In the beginning, it’s always the same. Most of the work I do as a marketing strategist and advisor starts with me helping the client define “success.”

The process goes like this. I ask them what they’d love to see at a specific point in the future for their business. We group our discussion around three buckets: 1) external (leads, conversions, offers, etc.), 2) internal (staff, systems, space), and 3) revenue.

This worked wonders for two reasons. First, I guide them toward specific measurables for every item they’d love to see across all three categories. The result is, “By [this calendar date] you’d ideally love to see [this specific measurable] attained.” Second, putting all three next to each other enables the business owner and key stakeholders to spot gaps.

This is where the classic, ‘Wait a minute…’ aha’s hit. “We need to bump that revenue up if we want to add 3 project managers,” for example.

I kept this approach for a while, but then I added a significant wrinkle. The wrinkle is the result of my unique experiences as a longtime pastor. “You can tell the man he no longer holds the title of ‘pastor’ (because of budget cuts), but you can’t take the pastor out of the man.” So the saying goes.

The significant ‘pastoral’ wrinkle?

I added a fourth category centered around the question, “What do you want your life to look like?”

And that’s when the predictable pattern emerged. It’s always the same. Just swap out the client.

The pattern looks like this:

The client defines “success” in the external marketing bucket, and it’s more. The internal bucket, that’s more, too—more or different staff, space, systems, etc. The revenue bucket, cha-ching. Definitely more.

But, the newly added Life category, always less. ALWAYS.

To break it down, they want more, plus more, plus more, to equal less. The math looks like this: more + more + more = less.

To be fair, I’m no different when the tables are turned. Whether in a mastermind or over coffee with a colleague, when asked, that’s what I want too.

We Were Built for More. So Why Does More Feel Like a Trap?

Where does this peculiar human predicament come from? Wanting more to bring less.

Here are two observations from my current meditations coming from the foundational stories of the Genesis scroll.

We Are Designed Desire Factories

In Genesis 2, the first human is made in the dirt of the wilderness, endowed with Yahweh’s life-giving breath, and placed in a garden at the center of a place called Delight (Eden). Interestingly, the human is fashioned with needs from the get-go.

First, the garden has built-in beauty meant to map onto the human’s designed desire for beauty.

*Gen 2.9a Out of the ground the LORD God caused every tree to grow that is pleasing (חָמַד [cha.mad], to desire) to the sight and good for food; *

Second, the human is designed to desire and need food to sustain life. In a regular rhythm, the human has a non-negotiable desire for a delicious sustenance outside of himself/herself.

Third, the human is designed to desire and thrive in relationship. It’s Yahweh who notices the lone human in the garden of delight is ‘not good‘ (טוֹב [tov]). The lone human, in fact, cannot fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1 to be ‘fruitful, multiply, fill, and subdue.’

Yahweh makes the one become two, so the two can become one.

You Have Endless Desires

Pause and think about your own desires. If we sat down together over coffee, and I asked, “What do you want?” you could go for hours, days, weeks…a lifetime.

So desires are not only ‘ok,’ they’re good.

But those desires were meant to be managed together in unity and integrity according to Yahweh’s life-giving wisdom of good (tov) and bad (ra’). When the humans attempt to manage their desires according to their own wisdom, informed by the snake, they are choosing a future of death.

From Gardeners to Shepherds: The Death of ‘Work-Life Balance’

The first humans had work to do, namely, to extend the garden everywhere. They were to subdue the land by harnessing the baked-in potential. But the consequence for violating the life-giving divine command was exile into the wilderness environment.

Gardens are associated with permanence. Gardens don’t travel. Exiles do.

As the story continues outside the garden, shepherds replace gardeners as the primary occupation. Cain is a gardener. Abel is a shepherd. Abel, the chosen, innocent one, is murdered. As a result, repeating the pattern of his parents, Cain, the gardener, forfeited his calling.

Genesis 4.11–12 Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a wanderer and a drifter on the land.”

For the exiled humans, the land would now work against them. The land could still produce, but it would be far more difficult.

More poignantly, the land will make you its slave and work you to death.

The Death of ‘Work-Life Balance’

This is life outside the garden. There are moments where work feels like play. Where work produces an abundance of output far beyond the input we give it. But those are rare exemptions, a break in the norm. Our typical experience is reflected in our popular statements associated with “work.”

Grinding. Working around the clock. Working our fingers to the bone. She’s gonna work herself to death.

Those phrases come from the lips of exiles.

This is why the pattern I mentioned at the top will continue with the next client, and the next. We’re built for an abundance that exceeds our desires. We’re designed for a future we cannot manufacture.

Our desire for more + more + more to equal less—less striving, stress, and slaving away—is like a hunger pain.

Our work ‘working us over’ is the sign that we’re outside of Eden.

Here’s how the worst music class I ever took sent me in search of the harmony I’d been missing.

I walked into a surprisingly crowded class the first week of my freshman year at college. I found a seat near the back right corner as the murmur of my fellow classmates hummed throughout the room.

This was not ‘Freshman Biology’ or ‘English Comp I,’ where a large crowd is to be expected. No, this was Music Theory I. Turns out, every freshman music major had to survive the crucible of music theory. Vocal majors. Piano majors. Church music majors. Music performance majors. And the majority, music education majors. Whether you played the organ or the oboe, sang opera or played in the orchestra, all roads lead through music theory.

Music theory was the only class in my four five years of college that met every day, Monday–Friday. It was also the only class every music major had to take day one, because there were five semesters required—Music Theory I, II, III, IV, V. (Two-and-a-half years if you’re doing the math.)

