Dr. Ravi Zacharias is the founder and president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, an organization that exists "to reach and challenge those who shape the ideas of a culture with the credibility and the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ." He makes it his goal to reach people where they are—"in the university, the arts, politics, business, and the church."

We've long admired Ravi Zacharias and his audio show "Let My People Think" but recently he got our attention again with his books The Grand Weaver and The End of Reason. We were excited when he agreed to talk with TheHighCalling.org about his views on leadership, mission, pleasure, spirituality, worship, and work.

« Read Part 1: Leadership Is More Than Vision

Help me understand your view on pleasure. In your book The Grand Weaver, you said, "Anything that refreshes you without distracting from or diminishing or destroying your final goal, is a legitimate pleasure." So what is an example of legitimate pleasure in work?

If my wife were here listening to this, she would start chuckling. In my memoirs book Walking from East to West, she said, "Ravi, every third page has an illustration of food in it. One of the things I've enjoyed doing during these 30 years of travel, Marcus, is having a lovely meal with people in their home or somewhere else. I also love the pleasure of long walks in the early morning and later in the evening. It's relaxing. It's refreshing for the body and the soul. Lewis talks about this in Screwtape Letters in a marvelous way. The pleasure of good music, good entertainment, an exciting sports game—our bodies are meant to be exercised and to be exhilarated in legitimate ways. I think pleasure comes in many different ways. Unfortunately in our world, pleasure has become synonymous with heathenism, and that is destructive. That's not what I'm talking about.

But do you take pleasure in your work itself?

I have to be honest, like many other good things, the pleasure comes after the fact, not before. You work hard, you prepare hard, you sense the anointing, you see the response, and then you're delighted.

You have said that one cannot mix the profane with the sacred. Often the choices we face in the workplace are not clearly profane or clearly sacred, so how do we learn the wisdom to distinguish?

It's a very, very good question. I really think God gives us some elbowroom; otherwise you would end up being judgmental and legalistic. Anything in my experience that brings in profanity or vulgarity or appeals to the sensual in me makes me feel very uncomfortable. There are people I know who watch a movie that might have language or something sensual that I would feel terribly uncomfortable with, but they are okay. I like to leave that between them and God. They have to know for sure in their hearts that this is not compromising of their conviction and their sacred walk with God.

There is no way that I can watch something debased and sensual in a scene without it scarring my memory and probably provoking the wrong kind of response. I think in the end it injures my whole imagination, but if somebody thinks they can handle that and deal with that, in a small degree, without injuring their soul, it's something they're accountable to God for. For me, no. I can't handle that and don't want to, don't wish to. Everybody has to draw the boundary lines somewhere, and I tell young men and women why I draw it where I do. For me to then cross those boundaries … Like Paul, I would say, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." If it's contrary to your conviction, you would be sinning against God.

When Michelangelo was starting to paint unclad people, his teacher said to him, "Why are you doing this?" He said, "I want to see man as God sees man," and the teacher said to him, "But you're not God." I think that's a very strong junction to remind us that the eye gate and the ear gate ultimately affect the imagination.

So, would you say that faith in the workplace is primarily an issue of ethics and morality around these kinds of choices?

I think ethics and morality are a symptom of it. The true matter is one of spirituality. I think there are things that injure the spirit and things that build up the spirit. That's why I don't think one chooses between the secular and the sacred. One chooses between the sacred and the profane. If a man is an engineer building bridges, he's as much involved in the sacred calling as I am in building a bridge to the person's mind for the Gospel's sake. The engineer who lives for Christ is as much salt and light where he or she is, therefore I think the calling cannot be profane. The workplace, ethics, and morality play a vital role, but as I say in the book, The Grand Weaver, immorality matters only because it is symptomatic of one's spiritual relationship with God.

In The Grand Weaver, you mention three perversions of spirituality or false truths: the traditionalism, the legalism, and the superstition. Do you see those trickling into the workplace as well?

Yes, but I think I'd like to add another one—antinomianism. Some churches seem to think there is no law that you abide by; you do whatever you want to do. Traditionalism I think came and went, although in some aspects of Christendom it is very much there. Legalism is very present. The church is meant to be a place where people who are lost come and find the healing Balm of Gilead.

When Christians who struggle with legalism go into the workplace, how do you think that affects their work?

It's tough. If they are putting their own behavior into certain parameters, that's one thing. But if they have some kind of a pseudo pride and a superiority, they just make others feel inferior because "I do not do those things, I do not go to these places, I do not use such language." Basically, rather than presenting the attractiveness of Christ, they're presenting a negative picture of what it means to walk joyfully with the Lord. So legalism, both in the church and in the workplace, tends to be the sideshow of a very conceited soul.

That's a good phrase. Peter talked about everybody being a kingdom of priests, that is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. Do you think the church has lost sight of this?

Martin Luther did not to come to abolish the priesthood; he came to grow up the laity. I think we have lost sight of that in terms of our intercessory and our representative role. We are part of the body of Christ, we bear one another's burdens, and we have direct access to the person of Christ in our priesthood. Yet it is the priests who despised God's name by bringing the lame, the blind, and the sick in Malachi. I think sometimes we give what is left over in ourselves, or we fail to play our role in the community. For example, the father of a home should really be playing a priestly role on behalf of his family, on behalf of his children. That is a very important responsibility given to him. It's interesting how quickly women Bible study groups pick this up. They bear each other's burdens and pray for their friends. Men sometimes miss out on that privilege of bearing one another's burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. It's a very important role that the church has missed out on, intercessory prayer and representational prayer.

I also wonder about worship. Can work be worship?

Worship is coextensive with life. It is an aspect of worship. The person who works diligently is reflecting the value of an offering to God. Before I preach any sermon, I first make an offering to God before I present it to the people. I think we must always do this whatever we do. Whether I'm cleaning a house or building a house or maintaining a house, if a person looked at my work, they should see it as an expression of my reverence for God.

This is why we work. When the devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of this world, he said, "I'll give you all this if you'll bow down and worship me." Jesus said, "No, you shall worship the Lord your God alone and him only shall you serve." It is that rare combination of two words, "proskeneo and letrea." Proskeneo means the reverence; letrea means service. By people's response to The Grand Weaver, I've recognized that one really has to meet people where they are … in reverence and in service.

And where are people today in regards to reverence and service?

They want to know how these threads—mission, pleasure, spirituality, work, worship, all the things we've been talking about—how do they converge in daily life?