Personal Jesus: Reflections on God’s Call

Abstract

This essay argues that contemporary conceptions of “calling” do not properly reckon with the concept’s biblical and historical foundations. In popular culture, where celebrities and social media influencers wield power, religious language is often extracted from faith traditions without regard for the tradition’s identity or communal nature. Calling, in this manner, has become a cultural catch-phrase devoid of vocational meaning. For many young, American Christians, including those taught by the authors, calling primarily bears a psychosocial meaning: calling signifies personal or economic fulfillment. Even students who are zealous for their faith tend to read the concept of “calling” within cultural norms rather than the biblical narratives or the Christian tradition’s theological insights. The authors present the biblical examples of Moses and Saul (or Paul) to critique contemporary cultural assumptions about calling. They argue that calling is and ought to be a process that is thoroughly dialogical (with God and community), embraces challenges rather than seeking personal stability, and foregrounds the simple act of following Christ’s call and example in daily life.

1. Introduction

The English electronic music band Depeche Mode released their song, “Personal Jesus,” in 1989 (Keppler 2019). The song lyrics appropriate the divinity of Christ to incite listeners to perform divine acts themselves: “Lift up the receiver/I’ll make you a believer/I will deliver/You know I’m a forgiver” (Depeche Mode 1989). The song’s resonance with musicians and audiences alike vaulted the band to stardom. More than 144 performers have covered the song, including Marilyn Manson (2002), Johnny Cash (2004), Def Leppard (2018), and Ambient Light Orchestra (2020).¹ Although “Personal Jesus” strikes notes of irreverence—a reading the band anticipated among American audiences—Cash describes the song as “probably the most evangelical song [I’ve] ever recorded” (Keppler 2019).

“Personal Jesus” exemplifies the emergent infusion of Christian language in secular music and culture.² Though Christianity may be losing its broad adherence in American culture (Levitt 2022), Christian spirituality thrives in secular culture. Although many secular appropriations of Christian ideas and principles are consistent with scripture—the once widely popular WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets are one example—cultural appropriations of call language—“God has called me…”—frequently challenge the biblical understanding of God’s call by omitting the corporately recognized and shared obligations of divine callings. These personalized notions of “call” can occlude the richer, community-oriented sense of biblical calls, a mournful loss when considering the loneliness of modern society. Biblical accounts—both in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—offer rich spiritualities rooted in encounters with God. In the New Testament, this is an encounter with Christ himself, drawing humans into his divine spirituality. Though related to a personalized Jesus—what Jesus does “for me”—the biblical accounts demonstrate a robust invitation into the spiritual community Christ has created in his own body.

In this essay, we problematize the appropriation of religious call language in contemporary American culture. We begin by describing popular usages of call language in both religious and secular contexts. Next, we identify common features of call language in popular culture and media. Third, we analyze the implications of popularized call language for communities of faith. We apply three criteria in our analysis. Our aim is to resolve the following critical questions about call language in contemporary culture: (1) Are popular appropriations of the term ‘calling’ in secular and religious discourse scripturally based, that is, do conventional appeals to God’s call entail sound principles of biblical interpretation? (2) Are popular understandings of God’s callings Christ-centered or do competing cultural ideas displace Christ on the contemporary American scene? (3) Are popular appropriations of call language helpful or harmful to religious communities?

2. Description of the Problem

Call language, once primarily associated with religious leaders who perform liturgical duties and administer sacraments, permeates the secular world. Calling in contemporary popular usage denotes a divinely sanctioned path to personal fulfillment. Personal fulfillment, particularly in the United States, are psychological and economic states. Pursuits that yield individual happiness and financial success confirm one’s perceived alignment with God’s call on one’s life (so long as one is not bothered by circular reasoning and equivocation). The conventional argument goes something like this: God has a plan for me and that is my calling. My calling will provide my personal fulfillment. Personal fulfillment entails happiness and economic stability. My ambition to do X involves happiness and economic stability. Therefore, my ambition to do X fulfills God’s call.³

James Fowler helpfully distinguishes between personal fulfillment and a Christian sense of vocation, contending that hopes for personal fulfillment are eudemonic rather than rooted in Christian theology. Seeking personal fulfillment often “paradoxically…alienates us from the bonds of community and intimacy” (Fowler 2000, p. 83). Longing for self-transcendence and seeking to fulfill one’s sense of self-purpose can leave one limited only to one’s own being, disjointed from the community and values one may hope to serve. In contrast, vocation is “a call to partnership with God on behalf of the neighbor, [and] constitutes a far more fruitful way to look at the question of our specialness, our giftedness, and our possibilities of excellence” (Fowler 2000, p. 83). The stakes are high for confusing this rich, communally bound and truly self-transcendent form of vocation for a modern, lonely notion of self-fulfillment. Is God’s call the former or the latter?

