The following is my personal reflection on evangelical fundamentalism and its distorted view of calling as I lived it. These are my experiences, shared in hopes that others might take care to avoid the pitfalls and engage in the praiseworthy aspects of my church’s perspective.
My parents are not at fault for my exposure to these ideas, having themselves pointed out when they saw something amiss in my church’s perspectives. The goal is not to point fingers at others, but rather to edify by showing what went right and wrong from my perspective.
My church drew a line between secular callings and sacred, where the latter enjoyed a privileged position, and was supported by the former. Yet, the privileged position of a sacred calling owed its status to equal parts danger and self-sacrifice.
Part of this sense of sacrifice came via the exoticizing of other cultures and peoples, and the fear that engendered.
While we were encouraged to shop the “Shepherd’s Pages,” shunning the yellow pages in favor of Christian businesses, missionaries and pastors had to engage the world and its evils.
It was in the job description for a sacred calling.
Calling and a Culture of Fascination and Fear
This view of calling may have caused a skewed perspective on helping others.
Specifically, there was some ethnically and racially charged rhetoric that distorted the objectives of so-called sacred work, as well as the nature of the people it was supposed to help.
The insidious thing is that the people who put on a Christian musical at my church (including me) about the “Dark Continent” were not willfully malevolent. To wit, we put lots of practice, props, elaborate puppets, and whatever musical talent we had into these productions as a labor of love, in hopes of reaching people with the gospel. Some of my fondest memories of church are from these productions.
Yet, this musical in particular contained an illiterate African man referred to as a “pygmy” (a term that once meant “monkey”), while the anthropomorphic elephant could read in “Patch the Pirate Goes to the Jungle.”
In this adventure, Patch the Pirate took a voyage to the jungles of (I kid you not) the dark continent of “Afraidica” to meet Mr. Missionary, the aforementioned native, and Bananaman (a Tarzan knockoff). Also, the anthropomorphic animals Worry Warthog and Lily the Elephant joined the crew.
By engaging in a sense of mystery and fear about the interior of the continent, the musical at one romanticized and recoiled from engaging the people therein with the gospel.
Other depictions of different cultures in the same series seldom fare better.
“The Sneaky Sheik” and “The Kungphooey Kid” don’t seem like highlights in the history of Christian cultural engagement. Also, there was Chief Kookawacka, a caricature of a Native American (and confusingly, a model of the second coming of Christ, which lent an air of seriousness to the silly exoticism).
If we look at others as exotic caricatures instead of people like us in need of grace, how can we get our calling right?
Secular and Sacred Calling
Equally importantly, my church distorted the definition of sacred and secular.
The sacred text comes from God. But what makes a sacred profession?
When I hear the word “calling,” either a secular or a sacred calling comes to mind. In either case, calling seemed inextricable from occupation or profession, as conceived of in my childhood church.
Real missionaries we supported visited the jungles of the Americas. Some even went to the remote islands dotting the Pacific, or went into dangerous places in the Middle East, Asia or Eastern Europe that were sometimes hostile to missionary activity.
These hostilities as well as exotic customs (serving an honored guest monkey brains), were brought up time and again on missionary visits, to the extent that I wonder if they were overstated–though it is impossible to say, now.
In any case, the stories reported back were sensational and engendered a sense of inadequacy in me, safe as I was in the God-blessed land of the USA.
The Spiritual Superiority of Sacred Work
The call away from the modern conveniences of home to the “savage” realities of other places was a sacred calling to ministry and possibly martyrdom as Jim Elliot and Nate Saint experienced.
I knew their turn of phrase “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose,” long before I fully understood its import. What I did understand was that i did not want to be killed in a remote place, no matter whether or not it opened the floodgates of God’s mercy for others.
Along with pastors, these missionaries comprised a “sacred calling” that seemed higher than others, but–it was emphasized–it isn’t for everyone.
The setting of pursuing a sacred calling is either the church or the mission field.
For those too “yellow” (“yellow is for the Christian who’s afraid to tell,” we’d often sing in children’s church), there was a secular calling: making money, having a family, raising them “in the nurture and admonition of the LORD,” and dying, having given money in life and in death in support of those pursuing a “sacred calling.”
Eventually, I was told, in the End Times (coming soon!), the two callings would overlap, and martyrdom would become a worldwide phenomenon: I could–if I didn’t come to faith in time to be raptured–be tortured and beheaded as a price for my late conversion. But, then I would see God.
I learned all this before adolescence, and I have to say that–as terrified as I was–I was worried Jesus would find me a coward, and that I would enter into heaven a second-class citizen, having to look up and grovel before the true heroes of the faith, of which I would not be one.
Our True Calling
But, is this secular/sacred division real?
No.
We are not called to one or the other. Instead, we are called beyond these concepts of reaching (or not reaching) others and strangers into a universal fellowship with others.
How do we achieve this? With God and where we are. In 1 Corinthians 7:24, we read: “So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.”
What sense would it make to remain where you are–even in slavery(!)–if there were better callings in better places? Surely, we should abandon our mundane existence in favor of something better, if such a thing exists.
The grass may always be greener on the other side, but you are still you, with your background, skills, and so on.
Instead of going elsewhere, the call to remain “with God” in one’s current condition suggests that the idea of a sacred calling must extend to all, regardless of profession.
1 Corinthians 1:9 states that we are “called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ.” It is this fellowship with God and others that is our calling. We are to know God, and that may (my childhood church got this right) include suffering on the behalf of others, but it isn’t limited to a special few.
“Lift up your eyes and see the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35) extends to believers where they are. So, where are you, and what do you see?
