Simone Weil on Vocation

Last updated on: September 16, 2020 at 7:42 am By Gene Veith

Simone Weil (pronounced “Vay”) was a French thinker who converted from Judaism to an idiosyncratic, mystical Christianity. In her short life (1909-1943), she was a radical leftist, worked with the French resistance to the Nazi occupiers, and had a dramatic conversion experience when she contemplated George Herbert’s poem on human sin and the grace of Christ, Love III. (See my book Reformation Spirituality: The Religion of George Herbert.)

Through it all, Weil always worked, not just with her mind but with her hands, including a long stint in an automobile factory. She wrote a great deal about the importance and value of working. And her insights tie in interestingly to Luther’s doctrine of vocation.

Richard Gunderman sums up her thoughts on the matter:

Weil looked at work as more than an exchange of money for labor. She argued that people need to work not only for income but also for the experience of labor itself. From her perspective, money does not solve the core problems of joblessness. Instead, work provides vital opportunities to live more fully by helping others. . . .

Though Weil understood that people need work to live, she argued that labor fulfills other equally essential functions. One is the opportunity it offers to become more fully focused and present in living. To multitask is to live superficially, but those who are completely present with another can give fully of themselves. She called attention “the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Weil believed that humans are not cut out for lives of idle pleasure. It is through work, whether in agriculture, manufacturing, the service industry or maintaining a home and raising children that people contribute to the lives of others. Work reminds us, she wrote, that individuals are part of something greater and provides a larger purpose to live for. She wrote of the calling to serve others:

“Anyone whose attention and love are really directed towards the reality outside the world recognizes at the same time that he is bound, both in public and private life, by the single and permanent obligation to remedy, according to his responsibilities and to the extent of his power, all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage the earthly life of any human being whatsoever.”

Work must be seen in its larger context, for if it isn’t, laborers may soon feel like cogs in a machine, winding a nut onto a bolt or moving papers from an inbox to an outbox. To do work well, people need to understand the context of work and how it makes a difference in the lives of others.

Here is Luther’s emphasis that, while vocation is important to our own well-being, the purpose of all of our vocations is to love and serve our neighbors. She also has Luther’s understanding that God is in vocation, that He loves and blesses those whom He has created through us.

Here is how the Wikipedia article about her describes her insights about loving God and loving our neighbor:

In Waiting for God, Simone Weil explains that the three forms of implicit love of God are (1) love of neighbor (2) love of the beauty of the world and (3) love of religious ceremonies.^[70] As Weil writes, by loving these three objects (neighbor, world’s beauty, and religious ceremonies), one indirectly loves God before “God comes in person to take the hand of his future bride,” since prior to God’s arrival, one’s soul cannot yet directly love God as the object.^[71] Love of neighbor occurs (i) when the strong treat the weak as equals,^[72] (ii) when people give personal attention to those that otherwise seem invisible, anonymous, or non-existent,^[73] and (iii) when we look at and listen to the afflicted as they are, without explicitly thinking about God—i.e., Weil writes, when “God in us” loves the afflicted, rather than we loving them in God.^[74] Second, Weil explains, love of the world’s beauty occurs when humans imitate God’s love for the cosmos: just as God creatively renounced his command over the world—letting it be ruled by human autonomy and matter’s “blind necessity”—humans give up their imaginary command over the world, seeing the world no longer as if they were the world’s center.^[75] Finally, Weil explains, love of religious ceremonies occurs as an implicit love of God, when religious practices are pure.^[76] Weil writes that purity in religion is seen when “faith and love do not fail,” and most absolutely, in the Eucharist.^[77]

She is also interesting on the subjects of beauty and of suffering. Again, from Wikipedia:

