There are a number of reasons why those of us who educate for vocation at independent colleges and universities are acutely concerned about the start of the new administration. First and foremost, attacks on DEI are rattling those committed to making college education and purposeful work available to all. While private institutions arguably have more protection than public ones, they’re not immune from federal attacks or statewide measures that follow. The slipshod firing of federal workers also sends shivers among public servants, many of whom chose governmental work out of a sense of calling; that is, because they “want to serve the public” and are “motivated by their desire to make the world a better place.”
Equally troubling is the fact that so many government officials have ordained their own work in terms of a higher calling, or a mission sent by God, even as they disrupt the more modest callings of others. At both the state and federal levels, politicians have repeatedly interpreted their electoral victories (many of which have been quite narrow) as a clear mandate to slash jobs, overhaul governmental bureaucracy, and attack higher education. We should be skeptical about declarations that elected (or unelected) officials have been “saved by God” or are doing “God’s work.” Even without explicit self-ordinations, we should be critical—and resistant—anytime a leader or party enacts “creative destruction” with all the certainty, zeal, and sanction of the God-Chosen.
Invocations of God’s will and self-assured pronouncements of having a “higher calling” have long made me nervous. As a Christian, I believe that God can and does use the lives of particular human beings to bring about healing and hope for all. But whenever a person equates God’s will with the events of history or rationalizes their own choices by interpreting them as God’s handiwork, the results range from the comic to the tragic.
The comical side is nowhere better displayed than in the classic musical comedy, The Blues Brothers. Jake (John Belusi) and his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) repeatedly explain that they are “on a mission from God.” Who then can stop them as they put the band back together and pile up carnage in their 106-mile quest to Chicago to save a Catholic orphanage? Securely on the tragic side is every authoritarian leader for whom “might makes right.” Since they are strong and winners, and God is the strongest and winningest of all, their actions are ordained and unquestionable, even—or especially?—when they pile up their own carnage of lost lives and livelihoods.
Many, in fact, seem to equate a “religious” or “Christian” calling with utter certainty and divine sanction. In their minds, if you are called by God to a particular task, career, or way of life, your vocation is settled, beyond question, and unambiguously good. Excepted is Bonnie Miller-McLemore, who in her new book explicitly critiques evocations of God’s will when they give divine sanction for systems that are often unjust. She also uses deeply Christian language for callings that many assume are “secular.” She describes how we often receive our truest vocations when we “relinquish” our own ambition and moral clarity, noting that “the Bible is full of such reversals.”
As I mentioned in a previous post, Miller-McLemore shares her critique of bad-faith rationalizations—as well as her interest in “the dark side” of vocation—with many existentialist writers. While many existentialists are atheists, a few are deeply Christian, among them the 19th century Danish writer, Søren Kierkegaard. According to Kierkegaard, to be called by God and to have a religious calling does not make one invulnerable to anxiety, self-reflection, or even self-suspicion. Quite the contrary, having faith leads you into constant questioning and uncertainty, and therefore also into radical trust. In his potent image, the one called by God is alone before God, trying to keep afloat out on 70,000 fathoms of water.
In a diary entry he penned as a young adult, Kierkegaard personally grapples with finding his own deepest vocation. He explicitly contrasts that which he seeks with something he can know for certain:
What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. Of what use would it be to me to discover a so-called objective truth . . . if it had no deeper meaning for me and for my life?
Discerning God’s will for his life does not give him clarity and security. Rather, it plunges him more deeply into his own groundless “subjectivity,” his passionate commitment to that which—and One whom—he can never fully grasp.
Kierkegaard also repeatedly reminds us that, whereas life can be understood backwards, it must be lived forwards. In other words, there is no transcendent perspective this side of eternity from which one’s life makes perfect sense. And yet we must still make decisions—courageously and hopefully, if not also with fear and trembling. For Kierkegaard, this existentialist maxim is more, not less, true for Christians who believe that God through Christ calls them forth. (He believes that Christ embodies the paradox of eternity entering time. To follow Christ is thus to follow God deeply into a paradoxical way of life that cannot be fully understood or justified.)
My institution has tried to make concrete Kierkegaard’s maxim about having to live life forward in our “Pizza and Purpose” series, where faculty and community speakers are invited to tell vocational stories that may still be unresolved for them. Speakers such as Kiki Kosnik (a contributor to Vocation Matters) have taken us up on the challenge. They vulnerably narrate their own vocational crises rather than lift up certainties and success stories. In so doing, they form powerful connections with students who are also trying their best to live life forward.
Finally, Kierkegaard continuously distinguishes faith in God from the reasons for that faith. He’s concerned that any explanation for faith does not become more important that the faith being explained. In Practice in Christianity, he ponders why people believe in Christianity, concluding, “Well, there is no ‘why’; so it is indeed lunacy.” But why is there “no why”? For this Christian existentialist, there is no why “because there is an infinite why.”
Kierkegaard here evokes boundless, infinite reasons for faith in God—a why so immeasurable that it cannot be comprehended, but rather thrusts us deeper into radical trust. The same might be true for the discernment of God’s will and for those with religious callings. Precisely because it is God who calls them, they can never grasp their ultimate purpose, much less wield it against criticism, or evoke it to justify ignoble means. Truly listening for the voice of God will make one less zealous in one’s mission, more receptive to the pleas and pulls of others.
Were Jake and Elwood to discern their mission from God in these more nuanced and faithful ways, the film would be less funny. Were some political leaders to do so, the results of their zeal would be less tragic.
Jason Mahn is professor of religion and director of the Presidential Center for Faith and Learning at Augustana College, Rock Island, IL. His essay “The Conflict in Our Callings: The Anguish (and Joy) of Willing Several Things” appeared in Vocation Across the Academy: A New Vocabulary for Higher Education (Oxford 2017). He has recently authored Neighbor Love through Fearful Days: Finding Meaning and Purpose in a Time of Crisis (Fortress 2021), co-edited So That All May Flourish: The Aims of Lutheran Higher Education (Fortress 2023), and contributed to The Christian Century. For other posts by Jason, click here.
