People are told that the physical world is all there is to life. According to the wisdom of this age, mankind originated through evolutionary forces, the world came into being through a “Big Bang” and that eventually everything and everyone will expire.[2] As Leslie Newbigin points out in his book Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture,
“A missionary encounter with our culture must bring us face to face with the central citadel…, which is the belief that is based on the immense achievements of the scientific method… the belief that the real world…is a world that is to be understood in terms of efficient causes and not of final causes, a world that is not governed by an intelligible purpose.“ [3]
The Search for Meaning
The problem with this view of life is that it does not answer the fundamental question that every person asks of themselves – Who am I? Why am I here? It is no wonder that the number one question people would ask God if they came face to face with Him is, according to a poll profiled in USA Today, “What is my purpose?”[4]
Purpose defines identity. Perhaps this is the reason why you are reading this article. You are looking for answers to this question. You are on your own personal journey towards meaning and purpose in your life. You may be interested in Christian service work. You may want to make sense of your life as a business person or homemaker. You are seeking to find out how your faith relates to the work you do every day. You want who you are and what you do to have significance.
Seminars, teaching and books to help people discover purpose in existence are proliferating. Despite the scientists telling us that there is no existential purpose to life, people clamor to discover it anyway!
We are all on a search for meaning, purpose and significance in our lives, that is how we are built. Victor Frankl, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, states, “The will to meaning is a really specific need not reducible to other needs, and is in greater or smaller degree present in all human beings.” [5]
Frankl experienced what happens when people lack hope, and a sense of purpose or meaning in their lives.[6] In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he tells the story of a fellow prisoner who had a dream that he would be released from the camp on a certain date. He believed the dream to be true and for awhile it gave him hope that he would survive his experience. However, as the date approached, he realized he would not be released and he lost hope. Without hope, he lost his desire to live and he quickly succumbed to illness, dying on the very day he dreamed he would be released!
This experience led Frankl to develop a psychological therapy called “Logotherapy” to help people identify the sources of hope and meaning in their lives.[7] He states,
“One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”[8]
Thus man’s search for meaning is the defining quest of the human identity. It is the need to find “fulfillment.” The need to answer the questions --”Who am I?” “Where do I belong?” “Why was I born?” “What is my purpose?”
The Biblical character of Job is an interesting illustration of the struggle for meaning in life. When Job lost everything he complained to God: “I despise my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone; my days have no meaning.”[9] Job needed to make sense out of the pain of his suffering, otherwise, he preferred not to have been born.[10] Perhaps the motivation for writing the book of Job was the need to answer the question, “Why?” when confronted with the apparent meaningless of his life situation.
My Personal Search
My life journey has been characterized by a search for meaning. At a young age I dreamed of a career as an astronaut. By the time I had finished college I knew my gifts and abilities were better suited to earthly related pursuits so I entered business school.
At business school I became a Christian. I decided that Jesus could order my life better than I could and that with Him at the centre, I would discover who I was and what I was supposed to do with my life.
One day, a cynical professor questioned the motives of the students in our class. He stated that the only motivation for anyone to be in business was greed. He asked the class if there was anyone who was there for another reason. I put up my hand. When he asked why I might be studying business, if not to earn money, I simply stated that I was a Christian. He laughed at my answer. The rebuke stung, but for me it was a defining moment in my life as a Christian. I determined at that point not to serve money but to discover a more noble motivation for a business career - a reason that was more meaningful than the pursuit of profits.
Winston Churchill once remarked,
"There comes a special moment in everyone's life, a moment for which that person was born. That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission - a mission for which he is uniquely qualified. In that moment, he finds greatness. It is his finest hour." [11]
Yet at the end of his life Winston Churchill was despondent about his life and the state of the world. Despite achieving greatness, he felt he had failed to make the world a better place.[12]
I was on a search for my defining moment for which I was uniquely qualified, for which I was destined. Once found I supposed it would give my life meaning and significance.
I met my wife who was in medical school and who had a dream to be a missionary doctor in Africa. However, I had no vision for Africa. My vision was to have a successful career in Canada. I felt that going to Africa would be the equivalent of throwing away my life. So I gave her a choice – Africa or me! A year after we were married, I repented of my selfishness and we spent eight weeks in Zaire “testing the waters.” I thought she would get it out of her system, however, it was me who changed and we decided that at the right time we would go back to Africa.