Reimagining God’s call as a lucrative life plan rather than a divine life purpose could lead one down any number of fulfilling and non-onerous paths: to a career, marriage partner, or business venture. Career maps, vision boards, and bucket lists displace the Kingdom work typically associated with call language.⁴ Although secular appropriations of religious identities, practices, and principles are not new, a resurging interest in spirituality near the turn of the new millennium introduced a fresh wave of religious call language in contemporary culture. In 2004, the self-proclaimed-turned-reformed material girl Madonna adopted the Old Testament name Esther to reflect her Jewish awakening—and authorize heavy expenditures on Kabbalah study—though she never converted to Judaism (Madonna 2015). Other A-list celebrities, such as George Harrison, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Goldie Hawn, and Kurt Russell designed costly home meditation rooms that embraced Buddhism’s mindfulness while avoiding its repudiation of desire (Allen 2016). Most recently, Ye West, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, an American hip-hop artist, fashion designer, and record producer, created and attempted to trademark a religious gathering called “Sunday Service.” Sunday Service is not a church. But it is, to borrow Jordan Darville’s phrase, church-ish (Darville 2019). Darville describes it as a religion “hand-crafted for the social media age” (Darville 2019). West, who launched Sunday Service in 2019, leads the hour-long gathering of people for unstructured prayer and remixed gospel and secular songs. He also lines up celebrity appearances and would be selling trademarked clothing had his application succeeded (need we mention again the economics of secularized religious practices?) (Sakzewski 2020). West also regularly deploys call language to describe his personal pursuits. His 2013 album Yeezus, a play on Jesus, includes a song titled “I am a God” (West 2013).⁵ In 2019 he told Joel Osteen’s megachurch that he is “the greatest artist God ever created” (Kuruvilla 2019). And in 2020, West announced in an interview with Forbes magazine that God had called him to run for President and that “God appoints the President” (Jenkins 2020).

Adults are not alone in appealing to religious traditions to meet contemporary spiritual needs. College students on our campus began flirting with the so-called Postmodern or Emerging Church movement in the early 2000s. With names such as “Spirit Garage” and “Scum of the Earth,” Emerging Churches sound more like garage bands than spiritual communities. Many serve pizza and hire disc jockeys for their worship services. Others have their own cafes or coffee houses. Members of the “Solomon’s Porch” church in Minneapolis were known to chat “with plastic cups of wine and pieces of pastry before being told to, ‘take and eat the body of Christ’” (Leland 2004). Silent prayer and meditation often displace liturgical worship. Faith is reconfigured as a personality matter. One of our students left her Emerging Church after a congregant told her, “I don’t see the spark of Jesus in your eye.”

However, this essay is not a conservative call to restore a former manifestation of the Church; nor is it a lamentation of the state of the secular world. We see how faith traditions struggle to remain relevant in contemporary culture. And staying relevant requires cultural engagement. We also affirm the goodness, beauty, and truth that humans make and perform daily. But we are signaling caution around cultural appropriations of call language. By stripping God’s call of its religious import—and co-opting God’s name for financial gain—we jettison spiritual and moral responsibility in both its personal and communal forms.

3. Evaluation of the Problem

3.1. Criterion One: Is the Usage of ‘Calling’ Scripturally Based? Does It Employ Sound Principles of Biblical Interpretation?

Perhaps a reflection on the biblical notions of “calling” would be a fruitful exercise for all of us who encounter contemporary usages of God’s calling. As we might expect, the biblical materials contain diverse understandings of the ways in which God calls or commissions human beings to participate in God’s purposes. However, the interaction and partnership between God and the one being called is key. “Spiritual encounters and holy callings are inextricably entwined” (Anderson 1985). Most of the biblical examples that are relevant for our discussion, however, can be broken into two broad categories: (a) call stories that feature a particular call to a specific task and (b) call stories that feature a general call to a life of followship or discipleship. The former accounts are especially prominent in the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament, whereas the latter accounts take on a more prominent role in the New Testament. In the interest of space, we mention a couple of representative examples that illustrate both of these categories.

