“Two Kinds of Righteousness” and Vocation

Last updated on: February 26, 2019 at 5:47 pm By Gene Veith

I’m in a reading group that just finished discussing Luther’s Two Kinds of Righteousness. Friends, you have got to read this brief tract based on one of Luther’s sermons from 1519. It’s from the early days of the Reformation, two years after the 95 Theses and two years before the showdown with the emperor at the Diet of Worms. This is Luther at his very best.

Setting aside polemics, despite the tumultuous controversies of the time–this was also the year of the Leipzig disputation with Johann Eck over indulgences and the authority of the pope–this work is pure pastoral care. It is one of the clearest, most penetrating, most profound, and most beautiful expositions of the Gospel–with stunning applications of Scripture–that I have ever come across.

And it is helpful in explaining something that we often overlook, that the “alien righteousness” we have in Christ is a real righteousness, delivering us from the “alien” sinfulness that we have in Adam. When we are united to Christ by faith–as a result of His grace and the Holy Spirit’s work through Word and Sacrament–we are saved by His good works, which become ours, since we are members of His body.

Therefore a man can with confidence boast in Christ and say: “Mine are Christ’s living, doing, and speaking, his suffering and dying, mine as much as if I had lived, done, spoken, suffered, and died as he did.” Just as a bridegroom possesses all that is his bride’s and she all that is his—for the two have all things in common because they are one flesh [Gen. 2:24]—so Christ and the church are one spirit [Eph. 5:29-32].

Furthermore, Luther explains the connection of this “alien righteousness” that we did not accomplish with our “proper righteousness”; that is, the good works that are the fruit and consequence of Christ’s righteousness in us.

Luther relates all of this to vocation. That is, to the Christian life as we each, in our various capacities and walks of life, love and serve our neighbors.

Luther’s text for this message is Philipians 2:5-6: “have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” He focuses not just on what this passage teaches about Christ but also on what this passage means when it says “have this mind among yourselves.”

I was struck by this passage, which specifies how we are to have the “mind” of Christ in our different vocations in the way we ought to empty ourselves–as Christ did–in love and service to our neighbors:

Whenever we, on the ground of our righteousness, wisdom, or power, are haughty or angry with those who are unrighteous, foolish, or less powerful than we—and this is the greatest perversion—righteousness works against righteousness, wisdom against wisdom, power against power. For you are powerful, not that you may make the weak weaker by oppression, but that you may make them powerful by raising them up and defending them. You are wise, not in order to laugh at the foolish and thereby make them more foolish, but that you may undertake to teach them as you yourself would wish to be taught. You are righteous that you may vindicate and pardon the unrighteous, not that you may only condemn, disparage, judge, and punish. For this is Christ’s example for us, as he says, “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). He further says in Luke 9:55-56, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

When “righteousness works against righteousness”! Using our very righteousness to mistreat people and thus to be unrighteous! This is an example of the subtlety and precision of this work.

So read the Two Kinds of Righteousness. free at the link (or buy it here or look it up in Luther’s Works, Vol. 32, pp. 297-306). It’s exceedingly short, only 20 brief paragraphs! So you probably have time to read it right now. You will be glad you did.

Illustration by John Warner Barber, “Christian Similitudes” (1866), p. 103, via Flickr, Public Domain.

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Vocation, Technology, & Luther’s “Theology of Tools”

Last updated on: February 12, 2019 at 4:51 pm By Gene Veith

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Rev. A. Trevor Sutton, the co-writer with me of Authentic Christianity: How Lutheran Theology Speaks to a Postmodern World, is working on a doctorate in which he is studying the relationship between technology and theology. He has written some interesting articles lately that I wanted to pass along.

In Mr. Zuckerberg, Meet Martin Luther, he applies the doctrine of vocation to Silicon Valley. Like the “Robber Barons” of the Gilded Age, the tycoons of Silicon Valley have been both lauded for their economy-and-culture-changing entrepreneurship and condemned for their all-too-human faults. Trevor shows that not only in their influence but in the “digital interfaces” that they rule over, the CEOs of high-tech companies function much like the “rulers” whom Luther exhorts to serve their subjects.

