Everyone, Everywhere, Everything
The word “calling” is commonly misunderstood to refer to an experience that only someone special has. In the Bible, however, calling is a central theme that describes the experience of every believer.
In the Old Testament the Hebrew word translated “call” usually has the same everyday meaning as our English word. Call is a communication that invites a response. Calling has a second important meaning in the Old Testament. To “call” can also mean to create, to bring something new into being, by naming. When God identified Israel as a nation, for example, he created a nation that did not exist before. A motley throng became a nation when God called them. God wants to do the same for us—make us something new and greater than we could ever become on our own.
In the New Testament, calling is used in two distinct but related ways. It is, first of all, almost a synonym for salvation. It refers to God’s calling people to himself as followers of Christ, a calling to a relationship with God. And secondly, when Jesus calls His followers to Himself, he also calls them to give Him His rightful place of preeminence in their lives, and then to work to see that He is given that place of preeminence in the world. He has every right to first place in “everyone, everywhere, and in everything.”
In time, the first of those New Testament uses of “calling” (a calling to a Person, to a relationship with God through Christ) became known as our “primary” calling. Calling in the second sense (our calling to a task, to live and work for God in the world) became known as our “secondary” callings. This vital distinction between primary and secondary callings carries with it two challenges—first, to keep both in view, while, second, ensuring that they are kept in the right order. The Church’s failure to meet these challenges has led to two serious distortions of the truth of calling.
The first distortion of calling is a form of dualism that elevates the spiritual at the expense of the secular. This distinction pits contemplation against action, the sacred against the secular, the “perfect” against the “permitted,” the “higher” against the “lower.” The “perfect” life is spiritual, dedicated to contemplation and reserved for priests and nuns. The “permitted” life is secular, dedicated to action and open to those engaged in soldiering, governing, farming, trading, raising families, and other such tasks. This “two-tier” view of calling flagrantly perverts biblical teaching by narrowing the sphere of calling and excluding most Christians from its scope.
Sadly, this distortion is as common today as it was centuries ago. Consider, for example, the fallacy of the contemporary expression “full-time Christian workers.” It implies that those not working for churches or Christian organizations are only “part-time” in the service of Christ.
The second distortion of calling elevates the secular at the expense of the spiritual. It is the triumph of the secondary calling (our calling to a task) over the primary calling (our calling to a Person). It idolizes work.
The Bible is realistic about work. It depicts work after Adam’s fall into sin as both creative and cursed. But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this balanced view was lost. Work came to be seen as worthy of man’s undivided devotion. President Coolidge proclaimed, “The man who builds a factory builds a temple…The man who works there worships there.” “Work” said Henry Ford, “is the salvation of the human race—morally, physically, socially.”
As God and God’s call were eclipsed in modern man’s consciousness, work came to be seen, not as a calling from God, but as a duty and a role in society. Workers became responsible, not to God, but to society. In time, faith and work were wholly divorced from one another. Modern man tries to find meaning in life by working. But neither work nor career can be fully satisfying without a deeper sense of calling. And there can be no meaningful sense of calling unless there is Someone who calls.
The first distortion of calling debases “secular” work by supposing that it is inferior to religious work. The second distortion exalts work to the point where it takes God’s place in our hearts. We must reject both distortions. We must insist that any and all honest work honors the God who calls us. And we must, at the same time, insist that meaning can never be found in work alone, but only in a relationship with the Person who calls us. Our calling is, first and foremost, “by Him, to Him, for Him.”
Do you operate with a sense that some people’s work is more important and meaningful than others because of its spiritual or religious focus? Do you want to accept a challenge that will be the integrating dynamic of your whole life, no matter what occupation you choose? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.