The Call of Moses. First, let’s recall a couple of biblical narratives in which God calls human beings to carry out a particular task that contributes to the overarching will of God. Perhaps the best-known example of this notion of calling can be seen in God’s call of Moses in Exodus 3:1–4:17. While Moses is tending his father-in-law’s sheep in the land of Midian, he leads his flock beyond the wilderness and arrives at Mount Horeb, the mountain of God (Exod 3:1). While on Mount Horeb, Moses sees a bush that is on fire. Yet, the bush is not consumed by the fire. This unusual phenomenon piques Moses’ curiosity and causes him to stop and examine the bush (Exod 3:2b–3). At that point, the LORD (YHWH) speaks directly to Moses by calling his name twice, “Moses, Moses!”⁶ Moses responds by saying, “Here I am” (Exod 3:4). In turn, the LORD instructs Moses to remove his sandals, and the LORD reveals the LORD’s identity as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Consequently, in a response which acknowledges the clear superiority of God, Moses hides his face because he is afraid to look at God (Exod 3:5).

The story then moves from God’s introduction of God’s self, which establishes God’s superiority and produces Moses’ reverent fear, to God’s commission of Moses. The LORD informs Moses that, having heard the cries of the Hebrews who are enslaved in Egypt (Exod 3:7–9), the LORD now desires for Moses to lead the Hebrews out of bondage (Exod 3:10).

Not surprisingly, Moses feels compelled to object to his pivotal role in this audacious plan. He does not seem to believe that he can fulfill such lofty goals. Therefore, Moses asks God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exod 3:11). The Lord responds to Moses’ objection by providing Moses with a sign that is intended to reassure Moses of the word of the LORD. God says, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain” (Exod 3:12).

Of course, we should not forget that Moses and God continue their dialogue (Exod 3:1–4:17). Amid this conversation, Moses presents four additional objections (3:13, 4:1, 10, and 4:13) while God provides four additional assurances to counter Moses’ objections (e.g., 3:14–22, 4:2–9, 4:11–12, and 4:14–17). Finally, even after God and Moses complete their initial dialogue, which constitutes what we are referring to as a call story or a commissioning story, God continues to speak to Moses as Moses begins to carry out God’s will (e.g., 4:19 and 4:21–23). Hence, God continues to direct and guide Moses’ actions throughout the book of Exodus.

The call story of Moses and his role in the exodus events exhibit a variety of biblical concepts that are helpful to us in our attempt to more fully describe the biblical notions of the call of God. First and perhaps foremost, as we see in Exodus 3:1–6, the LORD is the one who drives the conversation and who compiles an action plan. God approaches Moses rather than the other way around. God is the visionary, whereas Moses is hesitant to carry out the ominous instructions of the LORD. Furthermore, God patiently chooses to engage in a somewhat circular dialogue with the trepid Moses.

Yet, when many in our contemporary American setting talk about their personal callings, most of the dynamics present in Moses’ call story are absent from their experiences. We seldom hear of the God who calls hesitant servants to carry out audacious tasks that assist God’s salvific and liberating purposes in the world. Who provides the impetus for these present-day calls, God or humans? And who supplies the vision of what should be accomplished, God or humans? And who benefits most from these present-day calls, God or humans?

Second, the presence of the LORD actually elicits a sense of reverent fear from Moses rather than a sense of well-being, warm coziness, or even excitement. In fact, precisely at the moment that God is most imminent in this story, God is simultaneously revealed to be extraordinarily transcendent. As a result, when Moses catches a glimpse of the power, magnitude, and authority of the LORD, his response is to hide his face, to humble himself before God, and to be afraid of God. Furthermore, as corroborated by the narrative in Exodus 3–4, there is a real need for the LORD first to explain to Moses who the LORD is before explaining what it is the LORD is asking Moses to do.

Alternatively, some who speak about personal callings in our contemporary society appear far too eager and self-assured about functioning as God’s superhero emissaries but they also appear to be far too familiar with God and God’s ways. Perhaps younger generations, swayed by the ethos of contemporary culture, have failed to embrace a robust understanding of the transcendence of God. At times, it appears that the view of Jesus as a buddy or a member of one’s friend group has won the day. Perhaps whereas previous generations envisioned God as being too aloof, our current generation simply holds too casual of a view of God.

