What do you tell your son if he asks for discernment about what to do for a vocation? Michael Jenkins, in Called to Be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life
,advises his son through a life in business and social work into seminary (Princeton, so it seems). I prefer his wisdom to his son more than what he says to his daughter, and some of my favorite lines in the whole book are in his vocational wisdom.Our question: What advice and wisdom are you providing for your son (or daughter) on vocational choices?
Our essential calling, regardless of what we do, is to follow Jesus Christ -- so Jenkins on p. 25. Everything is an extension of that essential call.
And that we are each called to something distinctive to who we are; that we may well be asked to use all of our various gifts instead of just one; and that we are called to be faithful right now in the moment we find ourselves. Be open to God, to the Spirit and to your own self -- so he advises. He urges his son to become flat-footed before GWAOT: God, the world, and all other things (112).
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As we have raised our children we've talked to them about what sort of natural talents they have and how God could have given them that as a way of getting them in a direction to choose a vocation. We've also tried to use language like "What do you sense God calling you to" as apposed to "What do you want to be when you grow up". I think many Christians have leaned toward the latter which focuses us on ourselves and not how we can be used by God in our vocation. In the end we desire our children seek to be faithful and follow God's will, more than we desire them to "Get a good job and make money".
"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Frederick Buechner
Our essential calling, regardless of what we do, is to follow Jesus Christ -- Everything is an extension of that essential call.
This deserves to be unpacked a bit. What does it mean to follow? Does it mean - live morally and compassionately, worship and practice spiritual disciplines? Or does it mean more than this - does it mean sacrifice and commitment and vision?
Travis, Jinkins quotes those lines from Buechner and sets them in the larger context of Buechner's thinking.
RJS, What Jinkins is doing here is avoiding the "find the exact dot" method and, instead, he's more in line with others who say "follow Christ" and out of that general orientation choose a vocation. There's a tendency to torture youth with the idea of finding the precise thing God has called one to do when many don't have that kind of conviction. This approach of Jinkins, which was recently re-explored by Kevin DeYoung, basically says "follow Christ and do something good, something well, and something dutiful." Along those lines.
I agree: that orientation of following Christ reshapes our vocational orientation.
I like what J. I. Packer said about this in an interview at Laity Lodge: "All honest work is worth doing for the glory of God, and we may find ourselves called to do any honest work that we're fitted for."
You can read the whole interview here: http://bit.ly/nRDPW
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