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<\/a><\/p>\nJust as the early church is said to have co-opted pagan festivals to turn them into Christian holidays (though this didn\u2019t happen<\/a> as much as has been claimed), the Cranach blog has been pushing the idea of taking over Labor Day and turning it into a commemoration and celebration of the Christian doctrine of vocation.So we\u2019ll devote this Monday Miscellany to Labor Day, I mean, Vocation Day.<\/p>\n The good news is that the concept of vocation is catching on.\u00a0 The bad news is that yet lots of people are still misunderstanding it, though in interesting and revealing ways:<\/p>\n Catholics discover Luther\u2019s doctrine of vocation, but some are pushing back.\u00a0 Some evangelicals hold to the Catholic view of vocation, with twists.\u00a0 And <\/strong>secularists adopt a Reformed view of vocation without faith.<\/strong><\/p>\n We will close the column with links to what vocation actually is.<\/p>\n Catholicism used to reserve the word \u201cvocation\u201d for callings to be priests, monks, and nuns.\u00a0 Luther taught that laypeople too have vocations, that God calls all Christians to tasks, relationships, and offices in which they can serve God as they serve their neighbors.<\/p>\n But Vatican II issued a Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity<\/a>, the first chapter of which is entitled \u201cThe Vocation of the Laity to the Apostolate,\u201d which says things like this:<\/p>\n This plan for the spiritual life of the laity should take its particular character from their married or family state or their single or widowed state, from their state of health, and from their professional and social activity. They should not cease to develop earnestly the qualities and talents bestowed on them in accord with these conditions of life, and they should make use of the gifts which they have received from the Holy Spirit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That sounds like Luther\u2019s point that we have vocations in the three estates of the church, the family, and the society, including the workplace and other \u201cconditions of life\u201d that God has brought us to and equipped us for.\u00a0 (The Vatican does not credit Luther for these insights, of course.)<\/p>\n Pope St. John Paul II made an even bigger (uncredited) concession to Luther in his encyclical Laborem Exercens<\/a> [Through Work], which echoes\u2013perhaps in a more synergistic way\u2013Luther\u2019s teaching that God Himself works by means of human vocations (italics in the original):<\/p>\n The word of God\u2019s revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamental truth that\u00a0man,\u00a0<\/em>created in the image of God,\u00a0shares by his work in the activity of the Creator. . . . <\/em>Awareness that man\u2019s work is a participation in God\u2019s activity ought to permeate, as the Council teaches, even \u201cthe most ordinary everyday activities.<\/em>\u00a0For, while providing the substance of life for themselves and their families, men and women are performing their activities in a way which appropriately benefits society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nevertheless, Catholic theologian David Paul Deavel discusses this broader and richer view of vocation, while also pushing back against it.\u00a0 He has written an article for Catholic World Report<\/em> entitled Do we have vocations to marriage and singleness?<\/a><\/p>\n He says of that wider view, \u201cThere is a healthy aspect to this. There are also dangers.\u201d<\/p>\n The healthy aspect is that this conversation has made people think about the fact that all Christians have a primordial vocation to be holy before the Lord in their own lives. An unfortunate tendency throughout the Church\u2019s history, on the part of some Christians, is to treat holiness as the business of priests, monks, nuns, and other religious\u2014the \u201cprofessionals.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The danger, though, is that it risks neglecting \u201ca different level of vocation: namely, to a particular state of life. And this sense of \u2018having a vocation\u2019 is usually to the more extraordinary callings of holy orders or religious life.\u201d\u00a0 He acknowledges that popes, church fathers, and even the recent Catholic catechism have been calling marriage a vocation, but he tries to explain those statements away and\u2013unusually for a conservative Catholic\u2013basically disagrees:<\/p>\n But is marriage a vocation in the same way as a vocation, say, to be a cloistered Benedictine or a diocesan priest?<\/p>\n Even though many talk about marriage as a vocation in the same way, I doubt the wisdom. . . .<\/p>\n Better to act on the basis that one is free to pursue marriage as long as God has not called one to a more specific vocation, such as religious life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Luther, on the other hand, teaches that marriage, as well as parenthood, are indeed vocations.\u00a0 Not only that, he teaches that vocations are multiple.