Then Trevor connects technology to what Luther wrote about tools, in the context of vocation. I’ll give you a sampling of that.

From A. Trevor Sutton, Mr. Zuckerberg, Meet Martin Luther:

Luther’s advice for Zuckerberg would extend beyond principles for social responsibility in leadership; he also wrote about technology. Similar to power and influence, technology should be used in service to neighbors. In The Sermon on the Mount (1538), Luther suggested:

If you are a manual laborer, you find that the Bible has been put into your workshop, into your hand, into your heart. It teaches and preaches how you should treat your neighbor. Just look at your tools—at your needle or thimble, your beer barrel, your goods, your scales or yardstick or measure—and you will read this statement inscribed on them. Everywhere you look, it stares at you. Nothing that you handle every day is so tiny that it does not continually tell you this, if you will only listen. … All this is continually crying out to you: “Friend, use me in your relations with your neighbor just as you would want your neighbor to use his property in his relations with you.”

In Luther’s mind, the methods and tools of one’s craft—technology—are rightly used when deployed in service to neighbors; needles, thimbles, beer barrels, scales, computers, and smartphones ought to enrich the lives of others instead of hurting, harming, or taking advantage of them. This implies also that those who create these technologies must also consider the ends to which they are being employed—to help or harm others. This understanding of technology suggests that the Silicon Valley creators of software, user interfaces, algorithms, and social networking platforms are more responsible to the individual users than the tech investors and profit margins to whom they’ve traditionally answered. One can imagine the widespread change that would occur if designers, programmers, and tech companies as a whole created their technologies with the well-being of their neighbors at the forefront of their minds. To be certain, this way of producing technology would also be very disruptive to the current economic paradigm.

Zuckerberg and other leaders in Silicon Valley possess considerable power through their social networking sites, whether they’re willing to say so or not. And while Luther may not be able to help us fix the inherent problems of our economic system, his theology of tools—that is, arguing that the technologies we create and employ should serve rather than take advantage of our neighbors—should at least give Zuckerberg and other tech leaders pause to consider, “for whom are we to fix things.”

Illustration via MaxPixel, CC0, Public Domain

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Psychologists on Vocation

Last updated on: January 10, 2019 at 5:56 pm By Gene Veith

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Even secularists today are talking about the importance of having a sense of “calling”; that is, a sense of vocation (a Latinate word that means, simply, “calling”). Many secularist treatments seem to be oblivious to the fact that this is a theological concept and that, strictly speaking, you cannot have a “calling” apart from Someone who “calls” you. Nevertheless, this interest in vocation is a good sign, demonstrating that churches would do well to recover and to teach the doctrine of vocation, which is a subject of urgent interest to people today, both inside and outside the church.

Furthermore, the doctrine of vocation teaches that while non-believers do not know the Caller–so that their work is not the fruit of their faith, as it can be for Christians–God nevertheless does work through non-believers as well.

I have written quite a bit about vocation. To review, vocation is not just about how we make a living. Rather, we have multiple vocations in the “estates” that God has designed for human life: the family, the society, and the church. Also the workplace, which might be an aspect of any of those estates. God providentially works through human beings in their vocations to give His gifts: He provides daily bread through farmers, bakers, and shopkeepers; He creates new life by means of fathers and mothers; He protects us by means of lawful authorities; He proclaims His Word by means of pastors, etc., etc. And the purpose of every vocation is to love and serve one’s neighbors.

I stumbled across an article in Aeon that summarizes psychological research on “finding your true calling.” This is not the theological understanding of calling. For one thing, it restricts the discussion to the workplace. And instead of focusing on loving and serving the neighbors whom your calling brings to you to love and to serve, it is more about self-fulfillment, which is NOT what Christian vocation is all about. So though it misses the main points about “calling,” I found it interesting nonetheless. It can help us see some other misconceptions about vocation. And it illuminates, from a secular point of view, some other aspects of our callings and how we should think about them.

I’ll give the five points it raises and comment about each one. (Go to the link, which tells about the research in each of these areas.) From Christian Jarrett, Psychology’s five revelations for finding your true calling:

(1) “First, there’s a difference between having a harmonious passion and an obsessive passion.”

