Second Principle: Work is
Vocational
I think most of us are looking
for a calling, not a job. Most
of us, like the assembly-line
worker, have jobs that are too
small for our spirits."1
— Studs Terkel
A thousand images race through our minds when we read, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." We may envision the voice of God speaking the world into existence out of nothing; the finger of God pointing to the place in the universe where heaven and earth are to be; or the feet of God stepping out on space so that He can survey His creation. Whatever image comes to mind, one common truth holds all the images together: God is introduced to us as God at work!
If work is natural to the character and function of God, it must be inherently good. Of course, the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden put the taint of sin upon work, just as it did upon all other aspects of God's creation. Still, not even sin could destroy God's intention for human work. Because work is so natural to God's character, we must believe that part of Christ's total plan in dying on the cross was to redeem our work. In
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other words, the biblical meaning of vocation is related to redemption. To be a Christian is to be in vocation — called of God for a special task consistent with our individual gifts, and woven into the rich and varied fabric which represents the unity of the body of Christ.
THE LANGUAGE OF VOCATION
Vocation is one of those strong words which needs to be recovered in our Christian vocabulary. Language so often betrays our loss of biblical truth and moral values. When the Roman Catholic Church separated the spiritual work of the sanctuary from the secular work of the marketplace, the biblical meaning of vocation fell on the spiritual side. Such a distortion of biblical truth had far-reaching implications for the church and society. The religious were called to spiritual vocations, all other people were punished for their sin by labor in the marketplace. The church, as the expression of spiritual vocation, stood with dictatorial dominance over government, education, and commerce. Its segregation of the sacred from the profane justified such evils as the divine right of kings and the feudal system of lords and peasant slaves.
No wonder Martin Luther worked to restore the biblical meaning of vocation as part and parcel of the Reformation. For him, a corollary of the "priesthood of believers," which broke the barriers between clergy and laity, was the "vocation of all believers," which removed the wall between spiritual and secular work. According to Luther, all believers are called of God, according to their gifts, to a vocation which is spiritual. I remember so well my struggle with a vocational choice between higher education and pastoral ministry. Luther rescued me with the good words, "It is more spiritual for a cobbler to use good leather and a strong stitch than it is to pass out tracts." From then on I could go either way, as God might call.
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Despite Luther's efforts, the biblical word vocation has continued to be perverted and usurped by secular language. The perversion is to use the word strictly in the skill and training context. "Vocational" schools and "vocational" training apply to trade schools. Nothing is wrong with specialized training and manual skills. But to call this kind of education "vocational" robs the concept of its basis in God's calling and narrows the term to mean an educational experience with little or no emphasis upon foundational learning in the liberal arts from which we get out intellectual and moral heritage.
At the present time, higher education is caught in a cycle of "careerism" — a secular substitute for biblical vocation. Students are choosing major fields of study that lead directly to profitable careers in business, computer science, and communications. Left behind are the traditional majors in the liberal arts, such as humanities, natural science, social science, philosophy, and religion.
Of course, careerism has long been with us. Whether for students at Harvard in the seventeenth century opting for the professions of medicine, law, and ministry, or for students in Christian colleges during this century migrating toward teaching, nursing, and business, professional careers have always been attractive. The difference today is that self-interest without moral responsibility seems to dictate the choice. Since 1966, the American Council on Education as surveyed incoming college freshmen each year to ascertain their educational aspirations. In the first surveys of the late 1960s, approximately seventy percent of the freshmen aspired to develop a philosophy of life as a primary outcome of their education. Less than forty percent saw college as an opportunity to become well-off financially. Twenty years later in the late 1980s, the statistics were reversed. Seventy percent of the freshmen saw college as a step toward financial success and less than forty percent aspired primarily to develop a philosophy of life. Not surprisingly, the
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majority of students today are choosing careers offering the promise of financial return. Self-interest also causes them to take safe courses, avoid moral questions, and remain provincial in their outlook. At least in its current meaning, careerism is the antithesis of vocation.
Other terms which have replaced vocation are job, occupation, and business. Again, there is nothing wrong with these terms in their specialized meaning. They are not, however, synonyms for vocation. For one thing, the terms are too small. The word job captures only a small segment of a person. Referring almost exclusively to a task to be done, it lacks the spiritual, moral, personal, and communal breadth and depth of such a rich biblical word as vocation. Much is written and said about the depersonalization of technical systems in our modern world. However, much of this depersonalization begins with definitions. The word job implies no divine calling, neglects the totality of human personality, ignores the interpersonal nature of human work, draws no lines of moral obligation to the larger community, and promises no frontiers for growth. A job can be stripped down to nothing more than an impersonal, amoral, or antisocial task by which we exchange production for pay. No wonder so many of our college graduates who aspired as college freshmen to become well-off financially are shuttling from career to career without the satisfaction which they hoped salary, status, success, and security would bring. No wonder that so many of them are pursuing the impossible — trying to combine commitment with the self-interest in a giving/getting contract.
