Part IV Spiritual Formation and The Integration of Faith and Vocation

An Example: "Respectable Businesses"

Without A Redemptive Christian Approach

I am mindful of C.S. Lewis' book: The Screwtape Letters, in which he is often noted for his comments on evil with the following statement:

"The greatest evil is not done those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."

Lewis' point is well taken if we were to examine the origin and promotion of Pornography in our culture. For example, in a fascinating article in the Sunday, October 29, 2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette an article in its Commentary section featuring the following:

General Motor Corp., the world's largest company, now sells more graphic sex films every year than does Larry Flint owner of the Hustler Empire. The 8.7 million Americans who subscribe to DirecTV, A GM subsidiary, buy nearly $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films from satilite…"

EchoStar Communications Corp., the number 2 satellite provider, whose chief financial backers include Murdoch (chairman of News Corp.,), makes more money selling graphic adult films through its satellite subsidiary than Playboy…"

AT&T Corp., the nations biggest communications company… also owns a company that sells sex videos to nearly a million hotel rooms

The article goes on to say: " For all the money being made on sex – legally – by mainstream corporations, the topic remains taboo outside the boardroom. The major satellite and cable companies do very little marketing of the X-rated products, and they are not mentioned in annual reports except in the vaguest of euphemisms… None of the corporate leaders of AT&T, Time Warner, General Motors, EchoStar, Liberty Media, Marriott International, the Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment or News Corp. – all companies that have a big financial stake in adult films and are held by millions of shareholders – were willing to speak publicly about the sex side of their businesses."

To the astonishment of Flynt… his competitors in the 10 billion annual adult market are mainstream corporations whose board members are among the American elite."

Clearly these large "respectable" corporations described above have great need of a redemptive Christian influence. But, where was it? At the risk of appearing to moralize, are there not Christians associated with those corporations who have voting and policy power? Were there no influential Christians in management or on the Board of Directors, who would govern with the mind of Christ? If so, did any of those Christians have a faith and vocation integration perspective and commitment, or is their worldview compartmentalized? Or perhaps there simply are not enough of them and they are simply too outnumbered to make that much of a substantive difference… Of those who might be there, did any of them come from a strong Christian background and/or Christian Liberal Arts Colleges like Geneva College? If so, what was their approach to procuring their various positions? More specifically, did they get their position with the idea that they would keep the toxic parts of the job from infecting them; or did they take the job with the idea of infecting it for Christ?

Could it be possible that there were no Christians there, who intentionally chose that kind of work, that career path because they felt called by God to penetrate it as a Mission Field and use their calling and gifts to create a "good infection" that C.S. Lewis discusses in yet another book Mere Christianity? And because they did so, what they have, is not really a job but rather, a "vocation" that they are committed to? A powerful sense of God's design and purpose for them; a passionate calling, desire and commitment to transform this part of society for Christ, that the Apostle Paul encourages us with from Ephesians 2:10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Higher Education Students and the Practice of "Individualism" by Default…

Recalling that many young Christians choose their perspective majors for: First, not out of a sense of "calling," but because it will meet their lifestyle wants and "needs;" and secondly because those same students often engage in the subtle interplay of vacillating between "vocation" and "livelihood." In other words, they choose their livelihood predicated on wants and needs and then declare it their vocation!
Third, perhaps, even before Christian students come to Colleges and/or Universities, they really haven't been given the necessary experiences or diagnostic tools to be able to ascertain their vocational calling. Therefore the "individualism" practiced here is the kind that comes by default. They default and do, and act, on only what they know and have experienced.

As a Youth Minister involved in numerous churches and communities, it was no secret that most students spend the lion's share of their time and energy doing those activities that reap the most rewards socially; and through which their parents cold live vicariously. Over time this often resulted in emphasizing the development of secondary gifts and talents and not so much their innate and primary ones… In High School, a student can function reasonably well with this approach. But when they go to College or University, they discover that their secondary gifts are not weighty enough to allow them to perform at the next level. Conversely, their primary gifts, the ones that are directly related to their vocation and calling, withered, became truncated and are often grossly underdeveloped. This condition as well, will not permit them to perform at the next level… As a result they are often lost and confused about how their faith can work with their vocation - whatever that may be… The resulting primary objective becomes social and financial "survival."

This situation is exacerbated all the more, when they receive pressure from family members about choosing a particular major that will enable them to pursue a specific and narrow career path for the rest of their lives! I recall reading a number of years ago, that of those students who graduate from a college or university, only half go into a field of their particular major; and of that half, another half of them move out of that field altogether within five years. In addition, the average person changes, not their job, but their career 3-5 times in their life-time.

My thought is that those of us who do Youth Ministry, as well as those of us who are involved in Christian Higher Education, have a significant if not vital role to play in guiding students in this thought process. Clearly, what we have been doing so far is not working. As of today, there is not one major institution in our culture in which the Christian community has any significant influence. We are indeed in a Post-Christian Culture. This despite the fact that Christianity and those who embraced it are either responsible for and/or shaped significantly things like: Hospitals, Schools and Universities, Democracy/Politics, Business, Non-Profits etc. etc. We have lost our way from the faith and vocational integration principle - because over time, like the proverbial frog in the kettle, we were wooed into a highly privatized, intellectualized and compartmentalized expression of our faith. How odd it is that what we fail to recognize that what we build in life, is actually what we live in. Soren Kierkegaard once said:

"Most systematizers stand in the same relation to their systems as the man who builds
a great castle and lives in an adjoining shack; they do not live in their great systematic
structure. Metaphorically speaking, a person's ideas must be the building he lives in ---
otherwise there is something terribly wrong

We always do what we always are, because we can only do what we only are….