Chat With Os Guinness
Note: The following conversation with Dr. Os Guinness was conducted via Instant Messenger on the evening of July 2, 2001. Thanks to all who joined in, and apologies for the DSL outage that may have kept many from connecting.
Q: I'd like to have that sense of devotion and dynamism that you include in your definition of calling. But mostly I feel like I'm just trying to survive as a Christian and not be dominated by sin. I know I'm called to follow Christ and I'm doing that. How can a clearer sense of calling help me live a more dynamic Christian life?
Dr. Guinness: One of the characteristics of a human being living with a sense of purpose, and the trouble with many people, is that they take their sense of purpose from people and events and circumstances around them. But just as Archimedies looked for a leverage point from which to change the world, the great sense of calling is that it comes outside of the world, outside of ourselves. So if we start everyday by asking how we are living for the Lord, we have something to give us the highest and deepest sense of purpose.
Q: If someone doesn't have any spiritual interest, but still believes that life should have meaning and purpose and is searching for that purpose, what would you say to him?
Dr. Guinness: There are three main families of faiths that attempt to give an answer. The desire for individual purpose is almost universal. There are billions of people born before us and billions will follow us. And billions are alive at the same time as us. And yet we each have a unique sense of destiny. Is it real? Or is it only a conceit and we are only dust in the wind? There are three big answers in the modern world. One is the eastern answer--Hinduism, Buddhism, and the New Age. And put simply, it says just forget it. The desire to have purpose is part of the fact that we are caught in the world of illusion. The second family of faith is the secularists. Its answer is yes, create your own meaning yourself. In other words, meaning is not there to be discovered. It is there for each one of us to create ourselves. And the third big family of answers is the Biblical of Jewish and Christianity. It says that the deepest answer is to rise and answer the call of the God that created us. And there is no question that that third answer, by far, is the deepest answer in history. So I would say one of the big things about calling is that it is the very deepest answer to human longing, purpose, and fulfillment.
Q: You stated that there is no life without a Caller. What if a godless person feels called to sacrifice for a cause? (Like protecting the environment.) She feels very fulfilled and passionate that she is doing something very valuable.
Dr. Guinness: I said in my book that there is no calling without a Caller. In other words, can there be any true meaning in that without God? The word calling has come out of the Bible and has been taken over by our modern, secular society and used without any real strong sense of purpose and passion. I guess another way to ask the question is, "Can God call an unbeliever to do His will?" But when secular people use the word calling, it is like a cut flower. They've borrowed the meaning but they have cut off the root. And that's really cheating. The word calling only comes into its own with depth and richness if there is a personal God who calls. The secular people have used the word, but they really don't have a right to it.
God can definitely call unbelievers. And the strongest biblical example of that is the way God called Syrus, the pagan king, to be his servant and work on behalf of the Jews. And obviously, the reason is that the creator can call his creatures even if the creatures don't acknowledge him. But calling comes into its own in the idea of relationship. When creatures come to know their Creator as they do in Jesus, the idea of calling is rooted in a deeply intimate relationship. We not only follow our Caller, knowing we love Him. I think even if human beings don't even acknowledge God or know God, they are still made in His image. So when they exercise the gifts that God has given them, there is tremendous satisfaction to them as well as service to others. So they don't have a higher fulfillment and joy of doing it for Him when they know Him.
Q: I'm a parent of teenagers. How can I help them in the process of discovering their call?
Dr. Guinness: That's a wonderful question. Because much of the confusion about calling comes from the fact that people aren't taught about it at the right age. For example, mid-life crisis comes when people come from a career in which they don't fit. And they would have been saved from the crisis if they had a sense of calling before they started their career. So the ideal time is to teach a person a sense of calling is between 12 and 25. I think it begins with parents pulling out of their children a sense of their unique individuality. For instance, from the age of 12, we began to encourage and affirm all the individual and unique gifts that my son has. And that's partly a matter of Christian teaching from the Bible, and partly a matter of affirmation and encouragement. And we stressed to him many, many times that he doesn't have to be like his mother and me. And so the ideal age for teaching and encouragement is before they go to college and face the challenge of choosing a career. So I think parents are the principal encouragers of calling. Although when parents don't do it, it can be done by a coach or youth minister of someone like that.
Q: I am happy as a process engineer but I often have the thought that I am not putting my life to best use for God. I just can't see how most of what I'm doing every day builds the kingdom of God. Do I need to consider a special calling?