We should note that these elements are not only present in Exodus 3–4. The awe-inspiring presence of the LORD (or the angel of the LORD), the kinds of challenging tasks to which God has traditionally called God’s followers, and the profound otherness of God can be seen in a variety of other scriptural call stories as well. In fact, many have argued that these passages essentially share a common, call-narrative genre. Examples of biblical call-narrative passages include Exodus 3–4 as well as the commissioning stories of Abraham (Genesis 12:1–9), Gideon (Judges 6:11–24), Manoah (Judges 13:2–23), Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1–4:1a), Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1–13), Jeremiah (1:4–19), Zechariah (Luke 1:5–20), Mary (Luke 1:26–38), and the shepherds (Luke 2:8–20). In many of these stories, when the LORD (or an angel of the LORD) appears, the humans respond with fear and, consequently, the humans must be instructed not to fear (e.g., Luke 1:13). Furthermore, the LORD (or the angel of the LORD) often commissions the humans to carry out a particular task or to cooperate with the plan of God to which they object (e.g., Moses, Gabriel, Zechariah, and Mary). Finally, a sign of assurance is often provided to aid the humans so that they might be emboldened to carry out their God-given tasks.⁷ Hence, we should not consider the lessons about God’s transcendence and God’s otherness to be limited to the Mosaic call story.

The Call of Saul. In addition to the call of Moses, we should also consider a representative call story from the New Testament in which the person is commissioned to carry out a particular task. Perhaps the best-known example is God’s call of Saul to become an apostle (or one who has been sent) to the Gentiles, as described in the book of Acts. In fact, the story of Saul’s call by God to be the apostle to the Gentiles has often served as a paradigm for the way contemporary Christians envision the call of God upon their lives. However, the author’s take on Saul’s commission may surprise us.

At the beginning of Acts 9:1–31, Saul (who will later be known as Paul) is actively working to thwart the work of God in and through the early believers. Yet, in an encounter not unlike that of Moses, the Lord Jesus appears to Saul. A light from heaven flashes around him, he falls to the ground, and he hears “a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’” (Acts 9:3–4). Afterward, Saul cannot see for three days until the Lord sends Ananias to Saul. Interestingly, Luke indicates that God’s commission of Saul as the apostle to the Gentiles is not directly given to Saul by Jesus. Rather, the Lord (here, Jesus) informs Ananias, a fellow believer, about the substance of Saul’s commission (9:15–16). Moreover, that commission might be seen as encompassing both desirable and undesirable elements. On the one hand, Saul will “bring my name before Gentiles and kings and the people of Israel” (9:15). On the other hand, “he must suffer for the sake of my name” (9:16). Subsequently, Ananias then informs Saul of the divine commission upon his life (Acts 9:17–19, 22:12–16). As a result, Saul’s commission is a mediated commission. Saul hears it secondhand through another believer. Furthermore, even after Ananias’s announcement and Saul’s active ministry in Damascus and Antioch (Acts 9:19–22, 13:1), Saul does not yet embark on his mission to the Gentiles. In fact, the author of Acts never narrates an instance in which Saul resolves on his own to carry out the call of God and sets out to take the Christian message to the unbelieving Gentiles. Instead, Luke indicates that the Holy Spirit informed the church at Antioch when it was time for Saul (or Paul, Acts 13:9) and Barnabas to begin their apostolic ministry, not the other way around (Acts 13:2–5).

We would therefore argue that in the New Testament, as compared with the Old Testament, and particularly in the book of Acts, the continuous presence of the Holy Spirit among all believers has resulted in a shift toward a greater involvement of fellow believers in this commissioning process. Whereas the work of the Spirit among God’s servants in the Old Testament is portrayed as selective and temporary, the work of the Spirit among believers in the New Testament is portrayed as both universal and permanent (see, e.g., Acts 2:1–47). As a result, the Spirit-filled congregation at Antioch has a decisive role to play in Saul’s call. The commission is not complete until they have played their role. Thus, we would argue that the prevailing understanding in the New Testament is that God is continuously at work within Christ’s church as a way of accomplishing God’s work in our world and that the church has a clarifying and affirming role to play, as God calls individual believers to specific tasks.