A BIBLICAL MEANING OF VOCATION
What then is the biblical meaning of vocation? The meaning rises out of the premises that work is inherent in God's spiritual nature and, therefore, also essential to our spirituality. As J.H. Oldham notes in his book Work in Modern Society, "Work is inherent in
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God's purpose of man and an essential experience of man's nature as created in the image of God, the Creator."1 Such an affirmation sets the stage for understanding the biblical meaning of vocation as relational and redemptive.
Our fundamental premise is that biblical vocation is relational. While work is essential to human nature, it is only part of our nature. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve enjoyed a compatible relationship with God, nature, and each other. Although those relationships were spiritual, they were sustained by practical functions. Worship nurtured Adam and Eve's relationship with God; work maintained their relationship with nature; and wedlock was the lifeline for their love.
Vocation means being called of God to each of those interlocking relationships. To isolate worship from work, work from wedlock, or wedlock from worship is to lose the wholeness which is God's first vocational call upon our lives. To violate one of those relationships is even more destructive. Without exception, sin is an intentional break in our relationship with God, nature, or each other. By eating the fruit in violation of God's command, Adam and Eve found themselves alienated from God. One of the most plaintive cries of human history is God's call in the Garden to Adam and Eve, "Where are you?"
Once they broke with God, Adam and Eve turned on each other and then were driven from the Garden into the wilds of antagonistic nature. In reality, sin is a lost vocation — denying the call of God, violating the sacred relationship of worship, work, or wedlock, and discovering that our spiritual alienation affects the whole of life.
Our corollary premise follows: Biblical vocation is redemptive. Ever since God called Adam and Eve in the Garden, He has beckoned every person in every generation back to his true vocation. In other words, the purpose of God's call is to redeem people and restore the relationships of worship, work, and wedlock which were severed by sin in the Fall. In both the Old and
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New Testament, we hear this call from God. When we do, we learn that biblical vocation has meaning in three progressive steps.
God's first call is to faith. Immediately we see that the biblical meaning
of vocation is far more than a call to a job, it is a call to a
commitment. In the Old Testament, we see this meaning of vocation activated
when God calls the Children of Israel to be His chosen people. By responding
with faith in God and love for Him, the Israelites became the covenant people
for whom the divine-human relationship was restored. Both individually and
collectively, the Israelites became heirs of the promise which God has given
to Abraham. More than that, as members of the covenant community, they received
the revelation of the Law which served as the guide for their other relationships
in life — work and wedlock as well as worship.
The Apostle Paul extended this same vocational calling to the Gentiles when he declared that they became "heirs with Israel, members of the body and partakers of the promise" because of faith in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:6). This is the new "testament" or "covenant" of our calling which is in effect today. We understand, then, why Paul went to urge the Ephesian Christians to "walk worthy of the vocation" by which they are called (Ephesians 4:1) and immediately proceeds to talk about their spiritual relationships as members of "one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all" (vv.4-5). Later, the Apostle goes on to talk about the specifics of our work. But first and foremost, our vocation is to answer God's gracious call to the faith which restores our relationship with Him and gives us the privilege of being the children of His new covenant in Christ.
God's second call is to growth in our gifts. From among His people in the
Old Testament, He called certain persons with particular gifts to be His
prophets. This is our prototype for the vocational call to a commission.
Prophets were sanctified or
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"set apart" for the special task of speaking the Word of God to a wayward people. John the Baptist and Jesus were the last in the line of the prophets, and each of them is introduced to us as men who were "sent" from God. "Set apart" and "sent" describe the process out of which prophets — a rare and select breed of spiritual people — were made. After Pentecost, however, the prophet's privilege became a possibility for all believers. Through the agency of the Holy Spirit, what has been called a "cosmos of callings" opened up to us. Each and every person who is alive in Christ has a charisma or gift through which he or she can contribute to the effective ministry of the body of Christ and grow to full potential as a person created in the image of God. Biblical vocation advances with God's call upon the distinctive gifts that He has given to us. Even if our gifts are in a nonreligious field, our vocational call is to acknowledge them, cultivate them, and use them for the glory of God. The witness of "prophets without portfolio" in secular professions is indispensable to God's redemptive purpose in the world.
