency, not God’s highest value or necessarily the highest good. How would you talk to business leaders in the workplace who are trying to do what they can to produce things and create things for a flourishing community, but also balance that with the fact that they are employing human beings who have God-given and good limits and all of those things. How do you tether those two seemingly paradoxical things together?
Kelly Kapic
Great question. And, you know, as you guess, there’s no simple answer. And, you know, obviously I’m on tender soil here in this conversation, but I do think what’s interesting is to be able to even answer the question, we have to ask, what is the good? What is the good life? What does faithfulness look like? And, if another sign of the challenge is when everything is reduced to a number, you can move widgets for a while, but we just have so much evidence that it doesn’t work over long periods of time. So if you can imagine your task, whatever field you’re in, in terms of human flourishing and the good, it does allow you to think on different levels and different horizons. It’s kind of like, you know, just as an analogy, I don’t want to start controversy here. Some of your listeners will know, well, this isn’t the controversy you might imagine, but the Dallas Mavericks made a ludicrous trade of one of the greatest players ever, right? Yeah, the Luka trade, right? You didn’t think that would come up in the podcast, but here’s one of the challenges. The general manager has like a two to three year window on his contract. And he imagined, even if we think he’s crazy, he was gonna make these moves and he made some other moves all because if he could win now, it doesn’t matter what happens after he’s gone. And so you find this all the time when who is the goal? Who are you seeking to achieve? Is it the quarterly returns? This year end returns? Is there anyone who cares? Is this business still gonna be going five years from now, 10 years from now? And so I even, just using business language to think about it, you then have to have a mixture of legitimate goals to navigate that. And a simple way of thinking about it is how do you honor people’s humanity without dehumanizing them? There’s all kinds of evidence to say, people can work tons of hours and their productivity decreases over time. I’m super hesitant to even mention that on this podcast because you find non-Christian institutions doing this all the time where they’ll say, I don’t want the tail to wag the dog. I do think the fact is people will work longer. They’ll quote unquote, be on the clock longer. They may not get a whole lot more done than they would have if they worked two hours less and knew that was the time they had to work in, but we just spread it out. You know, I’ve had a manager who reading the book who is like, this is so helpful. I just wish we, you know, he’s so exhausted. He goes to work at 7:30, doesn’t leave the office till like 6:30. And he’s like, Friday night in my field, no one’s there. We’re in sales. And I’m like, well, you’re the manager of this. Why? And no, and this was relevant. I’m like, what? And he said, well, the people above me, if they called the office and no one was there at five, I might lose my job. I’m like, does anything happen if I know, but…and so nothing changes. So like everyone thinks the person above them is responsible. So I do think to imagine what is a more humane way to live. I had a friend who works in Britain in business, and it was very interesting. Their management, actually the way they started to judge managers, one of the criteria is they would ask, did all the people who report to you take their full vacation days for the year? Isn’t that different? Like I can’t imagine someone in America actually asking, did your employees maximize their vacation? Cause if they didn’t, you’re held responsible. And I think, so that’s a simple, and that wasn’t a Christian organization, but it is some, it’s an organization realizing we’ve got to reimagine what’s going on here for this organization over the long haul to flourish.
Tanner Fox
Wow. Yeah. And do you think people are not willing to imagine it because they’re, what they think generally of human beings is that if you give them an inch, they’ll try to take a mile in terms of the space that they’re asking or inviting their people to take some rest or slow down or is the common understanding of humanity that we’re just lazy and that’s why we have to have people pushing and pushing and pushing to make sure we get stuff done.
Kelly Kapic
Yeah. It’s a great question. My short answer is I don’t really think there is one answer. And one of the challenges is when we’re in, if when you’re in leadership, we tend to project and imagine everyone’s like us. So, there are many of us who are prone to sloth and there are many of us who are prone to overwork. What I’ve discovered actually though is I’m pretty sure very often these are two sides of the same coin. So you all have people who, if you ask, I don’t know if you’re gonna ask if, but just listeners, think about the last time you binge watched something, Netflix or whatever, right? And you end up spending all this time, and at the end of it, when you’re finally done, how do you feel? We tend to feel terrible, and it’s also guilt and shame, like, I quote unquote wasted all this time. It is often actually very productive people who do that kind of thing because they’ve been going so hard that the only way they’re ever going to quote unquote, try and relax is to distract themselves. Cause as soon as the distraction stops, all the to-do list, all the things to do come rushing back. So, you know, I’ve had an author who, you know, if I mentioned his name, many of you, many listeners would know who it is. And he’s like, I really struggle with sloth and I’m thinking, there’s no way you’re so productive. And and he basically was like, that’s the thing either I am going a hundred miles an hour or I do nothing. And so I don’t think there are always two different people, but I do think when you start having a community, not just individuals, try and figure out what a humane existence looks like, it allows you to resist both temptations. And you need a community to help, because sometimes we need to do more, not less. Just depends.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, it makes me think a lot of Andy Crouch’s work when he tries to hold two, you know, seemingly distant ideas closer together with a vision of healthy work and healthy rest. That shouldn’t seem so hard, but it is. I’ve seen plenty of Instagram things and stuff that, you know, secular folks are coming out and they’ll be like, it’s crazy. One full day of rest a week actually makes you more productive. And we’re like, that’s wild. That sounds Sabbath-like, that’s so astonishing. But that it’s knit into the fabric of creation and in our creatureliness, I think is a, you know, I think you would probably say, I’m not trying to tell y’all anything new with this book that I’m writing here. I’m trying to remind you of all the real gifts that God gives us as creatures.