For Weil, “The beautiful is the experiential proof that the incarnation is possible”. The beauty which is inherent in the form of the world (this inherency is proven, for her, in geometry, and expressed in all good art) is the proof that the world points to something beyond itself; it establishes the essentially telic character of all that exists. Her concept of beauty extends throughout the universe: “we must have faith that the universe is beautiful on all levels…and that it has a fullness of beauty in relation to the bodily and psychic structure of each of the thinking beings that actually do exist and of all those that are possible. It is this very agreement of an infinity of perfect beauties that gives a transcendent character to the beauty of the world…He (Christ) is really present in the universal beauty. The love of this beauty proceeds from God dwelling in our souls and goes out to God present in the universe”. She also wrote that “The beauty of this world is Christ’s tender smile coming to us through matter”.^[66]

Beauty also served a soteriological function for Weil: “Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right to the soul.” It constitutes, then, another way in which the divine reality behind the world invades our lives. Where affliction conquers us with brute force, beauty sneaks in and topples the empire of the self from within.

Though she is quite Christ-centered, she is not completely orthodox. She is extreme and aesthetic in her pursuit of virtue. She said that Hinduism and Buddhism also “deliver me into Christ’s hands as his captive,” and yet she opposed syncretism.

She was most interested in Catholicism, but she never became a Catholic. I was under the impression that she refused to be baptized out of a sense of solidarity with those who were not inside the church, but while that was true for awhile, the Wikipedia article said that she finally was baptized shortly before she died of tuberculosis at the age of 34.

Her take on Christianity is so unusual, yet substantive, that she might get through to that “None” friend of yours who is “spiritual but not religious.”

Photo: Simone Weil by Unknown photographer / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Why Do We Admire Certain Vocations?

Last updated on: July 24, 2020 at 7:45 am By Gene Veith

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In his book that I blogged about, Defending Boyhood, Anthony Esolen discusses the masculine qualities that lead to the military virtues. He quotes the Victorian author John Ruskin on why we tend to admire soldiers more than “merchants.”

The quotation is from Ruskin’s 1862 book Unto This Last. He goes on to apply his principle to other occupations that we admire, and in doing so, makes some striking points about what we can recognize as the Reformation doctrine of vocation. I’ll discuss those, and then say a few words on behalf of “merchants.”

From John Ruskin, Unto This Last (free online):

For the soldier’s trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but being slain. This, without well knowing its own meaning, the world honours it for. A bravo’s trade is slaying; but the world has never respected bravos more than merchants: the reason it honours the soldier is, because he holds his life at the service of the State. Reckless he may be — fond of pleasure or of adventure-all kinds of bye-motives and mean impulses may have determined the choice of his profession, and may affect (to all appearance exclusively) his daily conduct in it; but our estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact — of which we are well assured — that put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and his duty in front of him, he will keep his face to the front; and he knows that his choice may be put to him at any moment — and has beforehand taken his part — virtually takes such part continually — does, in reality, die daily.

From the soldier’s willingness to die out of a sense of service, Ruskin develops the concept of self-sacrifice, of being willing to deny oneself for a higher principle or for the good of someone else. He then addresses other professions that we admire: lawyers (OK, the Victorians evidently held that profession in greater esteem than is common today), physicians, and (quite rightly) clergymen:

Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer and physician, founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Whatever the learning or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief respect for him depends on our belief that, set in a judge’s seat, he will strive to judge justly, come of it what may. Could we suppose that he would take bribes, and use his acuteness and legal knowledge to give plausibility to iniquitous decisions, no degree of intellect would win for him our respect. Nothing will win it, short of our tacit conviction, that in all important acts of his life justice is first with him; his own interest, second.

In the case of a physician, the ground of the honour we render him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we would shrink from him in horror if we found him regard his patients merely as subjects to experiment upon; much more, if we found that, receiving bribes from persons interested in their deaths, he was using his best skill to give poison in the mask of medicine.

Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as it respects clergymen. No goodness of disposition will excuse want of science in a physician, or of shrewdness in an advocate; but a clergyman, even though his power of intellect be small, is respected on the presumed ground of his unselfishness and serviceableness.