God's third call is to a task which is uniquely ours to do. After He has
chosen us to be His covenant people and commissioned us for the growth of
our gifts, God calls us to vocational consecration for a special task.
In other words, our job is the point where our vocational call to faith and
growth come together in special focus. Not that our job is spiritually inferior
to our covenant or our commission. Just as our vocational relationships of
worship, work, and wedlock cannot be isolated or violated, so our three
vocational appointments are equally interlocked and interdependent. Although
the idea is not popular now, the coherence of our vocational appointments
helps us understand why Paul wrote:
For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord's freedman, similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is
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Christ's slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. Brethren, each man, as responsible to God should remain in the situation God called him to (1 Corinthians 7:22 -24, NIV).
Contrary to some opinions, Paul is not condoning slavery. Rather he is appraising the freedom that comes with the call of God. More important than our station in life or the job we hold is our relationship to God. Whether we are slave or free, servant or master, laborer or leader, the call of God puts us all on common ground vocationally. How else can we understand the joy of a janitor who whistles while he works or the testimony of a redeemed prisoner who spoke through steel bars, "They have my body in here, but not my soul. I am a free man"?
OUR TWO JOBS
Every person comes to two different jobs each day. One is a special task to be done, requiring the application of hand and mind for full productivity. The other job takes in the larger working environment and includes the climate for work, the attitude of workers, and the margins for personal and professional growth. People who go only to the first job end up despising their work and devaluing themselves. Persons with a sense of vocation, however, go each day to two jobs. They will work for quality production at their specific task, but they will also work to change the working environment by their attitudes and find new avenues for personal and professional growth within the margins of their role. Once we discover those margins, however, Christians can be expected to break out into new dimensions of freedom and opportunity. Isn't that why Paul urges Christians who were slaves to take advantage of the opportunity for freedom? I suspect that he would have been brutal
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with a believer who forfeited freedom because of contentment as a slave.
What about people who cannot work? For those of us who are gainfully employed, it is easy to assume that everyone can work if they want to. We forget a welfare system that discourages ambition. Recently, I became an advocate for a divorced mother who is impoverished because she prefers to work as a secretary rather than subsist on welfare. By firsthand experience, I also became an advocate of "workfare." We must not forget those who want to work and can't. When Toyota opened a new auto plant just north of our home in Kentucky, 200,000 people applied for 1,200 jobs. None of us expect Christians to settle for unemployment when they can work. Yes, during those difficult times which can befall any of us, Christians do not lose their vocational calling. They know their call to faith as God's covenant people and they know their call to develop their gift as God's commissioned people. While this sense of vocation has holding power during times of unemployment, it will not put bread on the table. Therefore, every Christian has an obligation to these members of the faith to employ them, to recommend them for work, to lobby for their welfare, and, if necessary, too sustain them as members of the community of faith so that each is served according to his needs (Acts 2:45).
Our biblical vocation, then, is a calling from God that begins with our salvation when we are chosen to enter the covenant of faith, it continues in our satisfaction when we are commissioned to exercise our special gifts, and is finalized in our consecration to the specific task or situation which we call our daily work.
We cannot isolate or violate any of these appointments without sacrificing the essence of life, the fullness of life promised in Christ, and the spiritual potential of God's calling to vocation.
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ANSWERING GOD'S CALL
At one time or another, each of us asks the question, "How do I know God's calling for my life?" College students, in particular, find this question nagging them as they try to match the will of God with the nearly unlimited options for careers. Whenever I counsel with these students, I cite the three "Rs" of vocational choice: reason, righteousness, and revelation.
Reason is a direct tie-in with the creative process. Because we are created
Imago Dei — in the image of God — we are endowed with the
intellectual ability to think logically, plan critically, and act constructively.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that God expects us to
exercise our capability of reasoning in vocational decisions. Of course,
the starting point in our search for guidance is the Word of God. A chapel
speaker at a Christian college once told the students, "Ninety-eight percent
of the answers to our vocational questions are in the Bible. If only we would
read and reflect upon the Word of God." He may have overstated his case,
but the fundamental truth is sound. We cannot spiritualize our vocational
decisions or expect God to answer by splitting the skies, when we have not
exercised fully the gift of sound thinking and common sense that He has given
us. Late last night, for instance, panic filled the voice of a prospective
student who called me to appeal for admission to seminary. He won an audience
with me immediately with his enthusiastic plea, "God has called me to preach,
I have been looking forward to attending Asbury all my life, my car is packed
and it's in the driveway pointing toward Kentucky right now." Puzzled, I
asked, "But why were you not admitted?" Slowly, the story unfolded. He had
college grades below our probationary level, test scores too low to make
up the difference, and a late application without adequate references. As
gently as possible, I told him that he had studied too little, started too
late, and expected too much. Eventually, we worked
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out an optional plan which would let him be admitted later if he proved his ability, developed his discipline, and prepared himself for graduate study.