I took a job as an administrator at the Canadian Cancer Society, a non-profit organization. This eventually led to a position as Executive Director of the Central Okanagan United Way. It was a position I was proud of. I remember showing off my business cards! I was somebody, therefore, my life had meaning. Perhaps this was my moment! However, that all came to an end when I was fired less than a year after I had taken the job!
Next, I tried Small Business. I started a marketing business – Okanagan Target Marketing. It provided direct mail services to other small businesses. However, the market I was in was not large enough to support the company and it failed. At the same time, my father owned a local cherry orchard but after four poor harvests I saw no success there either.
When I met people, one of the first questions they would ask is “What do you do for a living?” This is an identity question. They want to know who you are. In our culture, our identity comes from what we value[13], our occupation. In other culture’s, identity comes from one’s family or tribe.
But at that point in my life I had to confess that I was unemployed! This event precipitated an identity crisis in my life. I no longer had a title to define who I was! I suffered a loss of meaning in life.
The Teacher in Ecclesiastes presents his search for the purpose that motivates man to work hard. He asks the question: “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?”[14] He does not find an answer in his accomplishments.
“Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”[15]
The message of Ecclesiastes is that man searches for meaning and for his identity in places where it cannot be found. This is as true today as it was in Solomon’s time. No great achievement, no amount of wealth, no success or significant activity can truly answer the fundamental questions about meaning and identity. Only God has the answers.
Through the confusion and disappointment of the loss of employment I heard God say, “Seek my face!” to which I responded with the words of the psalmist “Your face, oh Lord, I will seek!”[16]. When someone calls, it means someone cares. Through these events in my life I felt the loving presence of my heavenly Father. I felt the Lord had a specific interest in me and that assured me that I would be able to discover the purpose for my loss of employment and what He wanted me to do with my life.
So I began my search for a “calling of God” that would define my life purpose.
The Question of Calling
When the word “calling” is mentioned today in the world of work it is most often equated with a career.[17] The Wordsmyth online Dictionary defines it as “vocation, occupation, or career, esp. considered as inspired or inevitable.”[18] In Christian circles, it is equated with a career in the “ministry” or full time professional Christian service. When people want to ascribe worth to a particular occupation they refer to it as their “calling.”
For example, Michael Novak in his book, Business as a Calling : Work and the Examined Life, challenges the prevailing view that business is a morally bankrupt activity. He argues for business as a morally serious endeavor that contributes to the welfare of society by creating wealth and by upholding right moral conduct.[19] Thus he ascribes meaning to business by associating it with worthy accomplishments.
However, although Novak uses the term “calling” in its contemporary understanding, he is not true to its original meaning as found in the Bible. In attempting to reach such a broad swath of philosophical and religious understandings he misses the essential nature of calling in that it is more about who we are as a person than it is about what we do as a person.
Os Guinness in his book The Call : Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, defines calling as
“God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we have, and everything we do is invested with a dynamism and a devotion because it is done as a response to His summons.” [20]
Guinness unpacks the Biblical notion of calling and distinguishes it from the contemporary understanding. Calling is a “Summons.” That is, for there to be a calling, there must be a person who is doing the calling. Thus “Calling” in the Bible is about God summoning his people into a relationship with him. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” [21]
In the New Testament, calling is synonymous with salvation.
“And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”[22]
God calls us into a salvation relationship. Thus calling is more about who we are as saints than it is about what we do. It is more about who God is and His purpose for us than it is about a worthy achievement or our self-fulfillment.
One Calling
R.
There is only one Call. It is God’s Call to his creatures to enter into relationship with him. It is a Call that has three dimensions.
Firstly, it is a call to belong to God.
“Thus persons without identities or ‘names’, who are homeless waifs in the universe, become children of God and members of the family of God. ‘Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.” (1 Peter 2:10) [24]
Secondly it is a call to be God’s people in life.
“…a holy people that exists for the praise of his glory in all aspects of life in the church and world.”[25]
Thirdly it is a call to do God’s work.
“… to enter into God’s service to fulfill his purposes in both the church and the world.”[26]
Thus “All are called. All are called together. All are called for the totality of everyday life.” (emphasis mine.)
