The word “calling” has meant different things to different people throughout history. Is it more than just a calling to God, an official role at church, or your job?
In his book, Callings, editor William C. Placher divides the idea of calling and vocation into four epochs in history. The four periods Placher describes include Early Christianity (100-500 A.D.), Middle Ages (500-1500 A.D.), Reformation and Post Reformation (1500-1800), and modern understandings of calling (1800-Current).
Spoiler alert! There’s little evidence historically or biblically that finding your calling meant finding a job that suits you. That doesn’t mean that you can’t work that you love. It just means that you’ll have to dig below the surface to find God’s professional call for you. The Bible’s focus is a call for people to turn to Him: to know Christ and love others. Theologians have named this our primary or general call. Luke 10:27 is the epitome of this primary calling: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” From a deep relationship with God, we are also to “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Our secondary calling, or “particular” calling, is everything in life God might want us to do after being in a saving relationship with Him. These include spouses, children, church involvement, and our jobs. But Scripture doesn’t provide much specific context on how each of us is doing this. God gives us a general outline that focuses on Him. My current interest is how you can find a job that glorifies Him, gives you joy, and advances His Kingdom. In this blog, however, the emphasis is on the history of calling. You’ll see at the end why this is helpful.
Calling Naysayers
I can say that, indeed, God cares about what job you have. But some don’t think this way. They are stuck in a rigid theological prison that the Lord is a curmudgeon—a prickly old man sitting in his garage with a fly swatter and yelling, “Get off my lawn!” Yet God cares about every aspect of our lives. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31). So the Lord cares about all aspects of your life. He wants you to be well-fitted to a professional position that you can commit to. Think about it: You will spend 80,000 hours working, so why wouldn’t you put in some work to find a job that you’d like to have?
We can begin to answer this enigmatic job question by taking a few steps backward and understanding the history of calling. Doing so will help you see the dilemma we face today; namely, a sea of choices. Infinite options seem to present themselves in the Western world, and it’s our duty to radically eliminate them and find one that matches our skill set, passion, experience, and fulfills a need in the world.
But this wasn’t always the case. Having innumerable vocational choices is a recent phenomenon. Options to what we do for work should be a blessing, however, not a curse. Let’s look at the four epochs that Pracher describes in his book that will shed led on this issue.
Early Christianity (100-500 A.D.)
Placher argues that in Early Christianity, followers of Jesus were focused on their faith, learning how to live in a pagan society, and arduously working to stay alive. Christians were anomalies during and after Jesus’s death. Society didn’t know what to do with them. And being a Christian wasn’t a benign endeavor—there were life and death consequences to your faith. Minus Judas and John, all of the original apostles, were martyred.
Indeed, following Jesus in that time cost people much, and many times it was their own lives. Most of the first Christians weren’t killed, but they were nonetheless pariahs. Christians were kicked out of their families for their faith, had their possessions confiscated, and balked at making sacrifices to the emperor—all for believing and living out their faith in Christ Jesus. Those outside the church also believed that Christians were committing incest because they called everyone “brother” and “sister.” Even two hundred years later, some, like the young woman, Perpetua, were still going to their death via wild beasts for their faith in Christ.
In this context, the last thing on their mind was pursuing a line of work that coalesced their skills, desires, and experiences. They weren’t quibbling about what they had to do to make money. Instead, they were focused on sharing their possessions with each other and growing in their faith in Christ while trying to stay alive. Followers of Jesus only needed to answer the questions, “Should I be a Christian? and, second, how public should I be about my Christian faith?”[1]. Even if they lived martyr-free, your specific line of work mirrored what your parents did. For much 1,500 years after Jesus’s death, sons just followed the trade of their father. Jesus was a carpenter because Joseph was one, and that’s how history went.
When Constantine came into power in the early fourth century, everything changed. In the latter part of the Early Christianity period, he became the ruler of the Byzantine Empire then became a devout Christian. Up to that point, Christians were minorities and were persecuted. Since the government took their land, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which “gave Christians freedom of worship and directed the governors to restore all the property seized during the severe Diocletian persecution[2]”.
Seventy years later, the emperor Theodosius “issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity—specifically Nicene Christianity—the official religion of the Roman Empire.”[3]. This ushered in a fresh start for Christians. Christians didn’t struggle with persecution anymore. They were finally free to worship openly. But the state religion that gave Christianity its freedom was also its bane. When life gets easy, people start to be lax in their faith. In essence, ubiquitous Christianity began to taint the faith. The waters became murky in deciphering between who was a “cultural Christian” and whose heart was truly dedicated to Christ.
To combat this, some Christians felt an urge to move away from society, live independently, and focus on God in solitude. They became monks in the desert and initiated the monastic movement in the late third century [4]. First men, then women decided to live ascetic lives in praying, fasting, and work. Some formed self-sustaining cloisters to live in. Thankfully, the persecution ended under Constantine, but this meant that others had to find “their callings in lives of radical self-denial that preserved the dramatic challenge of Christianity”[1].