The article uses the language of having a “passion” for your work. “Passion” used to be a negative word, evoking strong emotions that need to be curbed. But in this sense it refers to a certain zeal or enthusiasm (which used to be another bad word) for your work. But we hear this a lot, as in, “you need to have a passion for what you are doing.”

The research has found two different kinds of passion in this sense. An “obsessive passion” is an all-consuming pre-occupation with your work or what you are trying to accomplish. That kind of passion leads mainly to stress, lack of control, and burn-out. “Harmonious passion,” though, involves a sense of control and harmony with other facets of your life. This kind does result in better work performance and over-all vitality.

(2) “Secondly, having an unanswered calling in life is worse than having no calling at all.”

This says that if you have a sense of calling to do something, but it is “unanswered”–that is, you aren’t doing it–this creates dissatisfaction with what you are doing, as well as other kinds of frustration and unhappiness. This is in contrast to the Christian understanding that vocation is in the here and now, that God has called you to this moment and this task where He has placed you. (See #4 below.)

(3) “The third finding to bear in mind is that, without passion, grit is ‘merely a grind’. “

Experts have been referring to “grit”; that is, perseverance and toughness. Such “grit” is important to effectiveness at any kind of work. The psychological research cited here has found that you need “grit” along with “passion.” If you just have grit, but no passion for what you are doing, you will only experience drudgery. While if you have passion but no grit, you will get little done.

The doctrine of vocation does include “bearing the cross” in vocation, the trials and tribulations that your vocation will bring upon you, the difficulties and failures involved in loving and serving your neighbor. Yes, indeed, we must persevere in our callings (for example, marriage), even when it isn’t easy. But bearing our own crosses and realizing how they are taken up into Christ’s cross as we depend on Him builds up our faith and contributes to our sanctification.

(4) Another finding is that, when you invest enough effort, you might find that your work becomes your passion.

This is an important finding. If you don’t have “passion” for the work you have to do, if you devote yourself and put in the effort, you can develop the passion. The passion doesn’t necessarily come first.

This is more constructive than some of the other findings. It fits in more with the teaching that your calling is in the here and now. Your attitude–particularly, for a Christian, acting in faith, with a realization that God is present, even in this boring job or this frustrating relationship–can transfigure how you see that calling and how you experience it.

(5) “Finally, if you think that passion comes from doing a job you enjoy, you’re likely to be disappointed.” Instead, the beneficial, satisfying passion comes “from doing what you believe in or value in life.”

This is extraordinarily important and deals with a misconception that Christians too often have. Your calling is not measured by how much you enjoy what you are doing. In secular terms, your “passion” is not the same as enjoyment. If you aren’t getting pleasure from your job, or your family, or your church, that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of your calling. Rather, the good kind of “harmonious” passion comes from doing what is right, knowing that your work has a purpose that you are committed to. For a Christian, that means loving and serving your neighbor. Such a purpose can give your work, your relationships, your responsibilities, your offices, a meaning and a “passion” that can make all the difference.

If you are interested in vocation, you might want to check out my “trilogy” on the subject:

God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life,

with Mary Moerbe, Family Vocation: God’s Calling in Marriage, Parenting, and Childhood

Working for Our Neighbor: A Lutheran Primer on Vocation, Economics, and Ordinary Life

Illustration by lsucc via Pixabay, Creative Commons

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Trying to be a Missionary Apart from Vocation

Last updated on: December 3, 2018 at 10:42 am By Gene Veith

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You have probably heard about John Chau, the 26-year-old who was dropped off at Sentinel Island, home of one of the most isolated tribes on earth, so that he could tell the inhabitants about Jesus. They responded by shooting him with arrows, killing him on the beach. Some Christians are hailing him as a martyr. Some secularists are condemning both him and missionaries in general of being “colonialists.”

Lyman Stone, a missionary with the Lutheran Church-Hong Kong, offers a different perspective, applying the doctrine of vocation.

He says that Chau was sincere, well-intentioned, and pious. He didn’t want to dominate the Sentinelese, but loved them, wanting them to have the Gospel of Christ. That is good, and he will surely have his reward in Heaven.

But he did not know the Sentinelese language, had minimal preparation to be a missionary to this kind of tribe, and did not have the knowledge or skills to be successful.

