In 1947, the famous British novelist, playwright and critic, Dorothy Sayers (1893–1957), made this sharp observation:
In nothing has the Church so lost [h]er hold on reality as in [h]er failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as a result, the secular works of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends …1
Although Christians today are generally more affirming of what Sayers described as the “secular vocation”, the sacred/secular divide that she alluded to still stubbornly endures—perhaps in the subterranean dimensions of Christian consciousness.
In recent decades, a number of Christian writers have tried to correct this erroneous dichotomy, which privileges certain forms of work over others as true Christian service or ministry. Following the great sixteenth century Reformers, they have tried to show how service to God can be rendered through all kinds of work by retrieving the doctrine of “calling” or “vocation”.
This important idea must be recovered because, according to the Christian philosopher Paul Helm, secularism has banished it to obscurity. He writes: “Work is part of a Christian’s calling … this biblical idea has had a profound influence in Europe and North America since the Reformation but has largely been forgotten, due to the eclipse of the influence of the Christian gospel from national life.”2
In his book The Call, Os Guinness explains that a distinction must be made between God’s primary and secondary calling.3 The former, Guinness elaborates, has to do with the command to love God with all our heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37).
“Our secondary calling,” writes Guinness, “is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think, speak, live and act entirely for [h]im.”4 This means using the gifts and abilities that we have received to their utmost in everything we do for the glory of God, including our daily work.
There is therefore a profound relationship between call and vocation (after all, “vocation” comes from the Latin vocare, which means to call). The call is the divine initiative. Vocation takes place when we respond to the call.
When we apply ourselves to the vocation to which we are called, the work that we do becomes a ministry—a service—to God and to our fellow human beings.
This naturally leads to the question of whether each one of us is given a specific vocation. For example, can we say that Lillian is called to be a nurse, while Jimmy is called to be an engineer?
I think that in some profound sense, this may be the case, although discerning the vocation to which one is called is not quite that straightforward for many of us.
One way to approach this is to follow one’s passion or to respond to one’s burdens. Silas may be called to be a teacher because he is passionate about nurturing the next generation. However, William may be called to be a theological educator because his burden is the training of pastors and missionaries.
There may be others, however, who may not feel drawn to a particular job or kind of job. These people may be envious of Silas and William because they seem so certain about their passions and concerns.
Here, we do well to turn to the wise counsel of Barbara Brown Taylor:
Whatever I decide to do for a living, it is not what but how I did it that mattered. God has suggested the overall purpose, but was not going to supply the particulars to me. If I wanted a life of meaning, then I was going to have to apply the purpose for myself.5
Some of us, however, feel the work that we do contributes little or nothing at all to the grand plan of God. How does my work as a bank clerk or a librarian contribute to the great redemptive work of God? In what way does the work that I do have an enduring significance?
Isn’t the writer of Ecclesiastes right when he says, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind …” (Ecclesiastes 2:11)?
In response to this, we must turn to the apostle Paul.
In 1 Corinthians 15:58, at the very end of a long reflection on the resurrection of Jesus and of believers, Paul writes these assuring words: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.“
“Under the sun”, our toil appears quite meaningless. But in the light of the resurrection, the work that we do in and for the Lord is never in vain.
The Anglican theologian, Alan Richardson, has perceptively put it this way:
It is not the secular value or the lasting achievement of our working lives upon the earth which gives to our work its Christian significance; it is the final, eschatological reference within it to the heavenly goal that invests it with ultimate worth and meaning. This world will perish, yet nevertheless our labour is not in the last resort futile … It is in the resurrection of Christ that we find the final vindication of all the work that we do in this life, our assurance that our toil and struggle and sufferings possess abiding worth: the short ‘six days’ of our working life on earth will be crowned with that heavenly rest wherein we will survey our work and see that it is good.6
1 Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1974), 106.
2 Paul Helm, The Callings: The Gospel in the World (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), 98-99.
3 Os Guinness, The Call, Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nashville, TN: W. Publishing Group, 1998), 4.
4 Guinness, The Call, 31.
5 Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), 110.
6 Alan Richardson, The Biblical Doctrine of Work (London: SCM Press, 1954), 55-56.