catapult magazine

I just finished reading this article:

http://www.cultureisnotoptional.com/issues/article.cfm?issue=13&article=133

and enjoyed reading the answers to the questions. However, I’d like to comment on what many might see as a semantical nitpick, but I see as the deep-seated result of living in a “secular” society. In particular, my comments have to do with the questions “How do you apply your faith to your business practices?” and “What challenges do you face in applying your faith to your particular area of business?” that were asked in the article.

We apply things that are seperate. We apply makeup to our faces (well, I don’t, but some of you might). Children take the skills like team work and hardwork and stick-to-it-iveness that they learn in team sports and apply them to other non-sports parts of their lives.

The problem as I see it is that faith and business are not seperate things. Faith is not something that is seperate from business that needs to be applied to it. Your faith isn’t sacred and your job isn’t secular. There is no distinction.

So. That is my nitpick. Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed the article. As you read the article, though, might I suggest that you replace the questions that I quoted above with these: “How do you live your faith in your business practices?” and “What challenges do you face in living your faith in your particular area of business?”

Or maybe even “How are your business practices distinctively different from your non-Christian counterparts?” and “What challenges do you face in your particular area of business that non-Christians don’t face?”

I agree with your point ByTor, that it is semantically more accurate NOT to use “apply your faith,” but I think it’s syntactically easier more pleasing to write/hear. And it may be more “graspable” to more people, although perhaps not quite as correct. Just my thoughts.

thank you, ByTor, for such a thoughtful analysis of the language used in the article questions. i agree that the notion of “applying faith” is inadequate in the same way that talking about “integrating faith and learning” is inadequate. one of our respondents wrote with her answers, “I would rather say, ‘How do I apply business to my life of faith?’’” you are right.

but bridget is also right. it’s been a huge challenge for us as an organization to use language that is both accurate and accessible because we do not want to contribute to the dangerous rift between the “blue-collar” world and the “intellectual” world. such a rift allows for the unjust demonization of such good concepts as learning (on the one side) and simplicity (on the other).

i think the creation of new ways of speaking will be one of the by-products of what we’re trying to do with *cino. and those new ways of speaking will hopefully be rooted in a deep, yet basic understanding—both by the average joe and the doctor of philosophy—of our world, which was created by God, belongs to God, and is entirely transformed by God.

Another way of putting ByTor’s critique is that “applying faith” is a redundant redundancy. Faith is always already an application, perhaps the application of application itself (tee hee!)

The “applying faith” phrase must not be justified by the fact that it should be understandable to the common man or that it makes better syntactical sense (I realize that Kirstin and Bridget are not suggesting this per se, but for the sake of making sure we’re clear as to how we decide to use language on this site, I thought I’d add to the point they are both making). A phrase like “being faithful to God’s Word” or “living faithfully” ought to be used whenever possible. I’m trying to think if there are any such problematic phrases in our business plan or mission statements. I know we were very careful about that kind of thing, but if we missed some, we ought to replace them.

I also really appreciate ByTor’s nit-pickiness, which reminds us just how hard it is to say such dynamic words as Faith or God, Being or culture without limiting the scope or breadth of these um………………things/non-things? objects of words?…whatchamacallits? hoo-dads. Yes, hoo-dads.