\u00a0 Thus, a person may have a church work vocation and<\/em> have a vocation to marriage.<\/p>\n Plough has posted a section from Holly Berkley Fletcher\u2019s book Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism<\/a>\u00a0entitled \u201cWhat Is a Christian Calling?<\/a>\u00a0with the deck, \u201cA child of overseas missionaries asks how we know what our calling is and whether it really comes from God.\u201d<\/p>\n She tells of her life as a Southern Baptist missionary kid.\u00a0 As in traditional Catholicism, the understanding of \u201cdivine calling\u201d has to do with church work, as in the calling to be a minister, or, as in her essay, the calling to be a missionary.\u00a0 She speaks of the difficulty involved in what Catholics call \u201cvocational discernment.\u201d<\/p>\n She says how her father would discern what God was calling him to do.\u00a0 He would stand the Bible, let it all open, then randomly put your finger on the page.\u00a0 \u201cWhatever verse it happens to rest upon is the word God has for you.\u201d\u00a0 She then charmingly tells how she tried that when trying to talk her parents into letting her go to boarding school.\u00a0 Her finger first fell on a passage about a rock badger.\u00a0 The second try led her to a verse about a siege that would lead to parents eating their own children.\u00a0 Finally, she landed on the passage about God telling Abram to leave his family for the land of promise.\u00a0 She showed that to her father, whereupon she got to go to boarding school.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the level of personal faith, too \u2013 and even in secular forms of self-help \u2013 many American Christians have made calling key to lives of meaning and purpose,\u201d Fletcher writes.\u00a0 Today we have a plethora of choices<\/em>,\u00a0 and Christians often expect God to direct them all.\u00a0 We don\u2019t usually know exactly what choice God wants us to make, so we can be terrified lest our choices go against God\u2019s will\u2013and calling\u2013for our lives.\u00a0 And those who are convinced of God\u2019s call can use that as an excuse to do what they shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Making the decisions that define our lives gives us a sense of agency and destiny. But it can also produce anxiety and fuel unrealistic expectations and deep disappointments. On a spiritual level, we might live in fear of missing our calling, or feel guilt over being disobedient to it. The pursuit of something perceived as a divine calling can encourage destructive narcissism, a hero\/martyr complex that erodes self-awareness and deflects accountability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To her credit, as Fletcher works through all of this, she arrives at a view closer to Luther\u2019s understanding:<\/p>\n As a person of faith myself, I\u2019ve become less fixated on what God might have planned for me personally than on the universal Christian calling to love my neighbor as myself and the winding road toward understanding what that really means and allowing it to change me. . . .<\/p>\n Each new day offers opportunities to listen for this kind of calling \u2013 to use the gifts we\u2019ve been given and serve the people we meet along the way. . . .<\/p>\n The discovery and expression of who God created us to be through relationship, vocation, service, or even the most boring of responsibilities, is the miraculous conduit through which we fulfill our divine purpose. . . .<\/p>\n Maybe we don\u2019t need to go searching for our calling; we only need to show up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Exactly!\u00a0 Vocation is not about our choices.\u00a0 Nor is it about trying to find God\u2019s special plan for our lives, as if God\u2019s will is something we can thwart.\u00a0 Vocation is not primarily about us<\/em>, our self-fulfillment or the great things we do for God.\u00a0 Rather, vocation is about loving our neighbors<\/em>.\u00a0 We do this where God places us, in the here and now, where we find ourselves in the ordinary course of our lives.\u00a0 \u201cWe only need to show up,\u201d whereupon God will use us, as we love and serve the neighbors He brings into our lives.<\/p>\n Unherd<\/em> has published Michael Cuenco\u2019s article Grindset Is the New Protestant Ethic<\/a>.\u00a0 He refers to the phenomenon displayed on social media of \u201cthe archetypal ambitious young professional man who must \u2018grind\u2019 to get ahead in a cutthroat world\u201d:<\/p>\n He is defined by his routine, the \u201cgrindset,\u201d which sees him wake up early, take cold showers, work out religiously, eat austerely, and dedicate the rest of his energies to a monotonous but lucrative job, usually in finance or tech. . . .<\/p>\n The grindset displaces all the other pursuits and pleasures, including romantic, sexual, and social life \u2014 as well as the whole concept of open-ended leisure. These other activities are generally derided as superfluous, if not dangerous, diversions from the only thing that should matter to any serious individual: his work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Cuenco quotes other observers of this phenomenon:\u00a0 \u201c[Derek] Thompson observes that \u2018what is most striking about [grindset] videos \u2026 is the element they typically lack: other people.