As believing Christians and professors at a Christian university in the historic Baptist tradition, we would never want to short shrift the individual believer’s relationship with God as established by the intermediary work of Jesus. Instead, we want to affirm this personal relationship between God and the individual. At the same time, we also want to argue that, based upon the call of Saul in Acts, the particular call of God may well be communicated through, or in dialogue with, other believers. It may well have both an individual and a communal aspect to it. At the very least, we want to say that the individual is on the safest ground when a call of God is affirmed and seconded by a body of believers.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this concept in Protestant life is in the ordination of Christian ministers. While the commitment to full-time vocational ministry and the process of ordination may well begin with the individual and her or his preexisting relationship with God, in most denominations, the ordination process is not complete until a congregation, presbytery, or representative body of believers has confirmed that God has in fact called the individual believer to the particular task to which they feel called. Some Protestants might say that the call of God rests upon both the “priesthood of the believer” as well as the “priesthood of the believers.”

We worry that some in our society compromise both concepts. Not only have they missed the lessons established as far back as Moses’ call story but they have also missed the lessons found in the description of Saul’s call story in Acts. They have missed the church’s partnering role of helping the individual believer to listen for the call of God and they have all too often commissioned themselves to carry out a particular task without soliciting or receiving a confirming word from a congregation of believers, often a task that culminates in personal fulfillment rather than the furthering of God’s redemptive purposes in the world.

Robert Duvall’s character in the 1997 movie, “The Apostle,” exemplifies the biblical role of fellow believers in discerning one’s call. “Sonny” is a self-trained minister in the Pentecostal holiness tradition. He believes he is in constant dialogue with God, even though he is often at odds with his fellow believers. For instance, even after Sonny is fired from “his church,” and even after Sonny experiences a fit of rage and accidentally kills the man who has been sleeping with his wife, Sonny continues what he perceives to be a conversation with God, as if God is his next-door neighbor. Yet, in the second half of the movie when Sonny believes that God has told him to start a new church in Louisiana, he goes to a fellow minister in that area for a confirmation of his call. At this point, it is not clear whether Sonny would have chosen this route of his own volition or not. But the other minister responds by saying that he will not cooperate with Sonny’s plans until God also tells him the same thing that God has reportedly told Sonny. And to Sonny’s credit, he waits to start the new church until his fellow Christian minister indicates that God has also told him they should do so.

We would be negligent if we failed to discuss the more common theme in the New Testament of a general call to obedience for all those who are willing to follow Jesus. Whereas particular calls to particular individuals for particular tasks were the norm in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, the general call to discipleship is far more pronounced (e.g., Mark 1:16–20; 2:14; 5:18–19; 10:17–22; 10:46–52; Luke 5:1–11; 9:57–62; John 1:35–51). For example, in Mark 1:16–20, Jesus simply says to Simon and Andrew, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” In these instances, there is no short-term, isolated task in view. Rather, the call is to follow Jesus in an open-ended and life-long commitment that totally consumes the disciple’s life. Here, the call of God as voiced through Jesus functions as a call to a way of life rather than a call to a particular, short-term task. And the spirituality of Jesus himself, in his teachings and example, bears that vision out.

Similarly, Paul says that all believers have been called to yield to God’s will, to the point that God is able to work in and through them at all times and in all places. For Paul, all believers can now be rightly identified as those whom God has called. This conviction can often be seen in Paul’s greetings to the churches to whom he writes (e.g., 1 Corinthians 1:9 and Galatians 1:6).

Yet, even more substantively, Paul often ends his letters with parenetic or ethical instructions for the recipients of his letters that are rooted in the idea that the Christian’s primary calling revolves around a way of living in relationship with God. In these sections, Paul explains what a Spirit-empowered, right relationship with God looks like. For instance, when Paul writes to the unsettled Christians in Thessalonica, he does not attempt to teach them about a new project, assignment, or task. Instead, he teaches them about what it means to have been called by God as a follower of Jesus. He writes, “And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:14–18). Of course, Paul goes on to say much more but the thrust of Paul’s argument is nonetheless evident. At least in Paul’s mind, the call of God or the will of God for the Thessalonian believers had more to do with a way of living than it did with dramatic calls from God to dangerous, exotic, or lucrative new tasks.

