By Chris Armstrong, reprinted from Humanism as a Way of Life.
Note: I gave the following in chapel at Taylor University (IN) some years ago. I think it has held up well, as an intervention on the subject of vocation, for young people in particular. An earlier version was given at Wheaton’s chapel; in the Taylor version (below) I used more material from CS Lewis.
What do you think of when I say the word VOCATION? Does it stir up some thought, feelings, images? Just ponder for a moment. I’ll wait.
Alright. So just now, how did that thought process go? Were you maybe recalling to mind glamourous dreams you used to have when you were a kid – of being a firefighter, or a ballerina, or a veterinarian? Or did it make you think of plain old, ordinary work, with all its thorns and thistles and drudgery? Or was it stressing you out a bit, making you think of big decisions everyone’s expecting you to make, about what you’ll do after graduation?
Whatever you were thinking, did any of it link up with the Scripture we just heard – Jesus’s so-called “Great Commandment,” to love God and neighbor? Or do vocation and work seem like something else – a sort of “non-spiritual” compartment of life – the things you do when you’re not serving God through church-related activities?
This morning I’d like you to think with me about the un-glamorous side of vocation: ordinary, everyday work. And I hope to show you that it has everything to do with loving God and loving neighbor.
Only problem is: to listen to the world around us, and often even to the church, you wouldn’t think there was any connection at all.
So first, let’s turn to that great source of theological and spiritual understanding that illuminates all of our lives. I’m referring, of course, to The Onion.
“Dateline CAMDEN, MAINE — Longtime acquaintances confirmed to reporters this week that local man Michael Husmer, an unambitious 29-year-old loser who leads an enjoyable and fulfilling life, still lives in his hometown and has no desire to leave. Claiming that the aimless slouch has never resided more than two hours from his parents and still hangs out with friends from high school, sources close to Husmer reported that the man, who has meaningful, lasting personal relationships and a healthy work-life balance, is an unmotivated washout who’s perfectly comfortable being a nobody for the rest of his life. ‘As soon as Mike graduated from college,’ said childhood friend David Gorman, ‘he moved back home and started working at a local insurance firm. Now, he’s nearly 30 years old, living in the exact same town he was born in, working at the same small-time job, and is extremely contented in all aspects of his home and professional lives. It’s really sad. . . .’
“Additionally, pointing to the intimate, enduring connections he’s developed with his wife, parents, siblings, and neighbors, sources reported that Husmer’s life is ‘pretty humiliating’ on multiple levels. . . .
“Former classmates also confirmed that the underachiever is apparently resigned to going to his little small-time, stable, extremely fulfilling job in town each day and has zero ambitions to leave his position and pursue a more prestigious and soul-crushing career path in a real city.
“‘I honestly don’t get Mike,’ high school friend Caitlin Sese said of the man who gets eight hours of sleep per night and has time after work to see his loved ones and take care of his health. ‘Everyone else left Camden as soon as possible and is consumed by a deep sense of apprehension about getting ahead, but he’s still hanging around the same places from high school, focusing on the things that matter most to him, and existing as a relaxed, easygoing person who’s fun to be around. I can’t imagine anything sadder than that.’”
Author Michael Horton says, “‘Ordinary’ has to be one of the loneliest words in our vocabulary today. . . . Who wants to be that ordinary person who lives in an ordinary town, is a member of an ordinary church, and has ordinary friends and works an ordinary job? Our life has to count! We have to leave our mark, have a legacy, and make a difference. . . . We have to live up to our Facebook profile.”
Does this sound familiar at all? Have you ever heard these sorts of voices, like the Onion guy’s friends, telling you that ordinary work, well done, is not enough?
C S Lewis, in his rich war-time talk to a group of Oxford students about the vocation of being a student, contradicts this modern tendency to dismiss the ordinary. “It is clear,” he says, “that Christianity does not exclude any of the ordinary human activities. St. Paul tells people to get on with their jobs. . . . Christianity does not simply replace our natural life and substitute a new one; it is rather a new organization which exploits, to its own supernatural ends, these natural materials. . . . All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not.”
So, all work can be good if offered to God. That sounds like a nice holy motive and mode in which to do our work. But what about that basic reality about our work and our vocations – we need a way to make a living! What does our faith tell us about that?
In his essay “Christianity and Culture,” as Lewis reflects on how he slowly came to the conclusion that it was good and proper for him to be involved in the particular, culture-making job of scholar and professor, he starts by considering this simple matter of making a living:
“On earning one’s living I was relieved to note that Christianity, in spite of its revolutionary and apocalyptic elements, can be delightfully humdrum. The Baptist did not give the tax-gatherers and soldiers lectures on the immediate necessity of turning the economic and military system of the ancient world upside down; he told them to obey the moral law – as they had presumably learned it from their mothers and nurses – and sent them back to their jobs. St. Paul advised the Thessalonians to stick to their work (1 Thessalonians 4:11) and not to [37] become busybodies (2 Thessalonians 3:11). The need for money is therefore . . . an innocent, though by no means a splendid, motive for any occupation. The Ephesians are warned to work professionally at something that is ‘good’ (Ephesians 4:28). I hoped that ‘good’ here did not mean much more than ‘harmless’, and I was certain it did not imply anything very elevated. Provided, then, that there was a demand for culture, and that culture was not actually deleterious, I concluded I was justified in making my living by supplying that demand – and that all others in my position (dons, schoolmasters, professional authors, critics, reviewers) were similarly justified; especially if, like me, they had few or no talents for any other career – if their ‘vocation’ to a cultural profession consisted in the brute fact of not being fit for anything else.”
If doing whatever work we’re suited to, even just to make a living, can be affirmed on Scriptural grounds, then why do we as Christians have such trouble finding a spiritual dimension in our work? Why do we find it so hard to think of work as one way – a very important way – that we can love our neighbor and even love God? Because again, that is exactly, I will argue, what work is.
To be continued . . .
The Green Room 