Despite the loss of understanding of the concept of calling in contemporary society and the modern church, God continues to summon a people to himself. I believe it is His “still small voice” in the hearts of men and women that they hear as a call to meaning, a call to purpose; a call to identity; a call to belong, a call to be loved.
Pascal, the French physicist and philosopher, wrote:
There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.[27]
In response to this “Call” people embark on a search to fill the vacuum for meaning and purpose in their lives, a search that can only be truly fulfilled when they discover God. For only in a relationship with God will they discover their true identity as a child of God, know his love for them and receive his affirmation of their true worth as persons.
What is my Calling?
After my failed career in non profit organizations and the failure of my business I thought perhaps it was time for me to turn to a more significant endeavour -- overseas missions. Perhaps, the right time had come. Surely this would be my Calling -- missions in Africa. This was to be a more “significant” effort than small business. Bob Buford, a Christian Businessman, has written a popular book Halftime in which he challenges people to “change their game plan from Success to Significance.”[28] I made the move from pursuing success in a business career to do something, I thought, was more significant by going into missions. I was able to use my experience in small business to develop a ministry teaching entrepreneurship to Zambian business people. The two years we spent in Zambia were very productive and life changing.[29]
When we returned to Canada, I launched a ministry to disciple Christian business people. However, I hit some rough waters and was confronted with the fact that I had claimed ownership of the ministry and once again trusted it to provide me identity and significance. This was not God’s purpose for me and it quickly became apparent. I had to let go of it as “my” ministry.
Failure in the Life of Jesus
More recently, I tried my hand at a theological education. I have been registered as a part time student in a local college. The most recent course I attended was entitled “the Life of Jesus.” It was a historical study of the person of Christ. I thought this would finally give me some answers to my search for meaning and significance.
Since I am a distance learner, I submit my assignments by mail. After finishing the course I receive my returned assignment in the mail. My grade in the course depended on the grade of the assignment. I had worked hard in this course, reading more then the minimum requirement and wrestling with the teaching on the historical person of Jesus. In my course paper I had processed much new thinking about Jesus. So when I opened up my mail, I was eager to see how I did. I flipped to the last page and read the following comment from my professor. “I am really sorry but I can only give you an F.” What? An “F”? I was stunned! This is the first course in my entire academic career both in business and theological study that I had failed! My paper was not “masters level material.” A lot of thoughts rushed into my head but the dominant one was the irony of it all. I had failed at the life of Jesus!
After I settled down, I realized I was not alone, most Christians feel a failure at the life of Jesus. It was a great course and my life was changed by the teaching I received. However, I discovered I was not going to find significance and meaning in academic pursuits or intellectual achievement!
The Cost of Discipleship
Once again, my search for meaning, significance and purpose had ended in failure. Or had it? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book The Cost of Discipleshipstates, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die".[30] Jesus states,
“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds “[31]
Christ's most common title was in Hebrew "Bar Enash". It means “Son of human fragility”, “Son of mortal weakness” Jesus identified with our weaknesses, with our insignificance. When he was on the Cross, the Jews challenged him to show his significance. “Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." [32] Instead, he died!
Significance comes from “another,” not from an accomplishment. God considers us significant because He allowed His Son to die so that we might have life. Therein lies our true significance and the clue to meaning and purpose in our lives. But to discover it, I had to die to “my” callings: business as a measure of success; missions as a measure of significance; ownership as a measure of identity; academic ability as a measure of my intellect and meaning as the measure of my work; doing as a measure of my being; and calling as a measure of my worth. To gain a true understanding of my life purpose, God’s (not mine) calling, I had to die to all my previous understandings.
Death is a doorway to freedom through which we must pass to live a life of purpose, significance and meaningfulness. Death to ourselves sets us free to live for another. God calls us to Himself, but for us to truly answer that call we must die to everything that would substitute for God in our lives; our work; our gifts; our abilities; our plans; our visions; our missions; our dreams; even our calling. God must be completely sufficient for our need for meaning, our need for significance, and our need to be loved.