3.2. Criterion Two: Are Popular Understandings of God’s Calling Christ-Centered or Do Competing Cultural Ideas Displace Christ on the Contemporary American Scene?

One might be inclined to conclude that the real problem with contemporary Christians in the United States is that they have found the idea of a particular call to a particular task both more romantic and easier to fulfill than the all-encompassing call to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ. It is exciting to weigh questions of whom to marry, what major to select, and where to live. Perhaps it is also easier to fulfill a call from God to carry around a 7-foot wooden cross equipped with wheels on a Christian campus (an occurrence here at Baylor) than it is to live out a rigorous daily obedience as exemplified by the saints of old, such as Saint Benedict, Saint Francis, John Wesley, or Mother Teresa. Perhaps the Christian call to be a follower of Jesus Christ in today’s world is simply seen as being too difficult.⁸ Clearly, the biblical witness continually challenges us to reexamine our understandings of what it means for God to “call” us as Christians. But romance and ease are not the only ideas that draw Christians away from biblical conceptions of God’s call. Desires for authenticity and self-expression—as well as security and happiness—intersect with and, in the cases of the Emerging Church and West’s Sunday Service, challenge historic readings of God’s call.

Many contemporary Christians want to stand out among fellow Christians rather than blend into the body of Christ. Their prophetic imaginings bend toward individual recognition rather than collective action. They also seek to holistically explore personhood by integrating into their spiritual lives cultural phenomena that speak to their lived situations: race, gender, class, ability status, and so forth. The difficulty comes when they lack the resources for examining cultural forces in the context of biblical claims. Their epistemic and ethical limitations—lack of understanding, psychic insecurities, attraction to celebrity, and desire for success—make them unwittingly vulnerable to ideas that defy Christian scripture and church practices.

Some of our colleagues believe the solution to the ego-centered language of contemporary calls is to revive historically bound vocational language. They turn to the Roman Catholic tradition and early church fathers and speak the language of Orthodoxy as a way to reinscribe what it means to follow God. They argue that if we can displace the I-centeredness of student culture with God-centeredness, we can reconstruct student worldviews around fixed Christian principles. And they might be right if we lived in a culture-free, value-neutral world, a world that was socially, politically, and economically just. But one need only turn to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements to realize how much (or how little, depending on your perspective) has changed since the origins of the church. The Spring 2021 edition of the Baptist Joint Committee (BJC) for Religious Liberty’s “Report from the Capital” features “Voices of Black Faith Freedom” (Baptist Joint Committee 2021). Amanda Tyler, BJC Executive Director, titles her reflections, “Religious Freedom has been white too long” (Baptist Joint Committee 2021).

It is timely and appropriate to rethink how God’s call impinges on our personal identities. And we would encourage students to attend to crises of the contemporary world from their uniquely embodied situations. But we would also caution them to proceed wisely by thinking critically about what constitutes religious authority and what does not. For instance, students could reread the biblical text with an eye (and ear) toward examples of God’s call to combat racism, sexism, and poverty. They might challenge vocational language that erases embodied identities by exploring how biblical calls for specific tasks or discipleship relate to race and gender or by examining Jesus’s behavior toward minority populations. Or they might critique cultural appropriations of call language, examining how secularized calls arise from a weakening of spiritual and moral responsibility to self and others rather than a reimagining of how God’s call might strengthen one’s communal obligations. We welcome theologies of lived realities that engage biblical models of God’s call. But these theologies require the critical capacity to distinguish between secular aspirations and spiritual calls.

We should also point out that the language of vocation has been co-opted by corporate culture, too. This is another reason we are cautious about its use. When students hear faculty making vocational statements about workload assignments or committee service, they are reinforced in their belief that God’s call is a personal duty and/or pathway to psychological and economic fulfillment. A law firm in our region advertises their services with the slogan, “We never back down from a fight. Our calling is to do what’s right.” The slogan is not inherently flawed but it makes no reference to who or what has called them to fight (nor lays out the costs of the fight). Has Lady Justice called them to fight? Their clients? The ambiguity invites confusion.