All of this, of course, is the doctrine of vocation, that in every sphere of relationship or responsibility to which we have been called–in the workplace, the family, the church, and the society–we are to love and serve the neighbors who are brought into our lives by this calling. And love and service to our neighbor in vocation is our “living sacrifice,” an example of the cross bearing that our Lord calls us to: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”(Luke 9:23).

But what about the “merchant”–that is, people in the business world? Ruskin says that running a business takes just as much intelligence, personal skills, and leadership ability as is needed in the military, the legal profession, and the church. The difference, he concludes, is that people in business are perceived to be primarily self-interested:

Now, there can be no question but that the tact, foresight, decision, and other mental powers, required for the successful management of a large mercantile concern, if not such as could be compared with those of a great lawyer, general, or divine, would at least match the general conditions of mind required in the subordinate officers of a ship, or of a regiment, or in the curate of a country parish. If, therefore, all the efficient members of the so-called liberal professions are still, somehow, in public estimate of honour, preferred before the head of a commercial firm, the reason must lie deeper than in the measurement of their several powers of mind.

And the essential reason for such preference will he found to lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed to act always selfishly. His work may be very necessary to the community, but the motive of it is understood to be wholly personal. The merchant’s first object in all his dealings must be (the public believe) to get as much for himself, and leave as little to his neighbour (or customer) as possible.

In defense of all of you “merchants,” I would add, though, that people in business do serve their neighbors, often in self-sacrificial ways. Ruskin omits the aspect of vocation that teaches how God works through human beings in their various callings in order to bless and provide for His creation. Even the selfish merchant only interested in his profits is compelled to serve his neighbor. If the businesses doesn’t provide goods or services that help their customers, they will not stay in business very long.

The merchant serves his neighbor, whether or not he loves them. Likely, because of his sinful nature, he mainly loves himself. Faith in Christ bears fruit, though, in the love of neighbor. So the Christian merchant can carry out his vocation as an act of faith and love. The business still must make a profit or it will not last, but vocation can give it another dimension. And if Christians in business demonstrate a spirit of self-sacrificial love and service for their customers and their employees, they too will find themselves admired.

The same, of course, is true for soldiers, lawyers, clergymen, and every other vocation we look up to. (What would those be today? Not politicians, who have developed a reputation for selfishness and power-seeking, rather than public service. We admire athletes, though I’m not sure how Ruskin’s thesis applies to them. I suppose they sacrifice themselves in their physical discipline and for the sake of their team.) A soldier might serve his country without loving it, or give his life for his comrades without loving them, but the love gives his sacrifice a greater meaning. A pastor might serve his flock without loving them as he should, though this is something all Christians must grow in as their faith grows.

Here is how Ruskin summarizes his thoughts about vocation:

Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily necessities of life, have hitherto existed — three exist necessarily, in every civilised nation:

The Soldier’s profession is to defend it.

The Pastor’s to teach it.

The Physician’s to keep it in health.

The lawyer’s to enforce justice in it.

The Merchant’s to provide for it.

And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die for it.

“On due occasion,” namely: –

The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle.

The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague.

The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood.

The lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice.

The Merchant–what is his “due occasion” of death?

It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of us. For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Ruskin, by the way, often applies Christian ideas in fresh and unexpected ways. In my book Painters of Faith, I discuss and apply Ruskin’s view that aesthetics–what we find beautiful–is an intimation of the qualities of God, since, he said, ultimately, we can find pleasure in no one but Him. Thus, evocations of infinity are sublime and give us pleasure–because God is infinite. Works of art that combine unity and complexity are beautiful–because the Triune God is both complex and unified. (Painters of Faith is selling on Amazon for $59, but my daughter is selling them, through a coupon code she is offering, for just $18!)

Photograph: John Ruskin by W. & D. Downey / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons [detail]

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The Police, Protests, and Vocation

Last updated on: June 8, 2020 at 9:18 am By Gene Veith

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Protests against racism. Protests against the shutdown. The lawlessness of looters. The lawlessness of the government. Police brutality. Calls to defund or even eliminate the police. Defunding and eliminating businesses. What do we make of all this?

