Vocational Formation: Is Our Calling Inflexible?

By Chris Armstrong, reprinted from Humanism as a Way of Life.

See previous posts in this series starting here and continuing here, here and here.

Is God’s vocational will for us really inflexible?

We’ve noted that bad theology says our single, mysterious vocation is inflexible—that is, eternally fixed and pre-set in the mid of God. If we’ve picked this belief up on our journey, then we may be afraid that if we miss our one, divinely ordained vocation, perhaps by choosing the wrong major, or the wrong job after graduation, we’ve blown it and will never get a second chance.

How can we challenge this unfortunate belief?

This seems to come from secular pressures – and (again) to bely our experience

Well, notice that this “inflexibility belief” seems to identify the Christian notion of vocation entirely with a secular ideal of a single, life-long career (which still lingers despite the fact that almost no one experiences it any more!)

Clydesdale puts it like this: “Because cultural scripts place career choice at the center of life satisfaction, and college as the locus of career preparation, students often infuse academic decisions with a sense of permanence and even irreversibility.”

But if even career (not to mention vocation in the Christian understanding) is complex, shifting, and growing in ways we have seen, then this sense of irreversibility must be both unhelpful and in fact false to the kind of thing our lifelong work will be!

This view also seems to assume an inscrutable, harsh God

Moreover, this belief that if you miss the vocation God has for you, he will make your life miserable, also entails a very negative understanding of God’s character—doesn’t it? Think about it:

· First God demands that I make a momentous decision when I am still quite young,

· then he withholds crucial information from me,

· and then he punishes me if I don’t discover it by the time I graduate.

No wonder vocation becomes such a pressurized matter for some Christian students!

But the God of Scripture reveals his character to humanity – most vividly in the Incarnation – in the human being Jesus Christ. And in Jesus we see our God as a loving God. So this view cannot be correct.

Relating vocation helpfully to career

We have seen that when many of us think of vocation, we think of preparing for a career. Yet although career can be one area of vocation in our lives, it is certainly not the only one. But deeper than this, we are called first not into some particular work, but more comprehensively into life in God on a pathway of holiness – so the intensive focus in our vocation talk and thought on what we DO – whether in a career or not – has already led us astray from Christian ideas of vocation. As author Gary Badcock puts it . . .

Vocation beyond career

“Christian vocation is not reducible to the acquisition of a career goal or to its realization in time. It is, rather, something relating to the great issues of the spiritual life. It has to do with what one lives ’for’ rather than with what one does.” Gary Badcock. The Way of Life: A Theology of Christian Vocation. P. 134.

Though a perfectly serviceable word, “career” contains none of the spiritual meaning of the Christian term of “vocation.”

As Christians, we do well to think of career in terms of the Christian tradition of “vocation.” This opens to us many biblical insights.

Vocation and career: Scriptural connections

We may find in Scripture a number of connections between vocation and career. For example:

· Matt 25:14-30 (parable of the talents) – we are responsible to steward our careers as we grow in them

· Col 3:22-23 – we can work “as unto the Lord” rather than as “people-pleasers”

· Prov 16:9 – we can plan and prepare, but then also relax into the “winding path”: “A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps”

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are just three scriptural clues about our vocations that can direct us both as we discover – and as we live out – our careers.

First, when career becomes tied to Christian ideas of love and service, we realize that we need to be wise and practical in stewarding our gifts, abilities, and opportunities. The well-being of others depends on it! For the Christian, career can’t be about remuneration, success, or even self-fulfillment—though none of those is a bad thing. Rather, it must be about serving others well—as the faithful servants do in the parable of the talents.

Second, this dimension of stewardship points to the proper focus of our hearts as we work at our careers. If career is framed in terms of a calling from God, then our attentiveness to Him can’t stop once we think we’ve discerned which career he might be calling us into.

No, throughout our career, we need to keep our eyes on him, as Colossians 3 shows us. We must work not as people-pleasers but always “as unto the Lord.”

Third, though we’ve recognized that careers today are not straight lines, but rather a bunch of curves and angles, if we see career in light of vocation, then we can relax. As Proverbs 16:9 suggests, we don’t need to be able to see the end from the beginning. We can simply be faithful in what is before us, trusting the Lord to direct our steps as we walk.