Dr. Guinness: Your question touches the very heart problem of calling. Ever since the first century and a theologian called Eusbius, we've had this heretical idea that the spiritual is higher than the secular, and full-time ministry more valuable than secular work. And this is almost the universal, catholic position--a very common protestant position. In contrast, Martin Luther stressed that is everyone, everywhere in everything. In other words, there is no higher or lower. There is no sacred or secular. There is no full-time or part-time. If you do what you do by faith, to the glory of God, as a calling, it is just as valuable as being a minister or missionary. So I would say beware of the seminary trap that the idea of the spiritual is higher than the secular. On the other hand, always remember that your job, your paid job, is not necessarily the heart of your calling. For example, the famous French Christian lawyer, Jacques Ellul, used to say that the heart of his calling was not being a famous lawyer and professor. It was his work in his free time among the delinquent boys of Bordeaux.
Q: Did Jacques Ellul have a sense of frustration?
Dr. Guinness: Not at all, it was almost like Paul's. In other words, the paid work made him free to pursue his calling, which was unpaid.
Q: How does understanding my calling help me answer the question, "Who Am I?"
Dr. Guinness: That's a very deep question. Because three deep questions come together. One is the search for meaning. One is the search for purpose. And the third is the search for identity. The biblical faith provides us with the answer to meaning. Calling provides the answer to purpose. That's obviously very close to identity. Because God not only calls us to do something, he names us and therefore calls out our identity. It's important to remember that it would be an insult to define someone's identity in a sentence. It's far too intimate and deep. The same is true for calling. Sometimes we can talk about things we do. But the deepest part of it is God calling us out, that is our identity.
Q: Will God call me to do something I'm not gifted for or feel totally inadequate to accomplish?
Dr. Guinness: God usually calls us to employ the gifts that He has given us. And that's the clear teaching of Jesus. For example, in the parable of the talents and the pounds in Matthew. On the other hand, God sometimes, and this is his extraordinary call, God sometimes calls us from what is normal and natural to something special. For example, Amos, who was a farmer, was called to be a prophet because the normal prophets were so decadent and corrupt. But normally God calls us along the line of the gifts that he has given us. The puritans used to teach the great danger is to focus on the giftedness and forget the giver. So we need to remember that if we are using God's gifts to us, we always have to be grateful to the giver and use His gifts in clear dependence on Him.
The mark of the great ventures that we do for the Lord is that they are so much beyond us that they would never succeed without Him. So the gifts come from him and the success depends absolutely on Him. So everything we do, we do by faith.
Q: What is the place of career counselors and testing in determining God's call?
Dr. Guinness: I think there is a place, but a lower place for career counselors. In other words, we shouldn't make the calling so spiritual that it doesn't touch the world. I would recommend the value not of things like Myers-Briggs, which is psychological testing, but of the best discernment of giftedness and aptitude. But the danger is if we focus on secular discernment of gifts, we lose touch with the Giver, the Caller who is the source of the gifts and the power of the gifts. A superb book is Ralph Mattson's The Truth About You, which is published by TenSpeed Press. Ralph is a Christian, but the publisher is secular. And it is all about how you discover your motivated abilities. There is a danger in some of the Christian gifts of discernment testing that is around today. Much of the Christian testing will only help you to discover your spiritual gifts. Then they quickly put you to work in their churches. Whereas what we really need to discover is our natural as well as our spiritual gifts. And most of our gifts will be used in the world, not just in the church.
Q: I want to follow God and I want to feel like my life is special, but I don't want to be a hero. Everyone I have looked up to has disappointed me. I know if I am put on a pedestal I will fall and I don't want to disappoint others. I feel stuck between wanting to know my calling and afraid I can't live up to it. What should I do?
Dr. Guinness: That's a very deep question. Part of our following His call includes the Christian virtue of honesty and humility. So it would be wrong to avoid rising to God's highest just because we know we will trip up, just as the man in Jesus' story hid his talents in the napkin in the ground because of his view of the master. If we are a model to younger believers, part of our example is being honest about our failing. The calling should never be a matter of hypocrisy or pretense. And I would just challenge you to rise to the full height that God is calling you to rise to.
Q: I can relate to what you said about having too many choices. I feel paralyzed. I don't know which job to choose. I have several career options and I want God to make clear which I should choose, but He is silent. So am I really free to pick the job that seems best to me? I would feel better if there was some sense of divine confirmation.