I’d like to look at our current troubles from the perspective of the doctrine of vocation. To review, we all have multiple vocations, or callings, from God, in the estates that He established for human life: the household (the family [marriage, parenthood, childhood] and the economy [how we make our living]); the church (pastors, parishioners); the state (the society and its government, as officials and as citizens).

The purpose of each of our vocations is to love and serve our neighbors; that is, the particular human beings whom we deal with in our various callings. When we do, God Himself works through our vocations to bring His blessings. But we can also sin in our vocations, insisting that our neighbors serve us, and using our positions to hate and hurt our neighbors.

So what about the police? They are among the lawful magistrates of Romans 13 whom God uses to restrain and to punish evildoer, thus making it possible for sinful human beings to live together in societies.

But even government officials are obliged to love and serve their neighbors whom they are supervising. They should not use their power and authority for their own self-aggrandizement, but for the good of their people. Otherwise, they are sinning against and violating their vocation.

Being a police officer is a high and holy calling. They love and serve their neighbors by protecting the public from criminals and lawlessness. Sometimes police officers sacrifice their lives for us. They deserve our honor and our gratitude. The slogan of many police forces perfectly describes their vocation: “To serve and protect.”

In fulfilling their vocation, police officers must also love and serve their neighbors whom they apprehend. The police are among the lawful magistrates who “bear the sword” (Romans 13:4) and so are authorized to use deadly force in carrying out their duty to protect the public. But they should not mistreat the malefactors whom they take into custody.

Those of us who have received a traffic ticket might recall the elaborate courtesy with which they were treated by the patrol officer. (“Sir, are you aware that you were going 85 miles per hour in a 55 mile per hour zone. Would you please give me your license and registration? Thank you. I am writing you a ticket to encourage you to drive more safely next time. Have a nice day.”) Yes, such chilly formality is intimidating and makes us feel guilty, but the officer has been trained to treat even lawbreakers like us with respect, as human beings whom he is holding responsible for our actions.

Kneeling on the neck of someone already in handcuffs, who is begging for breath, is a violation of a police officer’s vocation. He was not loving, serving, or protecting the neighbor whom he had in custody.

We also have a vocation of citizenship, which requires us to love and serve our country and our fellow citizens. Racism is a repudiation of that vocation. Instead of loving and serving our neighbors of a different race, we hate and mistreat them. God does not call us to do that.

Protesting the police officer’s killing of George Floyd and the wider problem of racism can indeed be a way of loving and serving our neighbors. It thus falls under the scope of the vocation of citizenship. Such protests also lawful, falling under the Constitution’s protections of our civil liberties, as defined in the first Article of the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Notice that this also applies to those who have been protesting the COVID-19 shutdown, the closure of churches, and related “grievances.”

But if a protester, even one whose cause is just, starts smashing windows, looting stores, setting buildings on fire, throwing bricks at police officers, assaulting bystanders, or threatening the public with weapons, it’s a different story. Instead of loving the neighbor, the rioter is stealing from, terrorizing, or physically harming the neighbor. God does not call citizens to do such things. This is a violation of the citizen’s vocation. And it signals the need for the police officers’ vocation.

Do you see any other applications of the doctrine of vocation in our current troubles? (See also my post Vocation and the Epidemic. And see my book, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life.)

UPDATE: The Minneapolis City Council, in a veto-proof majority, have announced plans to disband the city’s police force. Other cities are also considering either defunding or eliminating the police. They would be replaced by “mental health providers, social workers, victim advocates and other community members.” How do you think that will work?

Photo: Skyfox11 at English Wikipedia / Public domain

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The Vocation of Weird Al Yankovic

Last updated on: May 4, 2020 at 7:46 am By Gene Veith

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Remember Weird Al Yankovic, known for his parodies of iconic pop songs and their videos? Creator of such masterpieces as “Eat it!” “Like a Surgeon,” “Another One Rides the Bus,” “Amish Paradise,” “Smells Like Nirvana”? He is still going strong.