Kelly Kapic
Yeah. Some people have asked like, do you think this book, you know, different things like, why has this book done so well right now or whatever? Like, I think if I wrote this book in the middle ages, no one would buy a copy. Like, don’t care. Right? There’s no, it is a peculiar thing. Like there is a peculiar challenge in our time and we are so soaked in ways we don’t even realize of a vision of what we think the good life is. Even though in our bodies and our relationships and all these things are telling us in all kinds of ways, this is not working. And so I do think there’s some particular challenges to try and think through. What does it look like to reshape our imaginations? You know, even when you’re talking about a day of rest, I teach at this Christian college. It’s very academically rigorous, but it’s great Christian college called Covenant College. Look at Mount Georgia and you know, we’ll have students who, they don’t totally think through this, if you kind of ask them a little bit, they would feel guilty if they don’t study on Sunday. And I’m not interested in a legalistic view of Sabbath or anything like that. Don’t have listeners freak out. But at the same time, I do think there’s a one in seven pattern. And you’re kind of like, even though they would never say they’re letting God or probably their parents down by not studying all the time, it gets woven into this theology about how we view God. So what has actually happened to these young people that they’ve been catechized, that they’ve been shaped in their imaginations, that if they’re not studying on Sunday, they’re lazy and it’s a moral flaw because they learn that often within the church. And that should be concerning to us, right? This is a day, you know, again, just a one and so if I’ll say to people, what if there was a day where you could sleep and then gather together and worship God and feast with some people and enjoy God’s creation and rest? People are like, no, that’s too good. Right? And you’re like, what are we doing? Exactly. And often when people do this for awhile, they start to discover they’re able to work more faithfully. But again, I don’t want the tail wagging the dog, but what happens is we’re never off. Right? So we’re doing travel sports during the weekend. As most parents who were doing that and Sunday night, they are, I can’t believe they got to go to work the next day because they didn’t have any break.
Tanner Fox
I think that’s really helpful. I think what’s unique about what you’re talking about, from a secular perspective, even though I do think that world’s kind of coming alive again to whether it’s the mindfulness stuff or, you know, visions of, I remember being in Australia and I was bragging about having five weeks off every year and they were like, well, that’s like a minimum. Like, you should get way more than that. That’s crazy.
Kelly Kapic
Yeah. You graduate from college and you get five weeks off. Yep. Same with the UK. Yeah.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, but the Christian vision of it is, I think you’re kind of hinting at it. Maybe not, you can correct me, but it’s not, if business owners or secular business owners are doing this just to get more out of their people, then they’ve never changed the bottom line. They’ve just made a new way to get to it. And so I think there’s a vision in the Christian life and world that we have a God who never sleeps nor slumbers, so we can, right? And we have a God who invites us to, even if we can’t tend to our plants, let’s say we’re all farmers, that he is still in control of the rains and the sun and will continue to work even while we aren’t because we trust the everyday provisions to him. But to bring that truly into a life where we are so disconnected from even the rhythms of the seasons and those various things, there is no off season, but farmers had one. So what do we do about that?
Tanner Fox
How are you training, you just mentioned students, how are you trying to train students at Covenant in a different vision of the good life?
Kelly Kapic
Yeah, it’s great. And how am I wrestling with it myself? In many ways I was doing better and right now I’m in a harvest season, so it’s super busy. And I do think farmers, and I talk about that, I think farmers are a great analogy. There are times when it’s harvest time and you’ve got to work really, really long hours. That’s not a problem. The problem is when we make harvest time a way of life, then we’re hurting.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, all the time.