Music theory is the dream crusher for countless aspiring music majors. It’s the pressure point of the hull that takes the ship under. In that first semester, students began to leak out the door as the weeks progressed. By the spring semester, the class was literally half the size, as many dejected music majors headed to the business school. (A much more profitable choice in the long run, literally!)

The 12-Tone Technique (Bear With Me)

Grant me three minutes to present a snippet of deep music theory minutia. I promise to make this digression worth it for you on the other side.

If you survive the music theory gauntlet and arrive at semester V, you’re rewarded with the theory behind modern twentieth century music like Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra Op. 31. (Go look it up. I’ll wait.)

Play five seconds of that and you’ll swear a two-year-old dumped notes into a Vitamix blender, poured it out, and forced an orchestra to play it at gunpoint. It belongs on the loop track of a torture chamber, not a chamber music piece.

However, what’s going on beneath the dissonant chaos is straightforward math, math anyone could grasp.

The 12-tone technique:

• The composer orders all 12 chromatic pitches (all the white and black keys on a piano in one octave)

• This is called the “tone row”

• This row is used as the basis for the entire composition

• Each pitch must appear exactly once before any can repeat

Imagine a dense line of Python code not “set” to music, but “as” music. Or better yet, picture ‘musical sudoku.’ Here’s how it works.

The 12×12 matrix:

Take your random row of all 12 notes and plop them on a 4-row grid or matrix.

• Prime (P): original tone row

• Inversion (I): tone row flipped upside down

• Retrograde (R): tone row backwards

• Retrograde-Inversion (RI): tone row backwards + inverted/flipped

Interesting math. Atrocious music.

Paydirt

What in the world does music theory V and a-tonal music have to do with Jesus, the Bible, and its relationship to your business?

Where’s the payoff, because it feels like we’re miles away!

Let me bring some harmony by sharing a bit of my own journey with Jesus, the Bible, and business.

Jesus Is Pretty Cool, But…

My experience of Jesus is that he’s pretty cool. He does some amazing things, is a teacher par excellence, and is unparalleled in his hospitality towards the forgotten and disenfranchised. He holds grace and truth, love and justice, perfectly together. Have I mentioned the resurrection?

So there’s Jesus, easy to hang out with. Inviting. Fierce and friendly. Meek carpenter meets world-changer. He’s the central figure of the New Testament. Growing up in the church, Jesus and the New Testament are the focus of 95% or more of sermons, teachings, Bible study groups, and most church activities.

Experientially, it’s akin to a contemporary country radio station. Listen for a week and you’ll start to hear the same 20 songs ad nauseam (without the nauseam, of course)!

But you keep listening, because you love those 20 songs. You dig contemporary country. You relate.

Jesus’ Music Is A-tonal (Uh Oh!)

The more I followed Jesus, the more something began to bother me. His playlist.

At some point, this one reality began staring me in the face. It became as piercingly uncomfortable as 12-tone music.

Jesus’ music, the music that shaped who he is, the music that inspired and informed THE most essential person in my life…I do NOT have the same experience with his music.

It’s what you and I typically call ‘the Old Testament.’ This was Jesus’ playlist!

Let me cut to the chase of my dilemma.

My love for and experience of Jesus does NOT mirror my love for and experience of the PRIMARY thing that shaped and molded my hero, namely the Old Testament!!!

Jesus is pretty cool. My experience of Jesus’ Bible is NOT.

Be honest. The Old Testament feels weird to put it politely. You get angry-God vibes. You read weirder dietary laws than a Hollywood celeb diet on the cover of People magazine. Names you can’t pronounce. Places you’ve never heard of.

Even stories where you can make sense of the basic details, like Abraham and some locals arguing over who owns a well 4,000 years ago somewhere in the Middle East—these seem so irrelevant to a world with TikTok, Prime Day, and Dancing With The Stars!

Yes, there are some inspiring moments and campfire classics. David and Goliath comes to mind. But those are outliers. You’re far more likely to flip open to sections that are strange, offensive, impossible to relate to, wildly confusing, or put you to sleep faster than a bubble bath chased with three Ambien. (I’m looking at you, genealogies.)

For me, this became incongruent. Increasingly dissonant. An oncoming collision that demands a move.

How can I say I love Schoenberg but hate 12-tone music? How can I orient my entire life, family, and business around Jesus but can’t make heads or tails of THE thing he oriented his life around!?

This cacophony finally brought me to a point of decision. Much like a freshman music major failing music theory and staring at the prospect of four more semesters, I either go all-in and wrestle with how to harmonize my hero Jesus and his Bible, OR it’s time to cut bait and head to the business school.

What happened next? We’ll pick up the story there next time.

Spoiler Alert

You don’t have to be relegated to the school of business. The Old Testament doesn’t have to sound like 12-tone atonal music from the early 20th century. The Hebrew Scriptures need not be a spoonful of green peas you’re forced to eat before you can enjoy the dessert of the New Testament.

It can richly transform your life and business without us having to treat it like a collection of trite modern truisms or ripping it from its ancient context.

There is a way to see the beauty of Jesus in harmony with the beauty of the Hebrew Scriptures. They are not dissonant. In fact, they are all notes in a single melody, one I’ve come to call The Messiah’s Melody.

Engage

Use these questions to reflect, engage, and grow:

• In what ways do you relate to the dissonance described above?

• What differences have you noticed in your own experience, familiarity, or comfort between the Jesus and disciples you meet in the New Testament and the winding, less traveled road of the Old Testament?

• If you had to put a percentage on your exposure to Jesus/NT and the whole of the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures, what would it be?

• How have you handled any disparity between the two in your own journey?

Keep building a life-giving brand.

P.S. This is part of a new series I’m calling Biblepreneur, where I explore how Scripture shapes life and business. If you’re intrigued, consider subscribing to this section—no pressure, just invitation.

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