Sam Anderson–who wrote a fantastic book about Oklahoma City–has published a profile and appreciation of the great man in the New York Times Magazine, telling about his life as a sheltered nerdy kid with no friends, how he turned to humor, his unlikely success, and his sheer artistry. Anderson attended one of his live concerts recently and concluded, “this was the single best performance of any kind that I had ever seen in my life.” And in an interview with Weird Al–who turns out to be a devoted family man who doesn’t drink, smoke, swear, lose his temper, or fail to talk with his fans–we are treated with a detailed account, complete with outtakes, of how he composed his rap parody “White & Nerdy.”

Here is a sample from Anderson’s article, “The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic: National economies collapse; species go extinct; political movements rise and fizzle. But — somehow, for some reason — Weird Al keeps rocking”
(my bolds):

What a Weird Al parody did was enact a tiny revolution. It took the whole glamorous architecture of American mainstream cool — Michael Jackson’s otherworldly moves, Madonna’s sexual taboos — and extracted all of the coolness. Into that void, Weird Al inserted the least cool person in the world: himself. And by proxy, all the rest of us weirdos, along with our uncool lives. “Beat It,” a ubiquitous superhit about avoiding street violence, became “Eat It,” a nasally monologue about picky eating. (“Have a banana, have a whole bunch — it doesn’t matter what you had for lunch. Just eat it.”) “I Love Rock ’n Roll,” a churning anthem of hard living and the devil’s music, became “I Love Rocky Road,” a squawking paean to stuffing your face with ice cream. It is no accident that much of Yankovic’s music was about food — everyone ate food, every day, celebrities and nerds alike. It was the great equalizer. . . .

Michael Schur, the creator of “The Good Place” and co-creator of “Parks and Recreation,” remembers the force of Weird Al’s 1992 parody of Nirvana.

“ ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ comes out, and it’s like the perfect voice for all the simmering anger of an entire generation of kids,” Schur said. “That song is vicious and angry and aggressive but also laconic and disaffected and scary. And it was immediately a gigantic thing in American culture. Then Weird Al does ‘Smells Like Nirvana’ and completely deflates it — the importance and seriousness and angst. That’s a service he has always provided: to remind people that rock is about grittiness and authenticity and finding your voice and relating to an audience, but it’s also fundamentally absurd. Being a rock star is stupid. We as a culture are genuflecting at the altar of these rock stars, and Weird Al comes out with this crazy curly hair and an accordion, and he just blows it all into smithereens by singing about Spam.

And as if that were not enough, the Anglican Luther-fan David Zahl at Mockingbird writes about Anderson’s article and his own appreciation for Weird Al, usefully embedding some of his videos. In the course of his discussion, Zahl invokes the V-word: Vocation.

From David Zahl, “The Ministry of Weirdness, Courtesy of The Rev. Alfred Yankovic“:

Absurd as it sounds, Alfred Yankovic may constitute the final link in the holy trinity of 80s American pop culture alongside Dolly Parton and Fred Rogers. What I mean is he appears to be that rare celebrity who understands–and fulfills–his role as a spiritual calling. A vocation, if you will. Because what Anderson describes in the article is nothing short of a ministry. This is a man whose art and presence, under the auspices of pure ridiculousness, imparts grace to those who come into contact with it. And not a superficial form either.

There’s a clear link here between the unlikelihood of the messenger and the depth of the resonance, something dead serious (and good!) transpiring under the aegis of the absurd. . . .

The first inkling I got came after A Mess of Help came out. I had spoken at an event somewhere, and afterward, a middle-aged woman approached me to asked me what I thought about… Weird Al. The gleam in her eye told me it was less of a question and more of a secret handshake. If it was a test, I failed. But I heard from her a few months after the event, saying that she’d put a copy of the book in his hands at a meet-n-greet, and then asking me to pray for him, since he was on the road and far from his… church. Huh, I thought, filing that last tidbit away for a rainy day reddit investigation.