Kelly Kapic (26:22.252)
We do, I find it’s fascinating. These young people from different Christian traditions, many of them while here at covenant will start practicing a one in seven pattern and on Sunday not working. And I’ll tell you, they are now some of the most defensive people about it I’ve ever met. Because for them, it just finally, cause it’s not actually honestly like they tended to do a ton of work on Sunday. But all that happened is they were feeling guilty all day about not working. So when they know, no, I’m not. Today is a day of rest and delighting in God and his people and his creation and that kind of thing. Then all of sudden they enjoy the day. And they are now protective of it in beautiful ways and advocating for it. It’s kind of, I think young people will in many ways be the people who help the rest of us rethink this. It’s just like technology. Young people are being hurt the most by it in many ways, but also because they are so dealing with it. I do think they’re going to be the ones who are like, they’re, they’re going to be, can tell you already from what I see way more strict with their children than we were in terms of technology because they’ve lived it. And they’re like, this is crazy. What are we doing here? And I think similar. Yeah. They’re looking at parents and like the. Yes, you guys have money, but you guys don’t have friends.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, yeah, kind of the wounds of generations.
Kelly Kapic
You guys never do joyful things, you are always so stressed. I actually don’t want that life and it freaks parents out. But then in a different conversation, if you ask parents, how are you doing? How do you see your life? They’re just stressed all the time. Very anxious. They’re very, you know, and they wish they had time with their kids and they, you know, so at some point people start asking questions like, wait, is this a dream that we…is this the wrong dream?
Tanner Fox
That’s great. You mentioned yourself in a season of harvest and so a lot of work. I’m curious, what are some practical habits that have come out of your experience in writing all of this, but also putting it out into the world? I imagine there’s a little bit of an accountability and responsibility there to honor your limits more often when you’re the poster child for slowing down, but tell me about that.
Kelly Kapic
Yeah, I wish I got a dollar for every time someone says, Kelly, you’re only human. I’m like, yes, you’re absolutely right. I am only human. No, I think it’s really good. I do think that there’s something. I remember when I became a Christian in high school, it was a secular high school. And eventually one of the best things that happened to me is I just told people I was a Christian. And you tell people you’re a Christian, all of a sudden you start thinking about your behavior in different ways, right? And I do think there’s something to this. But for me, it’s been long enough where I can just feel it in my gut. Like, I don’t super care what everyone thinks. I don’t want to let people, but I also just, I’m talking about these things because I care about them and cause I wrestle with them. And so yeah, I can, I actually have learned to listen to my body. I know, I don’t mean it in any new age way, but like my body will tell me, yeah, you’re doing too much. And so to really listen to that and even simple things like breathing, trying to reconnect with creation in those ways. But it’s all in light of a particular kind of theology, a kind of the theology of the fear of the Lord. So where the fear of the Lord is not about being scared of God, it’s about recognizing God’s presence, is lifting the horizon from this world to him and recognizing you’re not abandoned and he’s with you. So all of that to say, there are certain practices that I found really important to keep me grounded and to help me resist. And the main thing is sometimes it is harvest. And then I, once I realized, okay, this harvest is going on for a while. Now we need to make some concrete changes again, because if I don’t, the stream is just going to go in a certain way and I’ve swept along with it. So I’m actually not on any social media. You mentioned Facebook earlier. I’m actually not on Facebook. I’m not on Twitter. I’m not on any of those things. And that is partly as a way to protect for these things.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, I have a curiosity there in terms of information. And so, you know, we’re creatures, we’re finite. We cannot take in everything, nor can we respond to everything. Do you have any thoughts on what the onslaught of information and the ability that we have to kind of never be off to that as well? And what has that kind of done to the humans or to people you know?
Kelly Kapic
Man, not, not good stuff. I mean, again, it’s hard. Like news is important. The apostle Paul, an important part of Paul’s ministry is the, what we’d call the collection and he’s collecting resources for people who are far away. And so I don’t think biblically the idea that we don’t need to care about people far away from us is true. So I, what I’m about to say is not meant to undermine that, but I do think, and obviously lots of people have said this now. Our ability, and this started way back with newspapers, but our ability now to know about every earthquake that happens, to know about every gun shooting, every political crisis, it actually is overwhelming. I found even just recently with all the political turmoil going on, whatever you view of these things, I just, I realized I can’t read the news at night. Cause my heartbeat’s literally going up, right? Yeah. And how much power do I have on these things? So it’s not just, it’s not just, we only have so much strength. You actually only have so much emotional capacity as well. And so we need to know how to steward that. And a lot of emotion is being spent on things that you and I have no power in. And yet people in our neighborhoods and in our lives, we’re neglecting where we really could make a difference. So stewarding our emotions becomes important.