Middle Ages (500-1500 A.D.)
For a thousand years, churches were plastered throughout the Western landscape in the Middle Ages. Christianity was now the dominant religion in Europe. The trends of the monastic life that began in the previous epoch became widespread. This period further solidified the idea that if you were “called” by God in any way, it was to an austere religious life. But now, the monastics not only become recognized by Rome but they were also subsumed by it. Only priests, monks, nuns, or friars were officially “called” by God. As Pracher points out, “Indeed, for medieval Christians, ‘having a vocation’ (in Latin, vocatio) meant almost exclusively joining the priesthood or some monastic order [1]”.
At the same time, there was still no “calling” for the plebian. Shoemakers, blacksmiths, cobblers, and textile dealers were relegated to just jobs—a means to make money and support your family, but they were never callings. Sadly, for the vast majority, everyday professions were devalued by the Church. Here are three reasons why: First, if God didn’t call you to a religious order, then you took the less honorable option like being a merchant. Second, the unique gifts men and women had weren’t often considered when they followed a consanguineous profession. Third, it was never acceptable to move up in the social strata; in fact, it was a “sign of pride; demotion was a shameful sin”[1].
But it wasn’t all gloomy for regular people. They found their meaning in their family, children, and friends, not what they did from 8 am to 5 pm. Pracher notes, “If medieval laypeople thought of themselves as having a calling at all, that calling probably had to do with family rather than a job…Work was not about finding fulfillment or even directly contributing to the glory of God; it was mostly about supporting one’s family.”[1].
In summary of the Middle Ages, the idea of calling primarily meant that God was wooing you to a religious order.
Post Reformation (1500-1800 A.D.)
In the sixteen century, Martin Luther shattered the sacred-secular divide. Nailing the ninety-five thesis to the Wittenberg door, he ardently preached against the Roman Catholic’s practice of selling indulgences, its focus on works-based religion, while arguing that Christ was the only One who forgave sins. Luther concluded that we are all sinners and can only be saved by God’s grace. He believed the Apostle Paul’s words in Ephesians “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (2:8-9).
Luther was one of the first to put forth the idea that people who took on a role as monks or priests were not more spiritual than the average person. In fact, he believed that every role in society had equal value. As I stated in a previous article, “Martin Luther excoriated the Roman Catholic church in placing special “spiritual jobs” above those of cobblers, blacksmiths, and farmers. Luther labeled monks, nuns, and priests as the “Spiritual State” and argued that they are not more valuable than any other workers in society.” In one of his famous letters, he even goes as far as saying, “A priest in Christendom is nothing else than an officeholder.”
From this point onward, there was no less than a revolution in how people thought about their vocation. All jobs had value in God’s eyes. Regarding Luther’s beliefs, Pracher states that “No one should feel compelled to enter a monastery or convent and become some super-Christian to contribute tribute to one’s salvation through works”[1]. Just as interesting, “When Luther began the Reformation, about 1520, between six and ten percent of the whole population of Germany were priests, monks, and nuns…Only a generation later, in Protestant territories, their number ber had dropped by two-thirds; monasteries and convents were almost entirely closed, and the vast majority of the clergy had married”[1].
At the same time, Luther wasn’t a fan of people changing their vocations or status in society. Based on 1 Corinthians 7:20, he believed that whatever job you were in when you came to faith is Christ is the one where you should stay. “Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.” But modern scholars do not interpret “calling” here in terms of occupation. Instead, the true meaning of calling in 1 Cor 7:20 means your “place in life” when you were called to salvation. If you were single, you don’t have to change. And the same goes for if you’re married, circumcised or uncircumcised, a slave or free person—none of these statuses affected your relationship with God [5].
The Reformation and Post Reformation periods broke the religious legalism of the past, restoring to each person the dignity of finding a vocation that best suits their gifts, interests, and summons from God. It was liberating for Christians in the Reformation Period to find part of their calling in their everyday work. At the same time, this era still didn’t provide the vast amount of job choices that men and women in the West are privileged to today.
Modern Era
In our zeitgeist, there seems to be unlimited freedom in what we can do professionally. The pendulum of work versus calling has swung too far in the direction of a job being more important than what it was meant to be. Many high achievers who claim to follow Christ place too much emphasis on what they do for work. Christ no longer is at the core of their identity. Their title on the desk plaque has usurped the place of God. they have forgotten 1 John 3:1 “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!”
Even if you wear a uniform to work and don’t have a corner office, there’s much transience at our jobs. For example, if you don’t where you work or your boss, jilt that one with a day’s notice and find a better one. Want to make more money? Then find a place that pays you what you’re worth. I’ve fallen into the grass-is-greener-trap in the past, and have jumped from one job to another more times than I’d like to admit.
