People are turning against the idea of vocation in the workplace. “Please Don’t Call My Job a ‘Calling’,” reads the title of a recent op-ed in the New York Times. 1 Simone Stolzoff argues that the notion of calling can obscure issues around fair treatment and proper compensation for workers. Work is fundamentally an economic contract, he claims, advising us to find a job that is “good enough.”
Christians are also questioning the notion of being called to a particular career. A recent article in Christianity Today bears the title “Calling’s Dark Side.” 2 Steven Zhou acknowledges some positive effects of a sense of calling at work but warns that at times “a calling—especially one left unfulfilled—somehow leads to feelings of burnout, stress, failure and dissatisfaction.”
These critics do well to challenge how calling, with its promise of recognition and fulfillment, has been collapsed into a given job, subject to market forces. To distinguish our calling from being coextensive with a particular career is a welcome step in more sustainable forms of work.
“. . . just as home ownership gets increasingly out of reach these days, will more of us have to give up the sense that work is our calling?”
Yet these critics go further. Because the vestigial notion that we are doing “God’s work” makes us liable to exploitation, Stolzoff suggests we abandon the term “calling” and get on with the job. Zhou likens finding a match between calling and work to home ownership—a desirable goal but one that depends on the right circumstances and not a requirement for godly living. The analogy leads us to wonder: just as home ownership gets increasingly out of reach these days, will more of us have to give up the sense that work is our calling?
There is another way to think about calling and career without abandoning the hope of calling or reducing it to a “side-hustle.” A theological account can answer many of the concerns put forward by critics, challenging the temptation to identify fully with our work while providing an ethical vantagepoint that transcends workplace culture. Most importantly, it maintains that we can encounter the living God in our daily tasks.
From a theological perspective, our calling is not our career. In fact, our calling is not even work. But work can become our calling. A given job can be an “outworking” of a greater spiritual reality.
As Christians, our calling is ultimately to relationship with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,” writes the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 1:9). “The Christian doctrine of vocation,” writes R. Paul Stevens, “starts with being called to Someone before we are called to do something.” Our calling is both personal—a particular summons by name—and corporate—a reality of belonging to Christ’s body. Calling is a shared reality—our calling—a truth that carries ethical implications for the workplace.
Nothing can disrupt the reality of your calling in this ultimate sense, even if your role changes drastically. You might take on a major career transition: from business leadership to graduate studies; from full-time paid employment to stay-at-home parenting; from a thriving professional life to long-term disability leave. You might be made redundant, “severed” from a job that had become central to your identity. You might go through a season of unemployment. Nothing can disrupt the reality of your belonging to Christ. In this sense, your calling remains a “given.”
Although our calling is ultimately to relationship with God, that calling is to be lived out in ways that include our work. “Make every effort,” writes the Apostle Peter, “to confirm your calling and election” (2 Pet. 1:10). While our calling exceeds any societal role, it is nevertheless to be “worked out” through our specific occupations and in the company of our neighbours. The ways in which we confirm our calling can vary significantly over the course of a life.
The 16th-century reformer Martin Luther conveyed these biblical truths in his differentiated account of calling. There are two aspects of our calling: the spiritual—our relationship to God in Christ, including our belonging to the Christian community—and the external—the “outward” expressions of that spiritual reality through the good works of everyday life. As he writes:
We have a double vocation, a spiritual and an external. The spiritual vocation is that we have all been called through the Gospel to baptism and the Christian faith. ... This calling is common and similar for all. ... The other contains a differentiation: It is earthly, though also divine.
By speaking of a “double vocation,” Luther frees us from the habit of identifying fully with our work. Yet when he addresses the “earthly” aspect of our calling, he speaks in refreshingly mundane terms. Responding to someone concerned that they missed their calling, Luther asks what societal role they currently occupy and observes that there would be plenty for them to do there. His deflationary account offers a salutary challenge to idealized modern portrayals of work-as-calling.
Luther is often credited with leveling the vocational hierarchy. After him, everyone could claim God’s calling to their work. That is true, but only partial. Luther’s core insight was that God graciously justifies sinners, a gift we receive through faith alone. We are therefore freed to live and work within worldly orders without being burdened by guilt or driven to justify ourselves before God and others.
What, then, can we say to those who are turning against the idea of calling at work? They are right that the notion of calling has been collapsed into our jobs in a way that stifles the ethical imagination. Admittedly, Luther bears some responsibility for this modern flattening of work and vocation.
Yet we do not need to abandon the notion of calling or reduce it to a “side-hustle.” Informed by Scripture, Luther himself provides resources for a more dynamic account of calling. He refers to our “double vocation,” both spiritual—our relationship to God in Christ, including our belonging to the Christian community—and external—the “outward” expressions of that spiritual reality through the good works of everyday life. In this way, work can become our calling but will never exhaust it.