Tanner Fox
Yes, I have been thinking on this for a number of months now because of the ways we are engaging, engaging ourselves globally, at the very least with being willing to open our minds to information. I think there is a direct connection, correlation, maybe even causation to our lack of engagement proxymately in the places where God has called us to live, work and play. I, my hunch is what you’re saying is that we have spent so much emotional energy, we didn’t even know we were doing it. It’s just passive. Like it was just happening to us. That even thinking about walking across the street to engage a real conversation that our heart, mind, soul, body complex could actually be engaged for good there. It’s just, it’s not even thinkable. Like it’s outside of our plausibility structure somehow. And it just makes me sad. Like I think it’s pressing in on all these other areas too in terms of lack of community and lack of friendship. You know, what if…could proximity, well here’s a question for you, could proximity actually in engaging ourselves in local context, could that help us in this conversation around finitude when we think about businesses and friendships and churches and those sorts of things? What do you think about that?
Kelly Kapic
I think it’s huge. I think proximity matters. Although, and there’s some reason to believe that this has been spurred on by some social media and news things. What’s happened is you now are getting more and more people congregating who are more and more alike. Whereas historically, like in America, it’d be very common to, you know, a Republican as a neighbor to a Democrat, et cetera, et cetera. Someone goes to church, someone doesn’t go to church, that kind of thing.
One of the things that’s important about that kind of environment is that your world gets complex because you meet your neighbor and your neighbor, you may be on one political party and they’re on another and they’re like super nice and they actually value a lot of things you really value. And so, your life gets a little more complicated and you can’t just put them in a box, but when it’s just on a screen and the narratives around these other people are framed, you really get to simplify because our emotions can’t handle it all. Our brains can’t handle it all. So you dehumanize people and say, this group’s good. This group’s bad. I don’t have to think about the complexity. I don’t have to treat them as real humans. I know the Bible tells me to love my enemy, but forget that. That’s not efficient. That doesn’t work. So I do think this is really, really hard. It’s not knowing our neighbors, not actually just loving people who are different than us has…It is a dehumanizing kind of thing because human creatures as God made us are quite complex. And when you just talk about us in the abstract, then you can make us whatever you want.
Tanner Fox
Sure, or tweet about us, or have this article that sums up this type of person entirely. And then an algorithm that’ll feed you even more content in that same vein over and over over again. That’s really helpful. Well, Kelly, any other words of encouragement maybe to business owners or maybe a story or two of folks that you’ve engaged with that have started to open their minds to these concepts or started to try and move their
culture in business towards something that says, I’m going to honor the humans that I work with.
Kelly Kapic
Yeah, that’s a great question. And honestly, I’d even love, you know, if listeners end up reading the devotional You Were Never Meant to Do it All, or the book, You’re Only Human, and send me a note, because I get these kind of notes all the time, it’s really helpful. I do think whether you’re a business owner, it depends on your station, right? How much power and say you have in these things. But I do think, again, not letting the tail wag the dog. But I do think there are all kinds of reasons and there is growing data to suggest that re-imagining what faithful work looks like, not just in a day, but in a week, a month, a year, you can do things. And there’s more and more experiments with these where you might have less hours in an office or something with the goal of getting people to be able to be with their communities, their families and that kind of thing. And when you’re explicit about that, and that’s what it is, it’s amazing often how people will use their workplace then to actually get stuff done and not just to surf Amazon at their workplace. But if you know you gotta be there, right? It just, so I do think like, I think it’s fascinating. I’m old enough to remember when an employer said, we love you so much, we’re giving you a laptop. And it was like, yes, it’s so great. And then, some, well, yeah. And then you realize, you know, whether or not they pay for it or not, sometimes it’s like, hey, here’s a phone for you, right? And so there’s actually really like one piece of data that the business people should know that really surprised me in the research. If you ask most people today, do you think we work more now than employees did 50 years ago? I think all of us would say, most of us say yes, but actually the data suggests that’s not true. It’s not, and this is like, because if you move from people’s impression to actual data and this, the most careful way to keep this is what we call time logs. And we had those a long time ago. There’s no real evidence that we work more hours now than they did 50 years ago. Now that’s talking about people who are employed. I mean, I know more women are in the workforce and they were anyways, let me get to the point for this. So what’s interesting is like, why do we feel like we work so much more? Well, it’s cause we’ve been given a laptop and a phone. And so you can be standing, watching your kid play soccer and all sudden your phone buzzes and you pull it out of your pocket and you look at it and it’s a work text. And maybe you put it back in your pocket 30 seconds later. And you think that’s only two minutes, but actually what’s happened is you’re never done. And because you’re never done, even though you’re not working more hours, you never really rest. You never enter into the places where you’re at. So I would encourage, especially people who are bosses and those kinds of things, how do you actually be protective of your employees? Because when you start to protect them, they then will be about the good of this institution. When they don’t feel like you’re just trying to suck them dry, but you honor their humanity, their relationships, I really do think there’s lots of evidence to say in the end over time, you really end up in a beautiful place.
