I have three young people in my care who are planning for college. They are all in Grade 11 at Kelowna Christian School. Their future lies before them. What do they want to do? What careers ought they to choose? Does Scripture authorize them to choose secular occupations or is Christian ministry the preferred option?
One of our pastors was praying for the young people at our church one Sunday with this question in mind. His prayer was that God would raise up Christian youth to be Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Teachers or Pastors. The congregation shouted their amen, but the rebel in me felt like standing to my feet and shouting out a few extra career choices such as Doctors, Lawyers, Scientists or Political Leaders.
Why was this pastor's selection for careers for our church young people seemingly so limited? Is it because he sees the world from the church's perspective? Did he intentionally mean to slight secular option? Does he think Christian youth ought to only consider church work?
I don't think so, but what I do think was the problem is the way in which he reads the Bible. As good evangelicals we look to the Bible for answers to life's questions. There is much wisdom to be found in the Bible with regards to life's choices, however, when it comes to guidance for career choices the Bible is strangely biased towards church ministry. Some would argue that this is God's bias and if we are to take seriously our calling as Christians we need to focus on the "Lord's work" which is clearly defined in Ephesians 4:11 as the "fivefold" ministry.
The problem with reading the Bible this way is that we treat it like it was a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece of "truth" is a Biblical principle that we can organize according to the Biblical pattern. Not surprisingly when we lay out all the pieces there are substantially more pieces dealing with church concerns such as what Paul writes about in Ephesians and very few pieces dealing with workplace concerns. You'd think that if God wanted to place more emphasis on the secular marketplace as an option for Christian youth he would have talked more about it in the Bible.
This a good example of why we need to heed Tom Wright's rebuke about evangelicals "growing up" in the reading of Scripture. (See my post Biblical Authority and Faith at Work in Professional Practice). The reason there are relatively few verses in the New Testament on Christians in the secular workplace is that the documents we are reading are often pastoral letters to churches helping them to address pastoral concerns. No wonder they are biased towards church work!
We need to get past the Bible as a limited set of jigsaw pieces with the naïve conclusion that if it does not include pieces concerning the secular workplace then God didn't intend Christians to be in the secular workplace. What a silly conclusion to draw! But that's exactly what some Christians do and it frankly saddens me that we can't pray with equal vigor for Christian youth to be doctors, lawyers and business persons as well as to be church workers.
