Nathan Vonnahme

The Christian Life

Regent College

21 April 1999

          In thinking about what direction to take after I am done at Regent, the most helpful advice I've heard is from James Houston, who urged us to remember the distinction John Calvin made between our primary and secondary callings--the primary vocation of each life is to be a child of God, and the choice of career or occupation is secondary to that. This observation is simple, yet if taken to heart it prevents many of the confusions of identity and frustrations with employment that plague so many people in my generation. My first, clearest calling is to be a follower of Christ, a disciple, an adopted child, a member of his body, a part of his chosen people, a priest of his royal priesthood. This job is quite complex, challenging and rewarding in itself, and as long as I keep it central and do not confuse my secondary vocation with it, I have a secure, interesting and rewarding lifelong vocation to pursue.

          The primary calling also helps to make sense of and heal the fragmentation I experience in the other areas of my life. For example, for my current job I have learned some very technical skills and am involved in a community that uses those skills. Instead of defining my identity in terms of my occupational skills, practices or community, I am free to abandon my identity to God and be free of the tensions and incongruities that many people find between their work and "real life." As a child of God, I am doing the same thing at work as in the rest of life, and I am the same person.

          The secondary vocation has never been more up in the air for me than it is now. It used to be, whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I could tell them: "Smokey the Bear!" "an astronaut!" "a scientist!" "a computer graphics artist!" or, more recently, "a missionary, probably a Bible translator, probably with Wycliffe. . ." But for a number of reasons my eyes have been opened in the last few months to many possible and desirable careers. Reading Eugene Peterson makes me want to pastor; visiting the Wilkinsons makes me want to either farm or devote all my time to cooking, or reading, or both. Each professor here makes me want to teach; each book makes me want to write. Frederick Buechner's Telling the Truth got me really fired up about preaching; Miriam Adeney's and Bob Ekblad's stories make me want to be a missionary. Brother Lawrence makes me want to just wash dishes. Many people have reminded me of the tremendous need in North America and made me doubt my previous conviction that there are many trying to meet those needs here, and that the people are obstinate and not worth waiting for while others around the world are yearning to hear the gospel and are so easy to help. So, rather than talk about what exactly I hope or expect to do as my secondary vocation, I would like to discuss some elements of the first calling that I hope will be involved in whatever I do for the second. I've chosen seven of them, and they do not represent everything that is most important but a selection of things that have come to my attention recently.

          The first element of being a child of God that I want to carry in to my career, whatever it is, is spirituality. Not a vague subjectivist interest in non-material things, but orthodox Christian spirituality: a lifestyle of prayer, communion with God and submission to the Holy Spirit's leading in each moment. One of the most powerful lessons I've learned this year is how easy it is, even as a student ostensibly engaged in the pursuit of God through study, to forget him, be distracted from him, pursue outward forms of religion and atrophy in my relationship with him. Some very good role models have also shown me that a far greater level of spiritual maturity than what most of the church is used to striving for is possible. It takes years, but it is possible to pray without ceasing, to bring every thought captive, to love others selflessly, to control the tongue, to seek first the kingdom. Whatever my career is, I want it to be a place where this kind of spiritual maturity is cultivated. Almost any career could offer conditions for growth, but any career could also stunt and distract, and a religious one is at least as dangerous as any other.

          The second element of being a child of God that I want to see manifested in my life after Regent is community. "Community" is Buzzword Number One around here, and often it seems a little hollow perhaps because we try so hard to appreciate our differences and do not celebrate our commonalities enough, but real community is an amazing thing, the mark of true Christianity--"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). I want to realize the relationships that Christ has made possible between fellow believers in concrete, everyday ways. First of all, this means seeking Christ-centered community in my family, and second it means being involved in and committed to the lives of other brothers and sisters in a church community. My secondary career may not explicitly include community-building, but it needs to be part of my life.

          The third element I want to see present in my life is an engagement with the Word of God, both the written Word and the glorified, incarnate Word, whose Spirit continues to speak to us. Whatever I end up doing and wherever I end up going, I want my life to include serious study of the Word, and not fluffy religious platitudes. One of the things Miriam Adeney spoke to us about is the global need for theological education, and the need for that education to be contextualized. Leslie Newbingen's contention that theology needs to be put back in the hands of the whole people of God is similar, and both struck chords in me. I can't imagine that my life after Regent will not include reading the Bible with others and helping them interpret it with integrity according to their situations.

          The fourth element of the primary calling that has been brought forcefully to my attention this semester is the necessity of caring about and for the poor and marginalized. First of all this means the materially poor of the world, but it also includes those whom society pushes to its edges because of disability, age, race or addiction, and also the very real spiritual poor, who have nothing in their lives but an excess of material possessions. It is easy to either ignore all these problems or be paralyzed by them, but I hope my life will incorporate, through acts of mercy and justice, involvement with those whom God repeatedly affirms his special care for.

          Along with caring for the needs of the poor and marginalized, I hear a call to prioritize the lost: the one sheep out of ninety-nine, the one coin out of ten. I want my life to be marked by evangelism--good news sharing--by word and deed and purposeful engagement with those outside the church. Just as involvement with the poor provides a necessary reality check for our safe middle-class comfortability, serious involvement with people who are not Christians gives us a reality check for our theology and spirituality. While we speculate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or discover another room in the interior castle of our souls, much of the world is ignorant of God's love, presence, and grace, out of relationship with him and blinded by sin.

          The sixth element of the primary calling that I hope will characterize my life after Regent is that of earth-keeping. Adam and Eve's original vocation was to be gardeners, stewards and tillers of the land, and I hope that wherever I live I will be able to care for a patch of land. In the last few years we have helped two of our friends in Alaska as they build their house and improve and care for the land around it, and I have always felt drawn to their enterprise, and thought that even though the ideal of "wilderness" is beautiful, there is something about a garden that is maybe even more pleasing, especially if you live in it. The wilderness is less romantic when it involves thorny branches impeding every step. Though it may not be possible, I hope that wherever I live my life will involve keeping a house and some land well.

          The seventh and last principle of my primary calling that has been brought to my attention this year is the importance of place. Wherever I end up living and working, I want to love the geography and climate, enter into the culture fully yet discerningly, and love the people wholly. I can't see any other way of doing this beside spending quite a few years in one place. For this reason, there are some advantages of returning home and working in a familiar context and place, but I still feel very open to relocating anywhere in the world that God wants us to go. As Betsy and I think about the future and find our previous plans in question, it becomes more and more clear that we are permitted and enabled to do just about anything, and God will work anywhere we go, but in the end the only reason for going anywhere or doing anything is to obey him, and go where he wills.

          This has been a difficult paper for me to write. I've been dissatisfied with each sentence as I feel like I am regurgitating buzzwords and rhetoric learned over the course of my first year at Regent, and I am not saying anything original. I've been intimidated by the thought that I will probably read this paper a few years from now and measure my life against it, scoffing at some parts while wincing, embarrassed, at others. But it is all true, and I really do think all these buzzwords are important, and I really do want my life to be formed by them. Spirituality, community, exegesis, justice, evangelism, earth-keeping, place. I pray that these will be worked into and through my life, and that the result will be a whole, hale, healthy, holy, integrated Christian life.