Well, Anderson’s article has officially spared me that investigation. His testimony of what Weird Al meant to him growing up–as well as what Al meant to Andy Samberg, Lin Manuel-Miranda, and Michael Schur (Parks and Rec, The Good Place)–stopped me in my tracks. And Al’s own “origin” only made matters more profound. This wasn’t that cruel subversion known as nerd-cool, nor a novel strand of seculosity. It was something far more beautiful, more akin to a ministry of grace than anything else. That the grace in question might be based in something deeper than human kindness, well, it’s enough to make this grown man feel like a kid at Spatula City.

Indeed, Weird Al’s Wikipedia article, which is also worth reading, confirms that he “identifies as a Christian.”

Longtime reader and commenter on this blog Steve Bauer, who alerted me to these articles, which for some reason made him think of me, and observed, “Maybe words like ministry and grace are a bit of a stretch, as they usually are terms that carry an explicit Christological referent for Lutherans, so perhaps we would have to find a more generalized word for ‘unfettered favor that reflects the love of God (for the weird).'” Good point.

But still, we can see how being a comedian can be a Christian vocation, a way of loving and serving one’s neighbors. Not just by helping the neighbors laugh, thus lightening their burdens, but also, in this case, by subverting the fashionable culture that the neighbor might otherwise take too seriously.

I close with this example:

Photo by Chris Favero from USA / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

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Vocation and the Epidemic

Last updated on: March 29, 2020 at 4:00 pm By Gene Veith

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The coronavirus epidemic throws the doctrine of vocation, a prevailing theme of this blog, into high relief.

True, the most wide-spread effect of the epidemic has been to put much of the entire economy on “pause,” putting lots of people out of work, forcing many of those who still have jobs to change everything by working at home, and thwarting the normal course of vocations by not letting people leave the house.

But these challenges to vocation can cause us to understand and appreciate the concept at a deeper level. Vocation is not just about how we make our living. It’s about how God works through human beings to care for His creation. It’s about loving and serving our neighbors in our multiple stations of life.

COVID-19 and the Economic Vocations

To be sure, our economic employment is one facet of our vocations. The epidemic has turned some of the ways we look at work, whether our own or that of others, upside down .

For example, the quarantine shutdowns have created a distinction between “essential” and “non-essential” workers, with the former being allowed to still work despite the quarantines and the latter being required to stay home. Someone made the observation that many of the “good jobs” people went to college for turn out to be non-essential, whereas the lower-status blue-collar jobs turn out to be what’s really essential.

That’s an overstatement, of course, since many highly-trained professions–such as doctors, nurses, and medical researchers–are deemed “essential,” and many blue-collar workers, such as those in the restaurant industry, are not allowed to work.

But the epidemic has forced us all to appreciate the vocation of grocery store stockers, warehouse employees, food processors, farmers, truck drivers, utility crews, cleaners, and, in general, those with what Mike Rowe calls “dirty jobs” that the rest of us depend on for our very lives.

Certainly, the medical workers are heroes of the epidemic. But these other folks have been called the “unsung heroes.” Those people in both categories who can’t work from home are out in the epidemic where they could very well contract the virus, risking their lives–with some having already given their lives–in service to their neighbors.

High status “good jobs” are often their own reward, though they are often accompanied by generous remuneration. Sometimes even Christians assume that vocation has to do with their own self-fulfillment, rather than serving one’s neighbor. But jobs that are exhausting, tedious, and low-paying often serve the neighbor in more fundamental ways than do vocations held in greater esteem by the world. Those who do “dirty jobs” exemplify the self-denial and “daily” cross-bearing of sacrifice for others that Jesus commends (Luke 9:23).

Certain occupations may not be “essential,” but they are still valuable. Having to work at home–teachers trying to figure out how to use distance learning software, office workers shifting their tasks and communications online–means fulfilling our duties in new ways, thus “defamiliarizing” our work. Breaking out of the routines and having to approach our work in different ways can bring new life to a vocation.

