The Other Six Days: C4 – Human Vocation

The Other Six Days

Part Two – Summoned and Equipped by God: Chapter 4 – Calling in a Post-vocational Age

Human Vocation

I have written in the past two posts about personal vocation and Christian vocation. Now we have come to what I consider to be the missing ingredient in most discussions about vocation: human vocation.

Stevens begins this section observing that when we talk about vocation, two mandates usually surface: The Creation Mandate (Gen1:27-30) and the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19-20). He notes the tendency of denominations to prefer one over the other. Mainline denominations (the National Council of Churches crowd) and European churches prefer the Creation mandate, emphasizing “civic responsibilities like earth keeping and engineering.” As evidenced by their name, Evangelical churches emphasize evangelism and saving souls. Stevens uses the word “tragic” here. Tragic indeed.

Stevens suggests that:

Salvation is both a rescue operation (recovering our lost vocation in Eden) and a completion project (preparing for the final renewal of creation at the second coming of Jesus.) Eschatology (the end times) is critical to understanding our vocation as Christians in this world.

The last thing we is the first thing we think about. … (90)

If you have read guru Stephen Covey, you know one of his axioms is that we “begin with the end in mind.” It is a very biblical idea. So what is the “end” we are to have in mind? We find the “end” both at the beginning of the Bible with Genesis, and we find it in Revelation. There is the covenant between God and humanity at the beginning of creation. The covenant is broken by humanity. God initiates a new covenant. The story ends with the consummation of a New Creation.

Stevens relates three aspects of the original covenant mandate. Communion with God is one. Stevens writes:

The practice of the presence of God is not the exclusive vocation of professional ministers and cloistered monks. Nor is it a sacred interlude but woven into the warp and woof of everyday life. It is part of our calling. (92)

Concerning the second aspect, Stevens writes that “God makes humankind innately social and inevitably sexual.” Again quoting Stevens:

Adam and Eve were called to live in grateful awareness of the cohumanity of life, male and female being the image of God together and not alone (Gen. 1:26-28), each sex evoking the other’s sexuality, and together enabling humanity to be a mysterious expression of God’s own love (Eph. 5:32). As designed by God, male and female are equal partners and heirs of the grace of life, complementary and side by side, rather than senior and assistant.

The family becomes God’s prototype community on earth and is part of every person’s vocational calling, whether one remains single or gets married. People-making (Gen. 1:28) gives Adam and Eve the further privilege of making people in their own likensess (Gen 5:3) as God made them in his. … (94)

The marriage relationship is the embrace of that which is other than oneself and serves as the grounding model for other-centered love in broader community. The basis of work, whatever our occupation, is about sustaining and enriching the community-building mandate given to us by God, and in a very real sense, it does not matter what particular occupation we use individually to earn our living as we build community.

A third aspect of the creation covenant is co-creativity. God created humanity to exercise dominion over the Earth, to bring it to full fruition. Stevens alludes to Micah 4:3, where it is prophesied they will beat “swords into plowshares and their spears in pruning hooks.” We often latch on to the destruction of war implements facet in this passage but don’t notice what the instruments are transformed into: tools for work and economic production.

At the end of the chapter, Stevens asks, “How is our sense of vocation enriched by a trinitarian understanding of God?” He offers three responses.

• First, we experience communion by becoming co-lovers of God…
• Second, through community building we become lovers of one another….
• Third, co-creativity draws us into God’s love for the world. … (103-104)

To tie these pieces together, Stevens presents the chart on page 101.

I think this is one of the most critical sections in the whole book. My take is that a large portion of the Western Church (mainline Christianity) sees its mandate as civic service on behalf of the existing world order, essentially baptizing the status quo. Others within this community see their work as social justice, but it is largely justice predicated on modernist/Enlightenment notions of justice dressed up in God language. Another large portion of the Church sees its mandate as “winning souls” and getting individuals right with God. Many within this camp have grown uneasy with the narrowness of this and want to include social justice, yet just like their mainline cousins; their emphasis tends to be more on modernist/Enlightenment notions of justice.

Lost from all of this is any clear eschatology. The issue is not evangelism versus social justice. The issue is the creation covenant and how we participate in restoring that covenant as God’s New Creation until the consummation of the new covenant at Christ’s return. The issues are greater than evangelism, greater than social justice, and greater than the two of them combined. Evangelism and social justice are only two aspects of Christian vocation. Christian vocation should have the restoration of the human vocation as its ultimate vision. The Christian vocation is temporal. The human vocation is eternal.

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