Gene Edward Veith Jr., provost and professor of literature at Patrick Henry College, is the author of several noted books on Christianity and culture, including God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life.
A lot of people are talking about the importance of a Christian vocation. Why is it always a relevant issue for Christians in their daily lives?
People are concerned with how to balance family life with work life. The doctrine of vocation is a way to address all those things and a lot more.
What is distinctive about a Reformation approach, and why is it important? Why can't we just say that people need to work and find good jobs? Do we need to have a philosophy of work?
First of all, many of those who talk about vocation seem to be missing the biblical point, certainly the point that the Reformers made. According to Luther and the others who were writing about this, it's not just a matter of what we do in our work, but it's what God does in our work through others and through our different callings. Luther said that when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread, and he does give us our daily bread through the vocation of the farmers and the bakers, the truck drivers and the factory workers, and the lady at the checkout counter of the grocery store and the waiter who brings us food. God is present in those tasks, and he's working through human vocation to give us our daily bread. Luther says that when God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, God could have created more people out of dust; but instead he chose to bring new life through the vocation of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. God does bring new life into the world and care for children, but he does it through human vocations. So the doctrine of vocation isn't just about what we do in our work, or even doing everything to the glory of God; it's what God does for us through other people. In the different tasks God gives us to do, God is working through us to love and serve our neighbors.
God Wears Masks
God serves us, ministering to us through vocation. Thinking of Matthew 25 where Jesus says, "When I was hungry, you didn't feed me," what did he mean by this statement?
This is Luther's concept of the hiddenness of God, how God hides himself in so many different ways. Some people talk about hiddenness related to asking where God is when bad things happen. But talking about God's hiddenness is a way to talk about his presence. If a child is hiding in the room, he's there; we don't see him, but he's there. Luther calls vocation "a mask of God." In other words, God is working and is hidden in the vocation of the people who serve us in the high and low ways. From our perspective, as we live out our different vocations, Christ is hidden in our neighbor. Luther says, "Do you want to see Christ? Do you want to do something for Christ? Look at your neighbor."
Calvin said to his Roman critic Cardinal Sadoleto, "A person who is trying to save himself is going to confine all of his thoughts in this life to himself. And a person who is freed from having to strive for his own salvation is going to be freed for the first time to care for his neighbor." Is this the concept we're talking about here?
Absolutely. Another great quote from Luther is: "God doesn't need your good works’your neighbor does." Our relation to God does not depend on our works; it's completely what he does for us in Christ. Many who talk about vocation talk about serving God, and that's true and profound; but interestingly, Luther attacked those who were trying to do things for God, such as rituals and prayers that were supposedly giving them merit before God. His point to the monastics was: "You say those are good works? Who are they helping? A good work is something tangible that actually helps and benefits your neighbor."
Good works, as God desires us to do them, become a response of faith, an expression of love for the other person, especially for the neighbor in need. It's not doing things for humanity as a generic abstract; it's the people you meet in your vocation. Luther says we have four kinds of vocations:
The question you always have to ask is, "Who is my neighbor?" For a husband in that vocation, his neighbor is his wife, and he is to love and serve her in his marriage. For the wife, her neighbor is the husband, and she is to love and serve him. As parents, their neighbors are their children, and parents love and serve their children. Being a child is a vocation, according to Luther, and they are to love and serve their parents. In the workplace, your neighbors would be your customer, your fellow employees, your boss. As citizens, our neighbors are our fellow citizens in our society whom we are to love and serve. In the church, we are to love and serve one another. Vocations are multiple. The Bible talks about how any given person may be a master and how he should treat his servants, but then that same person may be a servant to his boss. Even a CEO is a servant to the stockholders. In the family, one person may be the husband of his wife, the father to his children, and a child to his parents if they are still living. In Luther's Smaller Catechism, he talks about the table of duties where the doctrine of vocation is set out. He presents these in terms of relationships: master and servant, husband and wife, parent and child’each of those has a role to play.
Do non-Christians have vocations, too? If so, why is that?
Was the farmer who grew the grain in the bagel I had this morning a Christian? God gives his rain on the just and the unjust, and he gives food and cares for his whole world. Now, some theologians make a distinction between vocation and office. Some say that a Christian has the vocation; he has been called by God and will approach that task in a different way. But still, non-Christians can be said to have an office or an estate. In Romans 13, we learn how God works through ungodly rulers. They are his agents, even his ministers. God creates law and order and protects us through the police and the legal system and everything else.
The doctrine of vocation helps define how Christians should think and live in their culture. That's a big problem today, because we live in a society that is not Christian and not typically informed by Christian ideas. How are Christians to live in a world like that? The temptation is to either separate’"This is ungodly, so we will draw into our own Christian culture"’or to take it over, to conquer the culture for Christ, as if that were possible. But we forget just how big God is and that he is sovereign, even among those who don't know him.
What stands out here is how intimately vocation is linked with providence. This seems to be what we are missing, especially among many evangelicals. The reason we don't see the unbeliever as also maintaining a vocation is because we have so many points of disconnection when it comes time to stand on the doctrine of providence. But God works through secondary means. Does my doctor have to be a Christian? No. But God's providence is such that this unbelieving doctor understands medicine enough to bring about healing and therefore be a means by which God heals someone.
The realms of medicine, science, and nature belong to God. A non-Christian businessman, who doesn't care about his workers and is just in it to try to make money, is very likely sinning against his vocation. And yet, God is still able to use him to employ people, to help them take care of their families. He must be creating some good or service that his neighbors find helpful; otherwise, they wouldn't buy it and he'd go out of business. Despite our sinful human condition, God works through the vocation, because those vocations are from him. God also works through a non-Christian couple to bring new life. In my own experience, sometimes just being a parent pulls something out of you that you didn't know you had. All a sudden, you put that child first and you really love and serve him. It's not something you would normally do of your own nature, but because the vocation is from God, he uses that, even for non-Christians.
Work Well with Your Hands
When Jesus healed the demon-possessed man in the graveyard, the man said, "I want to follow you; I want to be your disciple." Jesus told him, "No, go back home and tell your family and your friends of the mercy and goodness of God." So you're following a biblical pattern. The church and ministry have broken up far too many families to be credible. Paul says to the Thessalonians, "Work well with your hands, and that's enough." You don't have to be in your prayer closet all day. You don't have to hang up an "I Love Jesus" sticker in your cubicle so people will ask you about Christ. Just do your work and don't be a busybody. A lot of Christians say, "I'm going to evangelize on the job." But Paul says, "No, mind your own business, work well with your hands"’and here it comes back to your point about neighbor love’"so that you may have something to give to your neighbor in need."
In the Middle Ages, they talked about the doctrine of vocation, but only as it related to church work. If you've been called or have a vocation, that means you've become a priest or a nun or a monk, and it's still that way in Roman Catholic theology. I think a lot of today's evangelicals actually have that same mentality: that the only calling, the only vocation that's spiritual, is to do church work. Whereas the great insight of the Reformation, among many others, was to see that a person's calling as a farmer or as a businessman or as a mother or as a father is likewise a divine office. He uses the same language to talk about them as he does to talk about the pastoral ministry.
What is the difference between a Christian and an unbeliever who have the same vocation?
For Christians who know that this is a calling, what they do for their families or on the job is transfigured, because it's all seen in light of faith. It makes a huge difference if they are Christians, whether they know the one who has called them to this work. It changes the way you look at it. A non-Christian is doing exactly the same thing, but it's not done in faith and is just another occasion for selfishness and sin, even when he's doing things that are beneficial. Once Christians understand the doctrine of vocation, it changes the way they see their everyday lives.
