Considering Vocational Ministry

I came across this in one of the letters from C.S. Lewis in A Severe Mercy. He's talking to Sheldon Vanauken (the autobiographer), who is considering both Christianity and switching his field of study from history to theology. I think these thoughts are particularly applicable to us as we are all right now determining our life's work.

Lewis to Vanauken:

"We must ask three questions about the probable effect of changing your research subject to something more Theological.

(1.) Wd. it be better for your immediate enjoyment? Answer, probably but not certainly, Yes.

(2.) Wd. it be better for your academic career? Answer, probably No. You wd. have to make up in haste a lot of knowledge which wd. not be v. easily digested in the time.

(3.) Wd. it be better for your soul? I don't know. I think there is a great deal to be said for having one's deepest spiritual interest distinct from one's ordinary duty as a student or professional man. St. Paul's job was tent-making. When the two coincide I shd. have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one's job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation; and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap. Contrariwise, there is a danger that what is boring and repellent in the job may alienate one from the spiritual life. And finally, someone has said 'None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things; sacred things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want spiritual truth for her own sake; how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm. I've always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I'd advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology wd. do. Mind, I'm not certain: but that is the view I incline to.

[Second Letter] Look: the question is not whether we should bring God into our work or not. We certainly should and must: as MacDonald says 'All that is not God is death.' The question is whether we should simply (a.) Bring Him in in the dedication of our work to Him, in the integrity, diligence, and humility with which we do it or also (b.) Make His professed and explicit service our job. The A vocation rests on all men whether they know it or not; the B vocation only on those who are specially called to it. Each vocation has its peculiar dangers and peculiar rewards. Naturally, I can't say which is yours. When I spoke of danger to your academic career in a change of subject I was thinking chiefly of time. If you can get an extra year, it would be another matter."

This directly addresses at least my position. I have for a long time been planning to go into the ministry of some sort. Funny, I've never pictured myself as a pastor, at least not that I remember. I just pictured "gospel ministry" in some vague way, as if I would make my living reading the Bible and having conversations on the street. The more I've seen, the more the term "ministry" has included. Even a "secular" job. If you can be called a "missionary" for going to Turkey and running a sign-making shop and sharing the gospel when possible, can you not be called a "minister" for running a lawn care business in Dover and sharing the gospel when possible? The NT doesn't talk about being a pastor as a vocation does it? Apostles, traveling founders of the church receiving pay ("the ox is worthy…" etc.) yes. But pastors? I imagine that the elders appointed in churches were supported very little by the lay people. So the hard distinction of "minister" and "layperson" that refers to the positions vocationally must have come with the advent of (sufficiently) paid ministerial positions.

Not that this is bad: having vocational ministers is a luxury and great benefit to the churches. It must be an advantage to have pastors who can spend all their time working on improving and strengthening the church rather than thirty or forty percent. So it can't be a question of whether we should have vocational ministers or not; if we can have them we should have them. The question for us (or maybe just me) is then, should we be them? I think we should consider two things from Lewis's letters: 1) Can we handle the difficulties he mentions in question #3? Would it be better for our souls not to be vocational ministers? 2) Are we called?

Has someone written something on a theology of calling? It would be good to read on call in the NT.

Praying for Justice

I read this article a few days ago in the bathroom while I was waiting for the water to get hot and I ended up taking an angry shower. At first it seemed funny – someone stole baby Jesus. No doubt a car of guys riding around and someone had a dare to pay back, or maybe Dr. Williams's "dumb David" was in the car, but whatever the case some idiot got out, ran up to the nativity scene, and jumped into the back seat with Jesus. Haha, ok take it back the next day. But then I read the prayer from the church prayer list. Did you read it? This was printed, size 18 font, on the top of the Daily Break section: "PLEASE PRAY FOR WHOEVER STOLE BABY JESUS FROM THE MANGER AT THE BRITT HOUSE. They've had that baby Jesus for 25 years. Pray that whoever has it experiences such guilt and dis-ease that they have to take it back to get relief." Kristin Davis obviously saw the irony: she highlighted that the request sat alongside soldiers and cancer patients on the prayer list. Is it right for them to pray for the "guilt and dis-ease" of the perpetrator? Or, larger, is it right, ever, for any reason, to pray for the guilt and dis-ease of anyone?