Tanner Fox
And I think you mentioned earlier, a part of the way you do that is as managers, you always think the people are, you know, function more like you maybe than you realize you’re saying. But a part of that, I would assume then is setting the tone and to be, to begin by honoring your own boundaries, honoring your own limits, trying to, I heard a story the other day, of again, I’m a big Andy Crouch fan. And so I was either on a podcast or maybe it was one of the books, but he wrote, but, the idea was he takes a sabbatical every seven years for six to nine months, I believe. And part of the reasoning around it is because he says, I’m much more valuable to a place that I’m working in when I’m not trying to build it so that it’s dependent upon me. And so I think in some ways he’s honoring his own creatureliness and limits by trying to give what he can in those spaces and not what he can’t, which would be like himself in perpetuity, but also he’s creating for the good of the space because of the way that he’s put limits around himself. I’m only gonna be here six years and so I can get a lot done but not all that. I’m just curious, yeah, in that space, encouraging business owners and managers and things to set the tone for themselves too, to say, I’m not going to respond to emails at 8 p.m. I’m just not going to do it. I’ll wait till the morning. We’ve even hacked that, right? You can set an email to send at 8 a.m. the next day and make it look like you have boundaries.
Kelly Kapic
Yeah. And again, I’m not interested in being legalistic about it. It may be that someone really does work well, 7:30 at night to 10 or something. I mean, I don’t know. People have different body chemistry and rhythms and families and relationships. So I’m not interested in flattening things out. I am just interested in trying to figure out how to be humane. And the test of that is: Do you find yourself loving God, loving neighbor and rightly relating to creation? And when our work is working well, we actually are growing in all three of those. And when we’re undermining human flourishing, it’s undermining all three of those. And so that’s, I mean, the last thing I would probably say just is to be super practical. You don’t need to be a manager for this. I’ve come and written some about this in those volumes, but I’ve come to see sleep as a spiritual discipline because every night we are saying, we’re not in control and I trust you God and there is more work to be done, but this is the day that you gave and I’m done. When we’re not sleeping because we’re working so late and all that, that is probably a sign that something’s off, it’s not sustainable and you’re not a bad person, you’re not letting God down. You were never made to work 24/7. So now it’s time to rethink things and to reimagine. I finally had one word for you and listeners. I would say imagination. You know, this isn’t about legalism. What use your imaginations and especially use it with your family or friends. Cause I don’t think we’re great on our own. What does the good and faithful life look like? And then start to imagine it and make small changes.
Tanner Fox
That’s so beautiful. I think the efficiency stuff can be handled individually, but the stuff that you talked about in terms of love and an ethos of community and culture, I think has to be decided on, settled, and committed to in a community. So I think that’s a beautiful word to invite us into a fruitful and beautiful imagination for these workspaces. So Kelly, thank you so much for your time. It’s great to see your face.
Kelly Kapic
It’s good to see you my friend. Thanks for doing this.
Tanner Fox
Kelly has a new book out now: You Were Never Meant to Do It All: A 40 Day Devotional in the Goodness of Being Human. And then his other book that kind of spurred this one on is called You’re Only Human. And so we would invite you to pick up both of those. They’re both really helpful works. So listeners, thank you so much for joining us. Again, please like and share all that you do in that space really helps us continue to spread the good work of Nuance and the collaborative. Leave a review on this wherever you get your podcasts. Interact with Kelly and tell him how great his work is or how challenging it is to you or convicting, whatever you want to tell him. All that stuff is good. And you can always visit us at www.wecolabor.com for all sorts of content. We have a free 31-day devotional and a prompt journal that you can get your hands on as well. We’re across all social media platforms. Kelly is not, but we are. You can find us in all of those places. And finally, thanks so much to our sponsors, Michael and Shandy Kelly. And again, I’m Tanner Fox, and let me speak a word of blessing over you as you go. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he make his face to shine upon you. May he be gracious to you in every way and give you peace. Thanks so much for joining us.