\u2019 The protagonist typically wakes up alone, stays that way through his day, and goes to bed alone.\u201d\u00a0 This can be seen, says Cuenco, in \u201cmanosphere\u201d influencers\u2013some of whom scorn marriage as weakening men\u2013and in the liberal meritocracy, where friendships and relationships are treated as disposable means to reach the top.<\/p>\n Cuenco then relates the \u201cgrindset\u201d mentality to Max Weber\u2019s pioneering work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/a>.\u00a0 Weber sees the beginning of capitalism in the Calvinist work ethic, with its ascetic self-discipline and its intensive fixation on work.\u00a0 Weber related that to the Protestant doctrine of vocation, which displaced otherworldly spirituality into human work and the secular arena.\u00a0 The Puritans did not believe in spending all the money they made on themselves, so they plowed it back into their businesses, socked it away in banks, and invested it in other ventures.\u00a0 Thus creating capitalism<\/p>\n Weber speculated that the reason the Puritans worked so hard was that they believed success in business was a sign of God\u2019s favor, thus reassurance that they were of God\u2019s elect.\u00a0 Now I have spoken<\/a> and written<\/a> about how Weber was wrong about this\u2013that view no Calvinist would believe his earthly success was a sign of election and the Prosperity Gospel had not been invented yet\u2013and other scholars agree<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the Calvinist view of vocation does tend to emphasize \u201cjob,\u201d whereas Luther subordinates economic labor to the estates of the family and the society.\u00a0 And it does tend to focus on the isolated individual glorifying God through his work, whereas Luther\u2019s view has a social dimension and focuses on the needs of the neighbor.<\/p>\n Cuenco does recognize that the Puritans did emphasize their families above all other social obligations.\u00a0 He comments, \u201cThe grindset, it would appear, takes this process of social delimitation several steps further, heralding a shift from the family to the lone individual.\u201d\u00a0 He concludes,<\/p>\n The original Puritans grasped at the nascent modern notion of the individual through a theological lens \u2014 they saw him as an instrument of a providential plan. But they still retained social and civic ideals, centred around the building of a \u201cgodly commonwealth.\u201d By contrast, the pull of secularism and today\u2019s technological environment has made it possible to dwell in a society without either religious community or human companionship, thus the deracinated Calvinism in which the individual is left alone with\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0his work to preoccupy him, with neither a God to sanctify his labor nor a family to consume its fruits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In order to remain social human beings, Cuenco says, we need a different perspective.\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s missing today,\u201d he says, is an \u201cideal to leaven and humanise our labours and to anchor them in a more hopeful future.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, again, I offer Luther\u2019s doctrine of vocation.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to be a Lutheran to believe in it.\u00a0 Some of Luther\u2019s theology is controversial, but vocation is one of Luther\u2019s contributions, like reading the Bible in your own language or singing hymns in church, that all Christians can appreciate and profit from.<\/p>\n For a fuller explanation, read this essay<\/a> I wrote, or my book God at Work:\u00a0 Your Christian Vocation in All of Life,<\/a> or Gustaf Wingren\u2019s Luther on Vocation<\/a>.<\/p>\n And have a happy Vocation Day!<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Catholics discover Luther’s doctrine of vocation, but some are pushing back.\u00a0 Some evangelicals hold to the Catholic view of vocation, with twists.\u00a0 And secularists adopt a Reformed view of vocation without faith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":65538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,21,38,47,48],"tags":[16994,16997,17003,1254,2752,17000],"class_list":["post-85187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-family","category-holidays","category-reformation","category-theology","category-vocation","tag-catholic-view-of-vocation","tag-evangelical-views-of-vocation","tag-grindset","tag-labor-day","tag-max-weber","tag-reformed-views-of-vocation"],"yoast_head":"\nCatholics discover Luther\u2019s doctrine of vocation, but some are pushing back<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Some evangelicals agree with Catholics on vocation, with twists<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Secularists adopt a Reformed view of vocation without faith<\/strong><\/h4>\n