Serious reflection and inquiry are needed to draw realistic guidelines for vocational planning. Well-conceived and tested vocational instruments are available to help us delimit the fields which match our interest for working with things, numbers, or people. Of course, these are no substitutes for exploratory experiences in jobs or internships to enable us to sort out work that we love, tolerate, or despise. For me, a full summer as a hod carrier for a bricklayer, who finally let me lay up a crooked corner, convinced me that my talents and interests should be "laid" elsewhere. More often than not, the exercise of reason will be sufficient to identify our vocational gifts and focus our career options without asking God to do the screening and sorting for us.
Righteousness parallels reason in the process of vocational choice. Of course,
we know that we have no righteousness of our own. Only as we trust in Christ
for our redemption, can we lay any claim to His righteousness. At the same
time, we cannot rely upon reason alone as the basis for making our vocational
choice. God's will must be our will. Therefore, when I counsel with students
who are struggling with career decisions, I follow my question about the
exercise of reason with the penetrating probe, "Does His Spirit witness with
your spirit that you are a child of God?" Without an affirmative answer,
we cannot go on. Unless our heart is clear before God, we are not open to
the leading of His Spirit, wherever and whatever that may be. There is no
substitute for that high moment when the student answers, "Yes, I'll go where
He wants me to go and do what He wants me to do." A path of faith into a
bright and expanding horizon opens before us when we sign a blank letter
of trust and let God fill in the details.
Revelation may appear to be a shortcut around reason
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and righteousness — one that we want God to take when He calls us into vocation. But God doesn't work that way. He expects us to exercise fully our capacity for reason and follow the providential leading of His Spirit as we trust in His righteousness alone. But on rare occasions, our faithfulness to reason and righteousness still leaves us uncertain about the path we should take. Fleece after fleece may come up dry. Sometimes, in those moments, God wants us to take just a step at a time without our destination clearly in view.
My vocational walk with God, for instance, is filled with zigs and zags. At each turning point in my educational and professional career, I didn't foresee the implications of decisions I made when I changed majors, expanded fields, tested options, tried different positions, and hopscotched among institutions. But looking back, I bow in gratitude before the wisdom of God which gave me providential direction to what would otherwise be labeled as a checkerboard career. More than once along my vocational path, I found myself without an answer after exhausting my reason and renewing my spiritual commitment. In those moments, I dared to beg God for a supernatural break in the natural order — a special revelation to show me the way. He has always answered, not by my preferred timing or style, but usually with a confirmation of direction which I should have seen but had chosen to ignore. In each case, God also accomplished His revelation with the words of eternal patience, "Trust Me."
LIVING WORTHY OF OUR VOCATION
Carlisle called vocation one of the "loveliest of words." Its nature is inherent in the character of God, its relationships embrace the vitality of life, and its appointments give full meaning to the dignity of human personality. Vocation is to be redeemed by the witness of Christians in their daily work just as Christ redeemed it in His work on the cross. The Apostle Paul grasped the
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importance of this witness for his day when he urged the Ephesians, "Walk worthy of the calling with which you were called" (Ephesians 4:1, NIV).
Our vocation is a sacred trust. Redeemed by the Lord, we go to our daily work with the calling of being His covenant people, exercising His spiritual gifts, and doing His holy will in productive labor, quality work, and community responsibility. To live worthy of our vocational calling is practical proof of our redeemed nature.
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SPIRITUAL REFLECTIONS
ON OUR WORK AND CALLING
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech
you to have a walk worthy of the
calling with which you were called.
Ephesians 4:1
* * * * * * *
PROVOCATIVE QUESTION
How have you responded to God's threefold vocational call upon your life?
Have you answered to God's call into the covenant of faith?
Have you been "set apart" for a purpose which utilizes your natural talents?
Have you consecrated your daily work to God?
A PRACTICAL EXERCISE
Think forward into your vocational future. Where is God leading you vocationally? Is your long-term goal clear or is He leading you a step at a time?
A PERSONAL PRAYER
O Ever Faithful Christ, may I truly be worthy of my calling — to a personal faith, to an individual gift, and to a special task. Amen
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1. J.H. Oldham, Work in Modern Society (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1961), 49.
