God's Call, part I

This is something that I have had on my mind a lot recently. What is God's Call? I don't mean what is my call, and I don't mean what is your call, but I mean what is it. I think being here at camp, and being at a camp where many viewpoints might be more conservative than my own, that word has started to take on an eerie feeling. I'm not saying that people here are weird. Rather, I think that I have always had some suspicions about that word, and the "Christian-ese" meaning behind it, and those concerns have come to the forefront while I have been in this place. That is particularly true when I hear people claim, "I see [fill in the blank occupation] as God's call for me."

If that's the case, then that's great. And I'm not saying that you are full of poo when you say that. I am saying that unless you are a person I deeply respect, you might get a raised eyebrow from me when you make a statement like that.

Why? I'll tell you why. I'll raise my eyebrow because I think "Call" is a word that is abused these days. I think Christian culture has taken this very Biblically based word and has absconded it. We use it all the time! "God has Called me to be here; This is God's Call for me; God is telling me to do this; I hear God's Call in this work...." It says a lot to claim you are doing God's work. That should be especially profound when you think of people who say it, and yet you think, "If THAT is God's work then I want nothing to do with any of it" (I'm looking at you Falwell, and Phelps, among others...).

1 Corinthians 1:1 finds Paul introducing himself as: "Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God...." In fact, Paul is often described in this way, almost so often that I start to wonder if Paul put that call in there with his name simply because there were so many doubters out there who wondered just how reliable Paul was. After all, he wasn't one of the Twelve. Heck, I'd put that moniker in there to squelch a few rumors. But this was friggin' PAUL. If he's going to claim a Call from God, I figure I'll let him have it. Just remember that you aren't Paul when I raise my eyebrow after you say it. Paul had his difficulties and doubts. He boasted about working for the Lord. He wrote a good chunk of the New Testament. He started churches and preached to the poor and the needy and the desolate. He preached to the outsiders. What have you been up to lately?

The use of "Call" isn't too specific in other places. We see in 1 Cor. 7 that God calls us to live lives of peace. We often see "Call" in reference to being or becoming a disciple of Christ (such as in the calling of the Twelve in the Gospels, but also mentioned in the beginning of Jude, as well as Acts, Romans, 1 & 2 Peter, and 1 John among others). So when you tell me that God has Called you to the life of a high paying, high powered corporate lawyer while living in a nice house with 2.4 children, a dog named Butch, a cat named Ms. Whiskers, and geraniums on the porch behind your white pickets fence and manicured and landscaped lawn...I'm going to be a little apprehensive.

There's an article here that asks and states, "What is God's call? How does He call people to service? We often hear that God calls pastors and missionaries, but exactly how does He call? Do you hear it? Do you feel it? Is it in a still, small voice? Is it a dramatic event? Or is it just a feeling? I believe it can be all of the above." Yeah, that's kind of what I think about when someone asks me to describe it. And while some of those questions are important to consider (like the fact that NOT just pastors and missionaries feel or hear God's Call), it kind of leaves me with the feeling that you are in a cheesy movie - like all you have to do is follow your heart and it will all be OK in the end.

The problem is that I'm just not on board with that. Following my heart has sometimes led me into trouble, just like following my head can do. This is particularly true because I think the description above blurs the lines between Biblical accounts and present day reality. That is a great point brought to light by an author named Langdon Gilkey back in 1961. In his article, "Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language" in the Journal of Religion he raises a very pertinent issue:

Put in the language of contemporary semantic discussion, both the biblical and the orthodox understanding of theological language was univocal. That is, when God was said to have 'acted,' it was believed that he had performed an observable act in space and time so that he functioned as does any secondary cause; and when he was said to have 'spoken,' it was believed that an audible voice was heard by the person addressed. In other words, the words 'act' and 'speak' were used in the same sense of God as of men. We deny this univocal understanding of theological words. To us, theological verbs such as 'to act,' 'to work,' 'to do,' 'to speak,' 'to reveal' etc., have no longer the literal meaning of observable actions in space and time or of voices in the air. The denial of wonders and voices has thus shifted our theological language from the univocal to the analogical. Our problem is, therefore, two fold: (a) We have not realized that this crucial shift has taken place, and so we think we are merely speaking the biblical language because we use the same words. We do use these words, but we use them analogically rather than univocally, and these are vastly different usages. (b) Unless one knows in some sense what the analogy means, how the analogy is being used and what it points to, an analogy is empty and unintelligible; that is, it becomes equivocal language. This is the crux of our present difficulty...

That concept blew me away. This is especially pertinent when you take a look at the way people use "Call." Let's take a look at Paul again, just as an example. Paul's conversion story is fairly familiar to most experienced Christians, and the thundering voice, complete with blinding light later followed by blindness and scales falling from Paul's eyes, is a pretty good story to hit me with when I question you about the certainty of your call. Now, assuming that you want to take Paul's converstion account very literally, we have to ask the question why God doesn't use the same method these days to grab our attention. Or, if you are a fan of the Old Testament, then let's take a look at Moses: God's voice like thunder so loud it shook mountains. God talking with Moses on the mountain. Moses seeing God, such that when he returned his face glowed. Looking at God's interaction with the world today, one has to either say that God is changing the way God operates, or that we have to take another look at what the Bible means when God speaks or acts, and what it means when we say God is Calling us....