This was the second time Chau went to Sentinel Island. The first time he ran up the beach shouting “I love you and Jesus loves you!” Never mind that since he didn’t know the language, the islanders had no idea what he was saying. When they started shooting arrows, he fled back to his boat, his life saved by his Bible, which stopped an arrow. The next time he went back, didn’t go so well. Witnesses from off-shore said that they saw tribe members burying Chau’s body.

Being a missionary, Stone explains, is a vocation. And God’s calling to be a missionary involves getting the training that such a vocation entails, as well as working with other Christians to accomplish the mission:

For all that God sometimes works through unexpected means, the usual way that God accomplishes his work is through the mundane vocations of normal people. God heals diseases mostly through doctors, proclaims his word mostly through pastors, and reaches uncontacted people groups mostly through long-term missionaries doing years of advanced preparation in a variety of disciplines and skills.

Some say that Chau’s case is similar to that of the five missionaries killed in Ecuador, as chronicled by Elisabeth Elliott in Through Gates of Splendor. Her husband Jim Elliott was one of those speared to death, but she came back as a missionary to that tribe and eventually brought them–including the very murderers of her husband–to Christ. But Stone contrasts Chau with the Elliotts, who did know the languages and worked with the indigenous people for 15 years before making contact with the unreached tribe that killed them.

Stone also points out that the reason the Sentinelese, who live off the coast of India, are so hostile to all outsiders, going so far as to shoot arrows at the helicopters that were checking on them after a tsunami, is likely because in the 1880s a British admiral and probable pedophile kidnapped several of their children. After he finally brought them back, the tribe, now numbering about 100, have attacked all visitors.

Read Stone’s article in its entirety, which concludes with this point:

Chau is not emblematic of how mission activity has historically proceeded but, sadly, his approach, disconnected from any rational assessment of vocation, untethered from durable community roots, decontextualized and nomadic like an Instagram travel blog account, may be what much Christian mission work looks like in the future. That is, unless Christian churches push back against that trend, and demand of mission-sending organizations that they have realistic plans for how missionaries will be engaged in a materially productive relationship with their local community.

Illustration: The Massacre of the Lamented Missionary, The Rev. J. Williams and Mr Harris [at Vanuatu], by G. Baxter (1841), via Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain].

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Thankfulness, Faith, & Vocation

Last updated on: November 21, 2018 at 7:43 am By Gene Veith

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Thanksgiving is the one national holiday that has an explicitly religious meaning. George Washington got the holiday started “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God.”

Thankfulness is an acknowledgment of dependence. In that, it is like faith.

The English word “thank” is related to the word for “think.” Part of the observance of Thanksgiving should be thinking about our blessings, which leads naturally to thanking.

Our word “gratitude” comes from the Latin word for thanks, “gratus,” from which is also derived the word “gratia,” meaning grace.

The Greek word used in the New Testament for “to thank” or “to be thankful” consists of the word for “good” and the word for “grace” or “favor.”

St. Paul enjoins us to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). The word is εὐχαριστεῖτε: eucharist!

All of this is to say that thankfulness, like faith, is a response to “grace.” God’s grace in salvation, His “unmerited favor” that He bestows upon us through Christ, but also His other “favors”: family, home, food, country, and on and on.

We teach children to say “please” and “thank you,” social niceties that are signs of the deeper meaning in our social interactions. “Please” is short for “If you please. . . ” We are asking someone to do something for us out of his or her volition, if it pleases the giver, if the giver wants to. We are asking the person for a gift of grace. And then we respond with the confession: “I thank you.”

In reality, of course, when we ask the waitress for “another cup of coffee, please,” she complies not just out of grace because it pleases her. She has to bring the coffee. That is her job. Still, the work of her vocation is a sign of the greater provision of God, who works through her as His mask, giving us our daily bread, which includes our daily coffee. We express our thanks to her and to God, our provider. Thus, before our meals, we “say grace.”

Luther says in his Freedom of the Christian, which discusses the purpose of vocation as being to love and serve our neighbors, that we should be “little Christs” to each other. So in our vocations in the family, workplace, church, and country–all of which come together around the Thanksgiving feast–we embody, in God’s temporal realm, the life of grace and faith.