Dr. Guinness: It is very important not to confuse calling with guidance. We need to remember the entrepreneurial part of calling. In the parable of the talents and pounds, the master never told them what to do. There was no micromanagement. They were simply given gifts, talents, and praised or blamed at the end according to what they had done. When we confuse calling with guidance, we get paralyzed wondering if this is truly God's will and then we do nothing. Whereas calling is a venture and there is always risk. So I would not wait until you hear "it" from the Lord, but rather weigh up the talents of gifts and opportunities and figure out how best you can add fruit or value to the world. And recognize that there is always a process of trial and error.
Q: How realistic do you think it is for a student or someone right out of college to have a deep sense of God's calling?
Dr. Guinness: Because calling is so badly taught today and there is so much ignorance and confusion, it is a more lengthy process to discover it now than in the past. I came to Christ when I was 18 and it wasn't until really my late 20s when I came across the notion of calling and even later still began to understand what my calling was.
I came to Christ at 18 at a time in England if you were really spiritual you became a minister or missionary. And my parents were missionaries so I knew that wasn't my life. Though I went to the ministry, I wasn't ordained. I worked in a church for nine months, and to be honest, I absolutely hated it. I liked the pastor, I was pretty good at the things I did, but it simply wasn't me. And it was in a time of very deep frustration that someone introduced me to the idea of biblical calling. And it was an incredible liberation for me. I was invited to consider to be the minister in the church that Preacher Martin Lloyd Jones used to preach in. I sweated it for the whole weekend because I was horrified by the thought. And when I had the freedom to say no because I knew it wasn't my calling, I never looked back and I had a tremendous sense of liberation and peace. Part of my calling is as an apologist, though I am always happier in the secular world. And it is a great relief to me to not be stuck in the Christian subculture. Whereas some people are the opposite. Their calling is to direct full-time ministry.
When I came to Christ, the present view of calling was almost absent. I came across it when someone gave me William Perkins' A Treatice on Calling. He was described as a puritan C.S. Lewis. Today it is not very easy to read, but it is incredibly liberating when you understand it. I had to translate it to the 20th century and I've taught on it for nearly 30-odd years.
Q: If you could give any two pieces of advice to a young 20-something, what would it be?
Dr. Guinness: I would line up a number of very simple things in your life. First, be sure you have a deep intimate knowledge of the Lord. Second, develop a rich theology and know why you believe what you believe. Third, think through a very deep Christian world view so you understand the whole of life within the theological perspective. Fourth, think through and pray over your own sense of gifts and calling (so you know what you want). Fifth, cultivate a group of friends who will be a great encouragement and accountability to keep you going for life. And if you line up simple things like this, your life will start to surge forward in usefulness.
I have a new book coming out in September, Long Journey Home, on meaning -- identity, meaning and purpose. The one that answers the other two is meaning. It is because of our faith that we know who we are in terms of identity. It is because of faith that we know our purpose in terms of calling.
Calling and identity are very close. In rising to answer the call, that call names us. In fact, George MacDonald argues that only when we see the caller will we get our name. Because we've become who God called us to be -- identity. So obviously if we call to each other by name, the calling, naming, and identity are very, very close. People can't wait around to discover their identity. They will discover their identity in following their calling.
Q: What do you mean by meanings?
Dr. Guinness: Human beings have a deep longing for meaning. Meaning and belonging. The search for meaning is the search for making sense of the world. The search for belonging is the search for security in the world. Faith is the deepest answer to both them. So meaning is that hunt, how to make sense of our world. What is humanist? What is right? What is wrong?
The postmodern world is characterized by crisis of meaning. It doesn't fit into a larger whole. And it is only that larger whole that gives you that sense of meaning. Well, our modern world is very technological. We think of things as mechanisms, a machine assembled by its parts. What do you do with a car? You drive somewhere. The meaning is always the highest framework that makes sense of the whole. You go from the origin of the universe to the prospects of the human race after the end of this earth... all of this throws light on it. It gives meaning too. We are suddenly born into a world as human beings and the world doesn't make sense of itself. So we have to make sense of the world... By asking questions...
We always want meaning. The most awful things for us is pain and evil because apparently there is no meaning. Beacher says that he who knows why only knows how. We can cope with the worst things we face if they have sense and meaning. Of course the gospel is not only the deepest meaning, it is true meaning. Everything else is just fiction.