The irony of the Jesus figurine: Jesus had his life for 33 years and prayed, "forgive them, they don't know what they are doing" for the people who took it. The Britts had a piece-of-plastic baby Jesus figurine for 25 years and prayed, "bring them guilt and dis-ease" for the people who took it.

As an aside, it does smack a little of the birth of a relic doesn't it? That some object loosely connected to something holy grows in sanctity year by year, until after 1000 years it is nearly God itself, worthy of worship, pilgrimage, and awe. Today a cheap figurine, 25 years out something to be prayed about for return, 1000 years out… what?

Clearly the Britts were wronged, but what should we say about their reaction? Or how should they react if the boys were caught and they had the chance to press charges? And how should we react in similar circumstances?

A few propositions:

We should always love seeing Justice itself demonstrated, and never love seeing someone punished.
I heard someone a while ago say, "I really like seeing people brought to justice." I wonder if he would include himself? Or his son? Justice is immutable – it is giving what is due. Reward for righteousness is justice; punishment for wrong is also justice. So if we take delight in seeing justice bring pain down on someone's head, we must delight only in the first half: seeing justice. We must not delight seeing pain being brought down on someone's head. The only way Hell can bring God glory is if Justice is demonstrated in it, or some other virtues. The ultimate destruction of any of God's creation, especially that only piece made in his image, cannot bring him glory in itself because it does not represent any essential part of him. Justice does. This might seem a little hair-splitting but I think it's the difference between smug satisfaction in seeing someone "get their due" (a horrible and callusing attitude), and a distraught and weeping exaltation in God's commitment to himself, shown in someone "getting their due."

We should pray for Justice on a criminal only for a demonstration of justice and for the criminal's good.
We should delight in seeing Justice because we are seeing God in it. We should delight in seeing Justice because Justice can reform a person, and we should pray for God to use it to reform. We must not delight in seeing Justice because it returns our beloved baby Jesus figurine to our beloved and ancient (25 years!) nativity scene. We must not delight in seeing Justice because it brings pain down on the head of that guy who, for whatever reason, we feel satisfied to see in pain.

We should never pray imprecatory prayers, or pray them very carefully for Justice's sake alone.
We should not follow the Psalmist in praying, "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" (Ps. 137.9). Or with Isaiah: "Prepare a place to slaughter his children for the sins of their ancestors" (14.21). Or: "O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord! Let them vanish like water that runs away; when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted. Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the stillborn child who never sees the sun" (Ps. 58.6-8). The only possible way these prayers cannot be poison from the darkest corners of human depravity is if they are, somehow, aimed not at the destruction of the subjects described, but at the vindication of God's justice and goodness over his creatures' depravity. That is, if depravity has gotten so bad in the world (that, by the way, God made and sustains) that the only way to vindicate God's goodness is to destroy the depraved people, then only then can I see how such prayers could at all be construed as right. If we pray anything at all like these biblical prayers, we should stop and repent. The only way (that I can see) that we could rightly pray any prayer one-tenth as brutal as these is if we had an ultimate, eschatological, abstract love for the vindication and display of God's Justice and Goodness.

If the only real consequence of your being wronged is your own pain, absorb it and use it to imagine the pain Jesus wrongly felt. If some other consequence is at stake (the dignity of your daughter, the safety of the public), bring pain on the head of the criminal only as far as necessary and take no delight in his pain. And above all, love Justice because it is of God.

Publishing from MS Word

You can publish blog posts from MS Word 2007, and it's pretty sweet. Really helps with editing. Like major.

Here are the steps to do it:

1. Open a new doc in MS Word 2007 (click the MS symbol > New > New Blog Post).
   
2. Register the blog host (Blogger).
   
3. For Pannenberg you have to use my gmail creds, so email me for them if you want to do this.
   
4. Right now I'm using no image host… haven't figured that out yet.
   
5. In MS Word, create your blog post, the hit Publish.
   
6. See the swankness.
   

Some formatting experiments:

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Footnote¹

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¹How does this look??