Jesus experienced this passage when he went through the waters of baptism. It was not that He had to repent nor that He had to die to false measures of significance but so that in obedience He would submit himself to God in every aspect. He led the way for us to follow. His passage into ministry began with this baptism which was a symbolic dying to the old and being born again to the new. When He came up from the waters, the first word he heard was, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."[33]
These are the very words God directs towards us when we enter into relationship with Him. It is in these words we find our identity (son/daughter of God), we find our significance (whom I love) and we find our life has meaning (with you I am well pleased.)
Designed for a Destiny
So if calling is more about who we are in God than what we do for Him, the question remains, are we not crafted with an unique design for certain purposes?
The apostle Paul gives us the answer to this question. His most frequent method of introducing himself to his readers was “called to be an apostle” (Romans 1:1; 1 Corinthians 1:1; 2 Timothy 1:1). N. T. Wright explains Paul’s concept of calling,
“Call" in Paul's writings usually refers, not to the specific vocation of which a Christian may gradually become aware, but to the moment when the gospel message of Jesus first makes its saving impact on him or her.[34]
Thus for Paul calling is about an event in a person’s life in which they are converted and summoned into a relationship with God.
This conversion comes about by an encounter with the “gospel of God”
“’The gospel of God’ is thus at the heart of Paul’s self-definition and self-understanding. The word "gospel" (euangelion] referred in early Christianity to the proclamation about Jesus before it was used to denote particular books; Paul uses the term to denote the message, or announcement, that he was waking around the Mediterranean world. In Paul's Jewish world, the word (gospel) looked back to Isaiah 40:9 and 52:7, where a messenger was to bring to Jerusalem the good news of Babylon’s defeat, the end of Israel's exile, and the personal return of YHWH to Zion. In the pagan world Paul addressed, the same Greek word referred to the announcement of the accession or the birthday of a ruler or emperor…[35]
It is through the defining story of the gospel that Paul’s discovers who he is, his purpose in life and what he is designed or “set apart” to do.
“through the lens of the gospel, the covenant plan and purpose of the one true God have been unveiled before the world. Paul’s view of God remained deeply Jewish; he believed that the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the creator of the world, had now brought world history to its climax in Jesus. Paul is urging the Roman Christians to understand this purpose, and their own place within it, so that they can then live and work appropriately and, indeed, support Paul’s apostolic task as well.[36]
Paul’s challenge to the Romans is God’s challenge to us today, to discover our role and design in “the covenant plan and purpose” of God. We are all called as Paul was called and God has set each one of us “apart” unto a particular purpose which best suits our design. What is that specific purpose?
In his letter to Ephesus, Paul helps us to understand how calling relates to our specific purpose in life.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.[37]
The context of this verse is Paul’s exposition of the saving grace of God found in Christ Jesus. It is a grace that not only saves us but empowers us unto good works, specific activities, that God has purposed for us to do. As Jamieson, Fauset and Brown state in their commentary.
“God marks out for each in His purposes beforehand, the particular good works, and the time and way which he sees best. God both makes ready by His providence the opportunities for the works, and makes us ready for their performance that we should walk in them--not "be saved" by them. Works do not justify, but the justified man works.”[38]
One Calling, Many Works
Thus we have
There is a great scene in the movie Chariots of Fire in which Eric Little, the subject of the movie, is confronted by his missionary sister about his plans to run for England in the Olympics. She reminds him that he has a call from God to go to China as a missionary. She is concerned that his pursuit of Olympic glory is vain and that it will distract him from the more significant endeavor – missions in China. Eric Little replies to his sister that when he runs “I feel the pleasure of God!” He chooses to run for England and the resulting story over his refusal to run on a Sunday for the sake of honoring God makes headlines worldwide. He gets his gold in another race and eventually ends up in China as a missionary.
This story illustrates the point when we do what we are designed to do that pleases God. The artist who creates a painting; the poet who writes poetry; the artisan who crafts something of beauty, the merchant who adds value to their products or services; the servant who is excellent in his work. All of these are significant in God’s eyes even though these efforts may not always produce progress in the salvation of souls. All work done by design and honest intent pleases God. He makes no distinction of value between work of “spiritual” consequence and that of “material” effect. As the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus states, the work of a tradesman “holds stable the fabric of this world.”[40]
Doing what we are designed to do is the fulfillment of the creation mandate. God created Man and blessed him to “fill the earth and subdue it”[41] In the movie Moby Dick, the first mate Starbuck explains that the purpose of their work as whalers was to harvest whale oil “to light the lamps of a thousand families” not to exact vengeance on Captain Ahab’s nemesis -- the great whale.