As for those thrown out of a job completely, they are faced with the prospect of finding a new economic vocation. The Wall Street Journal has published an article saying that the epidemic has become a catalyst for a massive global reallocation of labor, with workers leaving epidemic-ravaged industries in favor of the booming hiring in those “essential” services.

COVID-19 and the Church Vocations

Significantly, in most jurisdictions, pastors are classified as “essential.” Corporate worship services might be forbidden along with other public gatherings and nursing home visits may be prohibited, but pastors can be out and about in otherwise deserted streets to go to the church to work out online services and carry out their ministry in creative ways.

Churches are hit hard by the quarantines. We need to worship in the real presence of other Christians. Meeting together online or giving pastoral care over the phone is not the same. But not being able to makes us crave it all the more.

Those with church work vocations–those who are “called” to the ministry of the Gospel–are laboring under great challenges. Those of us with lay vocations need to remember to continue to pay our tithes and offerings, even in the absence of an offering plate!

This enforced isolation is also an opportunity for spiritual growth. How many times have we told ourselves that we just don’t have time to read the Bible or that we are too busy to spend time in prayer? Well, you have time now.

COVID-19 and the Family Vocations

Our most fundamental vocations are in the family–as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.

The family, it has long been said, is an institution with serious problems, to the detriment of both the individuals involved and society itself. With both parents working, children are often left to fend for themselves, which often does not go well. Fathers in particular often spend little time with their children. Meanwhile, husbands and wives often have little time for each other, resulting in weak and troubled marriages.

We’re just too busy! We have to work! The kids are all involved with their school and are always out with their friends! We don’t have time!

Well, we aren’t so busy now. For many of us, at least, we don’t have to go to work. School has been cancelled. No one can go out with their friends. We have time.

This could be the occasion for recovering our vocations in the family. That is, for loving and serving our spouses, children, and parents.

COVID-19 and the Vocations of Citizenship

Politics, even in an election year, has been all but driven out of the headlines. Our nation was sharply polarized, even pulled apart, politically. Now, with the coronavirus threatening everyone, we are all in this together.

Governments themselves had been reduced to just political theater. But now, facing an immediate threat to the lives of Americans and an economic shutdown, government leaders are being called upon to exercise their vocation of loving and serving their citizens by protecting their lives and livelihood. Many of them have been taking forceful action to do so. This is true not only on the national level, but also with state and local governments.

Politics remains, of course, and some of our politicians are playing the usual games. And the virus is raising further political issues about the cost of bailouts, the prudence of shutting down the economy, the danger of violating the rights of citizens in an effort to keep them healthy, what the priorities should be, etc., etc.

We are seeing a new emphasis on the common good, though there remain many disputes about what that entails and how to promote it.

These issues call on the vocations of our government officials, but also the vocations of us citizens. We too must sort out these questions as we decide on what policies we should favor and who we should vote for.

The vocational question for citizens is the same as for all of the other vocations that we hold: How should we love and serve our neighbors during the epidemic?

In that light, our duties as citizens would include obeying our lawful officials in the measures they require of us–that is, observing quarantines, following social distancing rules, avoiding large gatherings, etc.–doing our best not to infect our fellow citizens, and extending help to the best of our ability according to our own vocations to those who are infected.

Photo credit: Dustin Barnes, left, and Kim Barnes, co-owners of a Great Falls cleaning company, U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Dillon Johnston [public domain]

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Thanksgiving and Vocation

Last updated on: November 24, 2019 at 6:25 pm By Gene Veith

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On Thanksgiving we give thanks to God for all of our blessings. We express gratitude for our material belongings, for our family, for our country. Before the feast, we thank God for this food and the hands that prepared it. That is to say, Thanksgiving is about vocation.