“Do anything,” “Be anything,” and “Choose whatever job you want” are the mantras in many developed nations. The result is that many Christians are stuck as there are too many viable choices for jobs in Western culture. Whereas the Reformation Period liberated the idea that calling could mean finding a job you are suited for, now it elicits angst among Christians because of a “paralysis of analysis.” Today’s men and women are trying to find the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They seek to synthesize their gifts, skills, and experience into one magnum opus job and become idolatry. In the least, the process is overwhelming, discouraging, and most everyone falls short of finding the dream job.
The problem is that the meaning of calling expanded too far. Young people expect too much out of their vocation today. But theologians Jacques Ellul, Stanely Hauerwas, and Miroslav Volf downplay how much our job should mean in life. They disagree that a job is part of our calling, and in their eyes, our calling has little or nothing to do with our true vocation of following Christ. Ellul was adamant that “Nothing in the Bible allows us to identify work with calling [1]. Likewise, Hauerwas spoke plainly that work is “the means to survive, to be of service to others, and, perhaps most of all, work gives us a way to stay busy … a hedge against boredom. Attributing greater significance to work risks making it demonic as work then becomes an idolatrous activity”[1].
But I agree with Placher’s hopeful view that a “job as vocation should stay on the list [as being part of our calling], but not as the only possibility.” My theological take on vocation is a logical one: If God cares about every sparrow that falls and can number every hair on your head, and if He knew you in your mother’s womb, and if you’ll spend one-third of your life working, then God cares about it. And He wants to speak into that in your life. Maybe it’ll only be a whisper, divine nudge, or a liver quiver. Or, maybe He will audibly call you in the night as He did with Samuel.
The unparalleled freedoms we have in the United States to find our callings should give us a reason for joy, not angst. Every one of my refugee friends in Greece would trade places with me in a heartbeat to have my same choices in jobs. I believe part of the reason it’s important for me to find my calling is that I can help others do the same.
Callings sometimes come in seasons, so you don’t have to beat yourself up if it’s time to change vocations. My friend dreamt that he was helping people walk again. He went back to school to earn a second engineering degree to learn to create prosthetics for people. For several years he worked in a renowned company, he did just that, developing prosthetic limbs and helped people to walk again. Was that from God? Undeniably. The kicker is that you’d think, with all the work he put into going back to school, all the sacrifices he and his family had to make, and the dream from God, that he’d continue in that profession for the rest of his life. But it didn’t happen that way. He and his wife moved to a developing country to be missionaries and take another entirely new job. There are several points I could make here, but here are two: One, God can call you to a specific task; two, what that is can change throughout life.
Jobs Sit in One Chair at the Table of Life
Pracher’s main point—and I agree—is that calling can mean many different things: It can mean your calling to faith, your job, involvement in church, or your spouse and children. As we’ve seen, if you received a calling at all in the Early Church and Middle Ages, it was to a dedicated religious life. Thankfully, The Reformers expanded the idea of vocation to include your job. Still, at that time, there was never a real push to try to break out of the limited professional options that your family, experience, or life presented to you.
Looking at history helps us find out calling because we can appreciate the choices we have today. Options don’t have to bring angst but the anticipation to what God has called us to. We should be jumping up and down in joy that we have a chance to coalesce our gifts, experiences, and desires to a paid position. But if you prefer a “regular job” where your focus is only to make money and provide for your family, then that is no less of a calling, either. What job you choose is almost never a right-wrong issue.
The problem with the discussion on vocation is neither that it isn’t mentioned often in the Bible nor that we have too many choices today. The problem is, some have come to worship their work or to find a perfect job. Some people are looking for an all-fulfilling and mythical profession with a seven-figure salary, amazing coworkers, solid benefits, an affable and flexible boss, and eight weeks of paid vacation a year. Worse, I know many who only want to make a lot of money and retire at fifty. But work is good. We were called to work even before the Fall in Genesis 3. The key is to keep work in its proper place—under the Lordship of Jesus. You being to worship your work when you expect more from it than what it was designed for. Timothy Keller defines an idol as anything you must have at all costs. If you look to your job as your ultimate source of joy, fulfillment, and meaning, you’ve missed the point of your primary calling, big time. We would do well to keep God first in our lives. Anything else is idolatry.
Search for a job you enjoy and appreciate the professional choices you have today. But keep your First Love at the head of the table.
Bibliography
[1]Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation (Kindle Location 131). Kindle Edition.
[2] https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/rulers/constantine.html
[3] https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/ancient-medieval/christianity/a/roman-culture
[4] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/Monasticism
[5] Ciampa, R. E., & Rosner, B. S. (2010). The First Letter to the Corinthians (p. 316). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