Our Thanksgiving feast is a “eucharist” that speaks to us also of the ultimate Thanksgiving feast, which is not turkey and dressing but bread and wine. In that eucharist, in the company of other Christians, we receive God’s grace in the body and blood of Christ with faith and thanksgiving.

Photo: “Thanksgiving Grace” (1942) by Marjory Collins, photographer for Farm Security Administration. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Rethinking Vocation?

Last updated on: October 10, 2018 at 7:55 pm By Gene Veith

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The doctrine of vocation has been catching on. There is now something called the “Faith and Work movement,” with think tanks, publications, and programs designed to show Christians the connection between the two. (The founder of at least one of these think tanks told me that my book on vocation, God at Work, was the catalyst for his interest in the subject, which I appreciated.) But this movement may have drifted away from the specific insights that the great theologian of vocation–Martin Luther–has to offer.

Christianity Today’s cover story this month, God of the Second Shift by Jeff Haanen, calls for a rethinking of vocation. It says that much of what evangelicals have been doing with “Faith and Work” is oriented to middle class, white collar workers. The emphasis is on “following your bliss,” finding self-fulfillment, and helping college students choose a career. Working class jobs, though, the hard, often tedious labor that most people in the world have to do just to survive, get little attention. Is there a doctrine of vocation for them?

First of all, Luther’s doctrine of vocation is precisely about farmers, craftsmen, builders, laborers, milk maids, and others who work with their hands. (Luther himself was from a family of miners.) And while acknowledging its satisfactions, it also deals with work as a realm of tribulation, frustrations, and cross-bearing. For Luther, vocation is about God and the neighbor, not the self. It is all about God working through you, as you sacrifice yourself in vocation out of love and service for your neighbor.

Those who want to rethink vocation will find lots of help in the Swedish theologian Gustaf Wingren’s classic book Luther on Vocation.

Some of you may remember a post I wrote here responding to someone who cited the “danger” of Luther’s doctrine of work.

He said that Luther’s ideas can make people who are stuck in dead-end jobs content with them, rather than bettering themselves. He illustrated his point by telling about his college job at a milk-processing factory, how back-breaking and boring it was. That was not a “vocation,” he said. His job after graduating from college–being a professor of theology–was his true calling from God. Working in a factory was just a “job.” He then discussed a lady who worked with him on the canning line, how she had worked there for 15 years and how pathetic and “dehumanizing” that was.

I answered the article at length, explaining what what Luther’s doctrine of vocation is and the misconceptions about it. But then I said this, which addresses the issue raised in Christianity Today:

The one thing, though, that really bothers me in Prof. Doriani’s post, is its attitude towards that woman who had been working in that “dehumanizing” factory for 15 years.

That milk-processing factory was a means by which God provides milk to children–part of the “daily bread” that He provides to all of us. The purpose of work, again, is for the neighbor, not the self. Young Doriani would be called to serve as a businessman, as a college administrator, as a pastor, as a professor. This woman stays at that milk factory. This is reason to honor her. Not to minimize what she does.

Luther writes about vocation in terms of bearing the cross, of sacrifice, of self-denial. When you love and serve your neighbor, you deny yourself out of love for that person. Vocation is not about self-fulfillment, or enjoying your work, or not feeling drudgery.

Some work is less pleasant than others. That work is often despised by the world, in favor of more prestigious and better-paying positions. Often, those despised jobs–trash collecting, cleaning hotel rooms, tending to sewers– involves a level of love and service to the neighbor that far exceeds the socially prized work of, say, Hollywood actors and professional athletes.

In fact, I might argue that the more praised positions can be more “dehumanizing” than the more lowly ones. That is, positions that bring affluence and prestige–including, I can say from personal experience, academia–can take a toll on the “humanness” of those in the position, as well as those under their authority or those their position is supposed to serve.

Luther’s doctrine of vocation does not prevent the woman in the milk factory from taking another job or working to improve conditions at the plant or taking night courses to help her move up in the world. But it does or should prevent the rest of us from looking down on her or her work.

[Keep reading. . .]

Painting, “The Harvesters” By Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1565) – PAH1oMZ5dGBkxg at Google Cultural Institute, zoom level maximum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22554956

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