It is something we all spend almost all our days doing. When pastors, teachers or friends issue the challenge to avoid living like a “Sunday only Christian — any answer should include it. And it’s something the whole Bible often addresses.

But it’s something that many Christian books, teachers, leaders and sermons don’t often touch.

I think that [a] great heresy of the Christian faith in the 21st century is that here, people spend their time and life at work … [and] it’s a whole area of life that we have not addressed in theological seminaries, in churches. I think people don’t think about it because they’ve never been challenged to do it. And yet as you go through the Bible you find that the Bible has a lot to say about work. But we somehow just go right over it.

That’s according to Dr. Haddon Robinson, theologian, preacher and teacher, and cohost of RBC Ministries’ “Discover the Word” daily radio broadcast.

Don’t let the program’s 15-minute length (or RBC’s famousness for the pithy devotionalette Our Daily Bread!) fool you. Well, it fooled me at least. Somehow I thought this program might not have a lot of doctrinal depth. Last year, when they spent months going over commonly misread and misunderstood Bible verses, I found I was so wrong.[And in fact, their grace-based and truth-imbued exploration of such verses formed an idea that would later become this site.]

Discover the Word began its series on Godly vocation in early January. Their first week, they began discussing the practical side of what people who’ve lost their jobs go through, how they recover and how others can help. On Jan. 11, they began focusing on Biblical doctrine of work.

Here most doctrine issues, Robinson noted, are from a lack of Christian teaching on the subject. Thus wrong ideas — including false divisions of “secular” and “sacred” — can infest our minds.

And if Christians do talk about our daily work, Robinson continued, it’s often limited to certain contexts. For example, if a theme is following God’s will in normal ways, we might mention the need to avoid stealing from the workplace. Much more common is the encouragement for people to witness and share the Gospel with others, including at work, he said. But in addition to those truths, do Christians spend equal time talking about God’s approval of work itself?

The following day they played a clip of a simulated sermon. It’s something that Christians might hear at a church whose pastor may not intend to further false ideas, but falls into this practice anyway because of ignorance or a perception of the false sacred/secular dichotomy.

“God wants you to give yourself to Him. He wants you think seriously about how you spend your time and where you spend your money.

“As you know, we desperately need people to teach our junior-high boys. But many of you are too busy with your job, your work, that you don’t have time for God’s work. The roof of our church building is in need of repair, and many of you are busy making money. But you can’t find money to invest in the house of God.

“Now I’m not scolding you. But I’m just asking: are you so busy working and making money that you’ve pushed God and the church out of your lives?”

My initial reaction: maybe few people have heard someone say that so directly. But do we have such assumptions deep down in our minds? Do we hear Biblically based, Gospel-driven truth against these notions? If not, the lies may keep growing. And so will the false belief that what we’re doing in our workplaces, or our tasks at home, are less important than “official” ministry.

Cohost Alice Matthews wondered if such guilt trips are more common than we might think.

It completely ignores everything that goes into the work week of the person in the pew. This person who is having to make money in order to pay the rent, or pay the mortgage, buy groceries for the family — the whole life of that person, Monday through Saturday, is being put aside in favor of only dealing with what is going on in the church.

And that, Robinson added, does nothing to aid the “don’t just be a Sunday Christian” truth.

That’s one of the [problems]. The other [problem] is: “the real work that you do for God is what you do on Sunday at the church. And what you’re doing out there in the workplace is somewhat questionable.” … I’ve had businesspeople say that when their work is addressed [at church], it’s always addressed in a way to make them feel guilty. Now you’re out there making money, and that’s somehow a terrible thing to be doing.

“Necessary, but terrible,” Matthews quipped. And she and cohost Mart De Haan went on to acknowledge the truth that the Bible does views some things as “set apart” for God. That includes Old Testament prophets’ references to the Jews building their own houses instead of working on the Temple, and Jesus’ encouragement that we must lay up treasures in Heaven.

Yet we can also lay up treasures in Heaven, and glorify God well, even in “secular” jobs. And Christians should honor that truth as much as they honor more-direct Kingdom work.

That’s what I draw from Robinson’s finish to that broadcast.

You don’t hear it the other way. You don’t hear, “Some of you are spending too much time working with the junior boys. And you’re not out there in the workplace doing the kind of work you ought to be doing, that’s quality work.”

… Pastors and Christian leaders do preach this kind of thing: that the really important work in life has to do with what you do with the church. Obviously it’s another sermon to say — you got to have balance. But we don’t talk about the balance of doing good work in the workplace. … There are inadequate ways of bridging the gap between worship and work. And I think serious Christians need to think about that in an honest way.”