Abraham continued Adam’s legacy in that by faith he received God’s covenant that through his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed.[42] Jesus Christ is the seed of Abraham and through his death and resurrection God has made salvation from the curse of sin. Jesus last words to his followers were to “make disciples of all the nations”[43]
The “good works” God has prepared in advance for us to do include the full range of work from “tending the garden” of this planet, blessing our family, our community even our nation with our work, to reaching and teaching the nations the gospel of Christ. This affirms the redeeming value of all work. Our work matters to God because it fulfills his mandate to make this earth a better place for everyone to live both materially and spiritually.
Thus I believe God does have “inspired careers”; purposeful works; and designed destinies for each of us and that he will reveal those specific assignments as we discover who we are in Him and what He has created us to do. We have one calling and within that we have many assignments.
Love as God’s Call to Mankind
The search for meaning in life for the people of this world, I believe, is a response to God’s call, his universal call to human kind to enter into relationship with Him. It is more than discovering self fulfillment in some achievement. Nothing will satisfy the longing for purpose in the human soul until it finds itself in Christ. And only, then as it passes through the death to self, will it discover life to another as the central purpose for existence. To love God with all our heart, mind, and strength is why we are here and what we are to do and what we will spend eternity doing. And this is in response to His love to us.[44] It is in this love relationship that we discover who we are, what our unique design is; and what he has assigned for us to do, the good works that he has prepared in advance for us to walk in.
Thus it is important for you as a follower of Christ to discover the reason why you pursue a career in Christian service work; or success in business; or greatness in politics. What is the source of your motivation to do what you do? Is it to achieve significance? Is it to discover the importance of your life? Is it essentially a selfish motive to meet your need to be loved or to find fulfillment? Or is it in response to a Heavenly Father who already loves you and is pleased with you even before you have achieved anything significant? Is it a response of love that says “all that I do is for you, for your glory, for your pleasure, Oh God.”
Notes:
[1]
[2] “
[4] Leslie Newbigin. Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 35.
[4]
[5]
[6] From Internet Web Site - MY TRIBUTE TO VIKTOR FRANKL at http://www.durbinhypnosis.com/frankl.htm Visited December, 2000.
[7] From Internet Web Site - The experience of meaning in life from a psychological perspective by Colin Leath Junior Paper, Psychology Honors Program U of W January 10, 1999. http://purl.oclc.org/net/cleath/writings/meaning.htm Accessed August 26th, 2001.
[8] Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning. p. 172
[9] Job 7:16 (NIV).
[10] Job 3:3 (NIV).
[11] John C.
[12]
[13] H.
[14] Ecclesiastes 1:3 (NIV).
[15] Ecclesiastes 2:11 (NIV).
[16] Psalm 27:8 (NIV).
[17] Robert
[18] Wordsmyth online Dictionary. http://www.wordsmyth.net Visited
[19] Michael
[20] Os Guinness. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nashville, Word, 1998) p. 4.
[21] Hosea 11:1 (NIV).
[22] Romans 8:30 (NIV).
[23] R. Paul Stevens. The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 71.
[24] Ibid. p. 88.
[25] Ibid. p. 88.
[26] Ibid. p. 88
[27] Campus Crusade for
[28] Bob
[29] For a complete report on this project visit http://www.scruples.org/web/moreinfo/zambia/zamrevw.htm
[30] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (
[31]
[32]
[33]
[34] N.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid, 416.
[37] Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV) See also Psalm 139:13-16.
[38] Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary at http://www.biblestudytools.net/Commentaries/JamiesonFaussetBrown/jfb.cgi?book=eph&chapter=2#Eph2_10 Visited October 22nd, 2001.
[39] 1 Corinthians 7:17 (NIV)
[40] Ecclesiasticus 38:39 (The New Jerusalem Bible, Apocrypha section.)
[41] Genesis 1:28 (NIV)
[42] Genesis 22:18 (NASB)
[43] Matthew 28:18 (NASB)
[44] 1 John 4:10 (NIV)