One of the most important teachings of the doctrine of vocation is that God works through human beings. He distributes His gifts by means of ordinary people carrying out their vocations in the family, the workplace, the church, and the community: giving daily bread by means of farmers and bakers; creating new life by means of mothers and fathers; protecting us by means of police, soldiers, and the legal system; healing us by means of medical professionals; giving us the benefits of technology by means of scientists, engineers, inventors, and factory workers; making works of beauty and meaning by means of artists; proclaiming His Word by means of pastors; etc., etc. And just as God blesses us through the people who do so much for us, He blesses others through us. When we love and serve our neighbors, which is the purpose of every vocation, God works through us to bless others.

Now consider this text from Luther, who develops this idea, and notice its relevance to Thanksgiving. From the Large Catechism, one of the definitive confessional documents of Lutheranism, in the explanation of the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” (my bolds):

26] For even though otherwise we experience much good from men, still whatever we receive by His command or arrangement is all received from God. For our parents, and all rulers, and every one besides with respect to his neighbor, have received from God the command that they should do us all manner of good, so that we receive these blessings not from them, but, through them, from God. For creatures are only the hands, channels, and means whereby God gives all things, as He gives to the mother breasts and milk to offer to her child, and corn and all manner of produce from the earth for nourishment, none of which blessings could be produced by any creature of itself. (LC, First Commandment, Paragraph 26)

These are great quotes about vocation:

“Whatever we receive by His command or arrangement is all received from God.”

“We receive these blessings not from them, but, through them, from God.”

“Creatures are only the hands, channels, and means whereby God gives all things.”

Thus, at Thanksgiving we are grateful for our parents, rulers, corn, “all manner of produce,” and on and on, and, while expressing our gratitude to the people who have blessed us in the work of their callings. I love what Kevin D. Williamson said about this:

As you cut into that turkey today, remember that somebody did the hard and dirty work of raising it, butchering it, packing it, driving the truck that brought it to your town, stocking the store shelves — and the very difficult work of figuring out how to get all that done, from domesticating turkeys to fueling that truck, a long unbroken line of human effort and ingenuity stretching back to the first guy who figured out how to chip a piece of stone a certain way to make it more useful.

And, in turn, our gratitude should go back further, to the God who has worked through all of these folks–giving them their skills, ingenuity, and opportunities–as “channels” of His love.

That Luther quote also reminds us that Christianity has a high view of creation; that is, physical reality. The entire universe has been created by our God. It is not an illusion, as in Buddhism; or a web of deception spun by a malign goddess, as in Hinduism; or a meaningless absurdity as in existentialism. Rather, the creation is good, indeed, very good: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Furthermore, the Second Person of the Trinity became incarnate in this creation, becoming a physical human being, who physically died and physically rose again. And God is not a distant deity looking down on the world from afar off, as in some religions; rather, He is intimately involved in His creation, feeding the fowls of the air, clothing the lilies of the field, and giving human beings what they need (Matthew 6).

And yet some Christian theologies, while agreeing with all of that, have managed to downplay the value of physical reality. Mysticism, subjectivity, neo-Platonism, dualism, and the influence of heresies such as Gnosticism have resulted in hyperspiritual versions of Christianity, in which the “spiritual realm” is seen as the true locus of religion, with the “material realm” being the source of all that is bad, something to escape from or separate ourselves from.

Lutheran theology is distinctive in the way it affirms the spiritual significance of physical reality. As Luther says in the passage from the Large Catechism, God uses His “creatures”–that is, His physical creation–to give His gifts. Thus we have the Lutheran emphasis on the Sacraments, on water and bread and wine as “channels and means” for the Gospel. Also the Lutheran doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, which sees God as already ruling in the physical and social worlds. And, of course, in the Lutheran understanding of vocation.

Another connection of Thanksgiving to vocation is that this holiday has become a time for family, which is the most foundational of our vocations, where husbands and wives, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, uncles and aunts and cousins can meet together to love and serve each other.

Photo: Thanksgiving dinner at Jerry and Yvonne Snyder’s by Loren Kerns, via Flickr, Creative Commons License

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