How conscious are our students (or are we, for that matter) of conflicting views of God’s call? Specifically, how does one interpret God’s call given the growing awareness of social injustice and the desire to see one’s embodiment as an essential element of God’s call, i.e., God calls me as a woman, as a Black man, and so on? Does seeing God’s call through the lens of one’s bodily situation—as did Martin Luther King or Elizabeth Cady Stanton—move one towards or away from scripture? Or do economic forces intervene and disrupt the clarity of God’s call on our lives, as we might argue they have in the example of Ye West?

The singer and songwriter, Ryan Reece, a graduate of our university and former student, describes the “call” culture he experienced as a student in the lyrics of his song, “$14.95:”

For $14.95 you can buy salvation/For $14.95 you can have it all/For $14.95 you can buy redemption/And if you call right now you will get the holy ghost for free.

The displacement of Christ from call language discharges the doing (Moses) and living (Paul) obligations attached to God’s call. Similar to the law firm called by an unidentified entity to fight for what’s right, secular appropriations of God’s call conceive vocation in largely corporate and economic terms. If you are happy and you know it say Amen (and cash your check). Reducing God’s call to paid labor that generates personal capital eradicates any meaningful spiritual or moral risk-taking that accompanies biblical accounts of God’s calls. When Jesus called Peter, James, and John to follow him, the disciples were required to leave everything—including their means of livelihood—and embark on an unpredictable journey (Luke 5:11). Later, when Jesus commissioned his disciples, he required them to travel without provisions much like the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness completely dependent upon God’s care (Luke 9:3).

3.3. Criterion Three: Are Popular Appropriations of Call Language Helpful or Harmful to Religious Communities?

We live, work, relate, and worship God in a highly complex cultural context. Our observations are meant to engage this cultural complexity as we consider the nature of God’s call from within our faith tradition. Contemporary Christians who value personal autonomy and define themselves by their embodied identities, economic labor, and Christian faith must confront the paradoxes of contemporary existence in personal ways. How does one (or, to personalize it, how do I as a CEO of a corporation) alleviate poverty and pursue wealth? How does one (or how do I as a woman of color) promote racial justice and serve as a police officer? How does one (or how do I as an able-bodied white male athlete) affirm disabled bodies as whole and good? And what if God’s call demands that I give up my corporate position, critique the police, and train athletes with special needs? What guidance may I draw from Moses, Paul, and others as I weigh the spiritual and moral responsibility that accompanies God’s call?

Hearing God’s call in a world of unrest is not easy. We see our students struggle as they negotiate life’s cultural complexities. They seek to academically and spiritually grow and learn as they move between the spiritual world of faith and religious practice and the material world of markets and mediated experiences. Many of our Christian students wear crosses around their necks. They publicly pray with vigor. They sponsor Christian fraternities and events, such as Christian concerts. They read Christian authors and participate in mission trips. They also speak the language of culture (in their self-presentations and hobbies), post party photos on Instagram, and critique their teachers and classmates on Twitter. One former student never wore shoes—ever. Upon inquiring into his shoelessness, pointing and asking, “Jesus Complex?,” he responded wryly, “John the Baptist, actually.” His response conveys the irony of student culture at a Christian school, a culture that encourages faith development alongside self-indulgence.

If our students are representative of young Christians everywhere, the challenge of distinguishing a divine call from a personal choice is more challenging and charged than ever. Students wrestle with these two worlds, especially in light of social and racial injustice, in highly personal (and personalizing) ways. Charges of microaggressions, racial insensitivity, and sexism flow among students and between students and faculty. Some are warranted while others operate out of political agendas. How can we learn to bear witness to culture without being co-opted by cultural claims? The question here is whether the example and teachings of Jesus play a central role in our callings to follow him and his way with our lives.

4. Conclusions

Contemporary culture encourages Christians to insert themselves into the Christian notion of calling far more than the biblical witness condones. By allowing cultural preconceptions to shape our understanding of “God’s call” while simultaneously misappropriating biblical concepts of “calling” by applying scriptural models to our lives, many contemporary Christians have come to define the concept of “calling” through a psychological rather than a theological, biblical, or ecclesial (congregational) paradigm. We are using religious language to refuse the spiritual and moral responsibilities God’s call places on Christians’ lives. And we are overlooking spiritual resources that can help us clearly discern God’s call.

Theologians engage the dominant intellectual trends of their day. And the context in which Christians live has changed dramatically since the first five centuries of the common era. What does it mean to speak vocationally, to claim God’s call, in a world where worship is postmodern, church-ish, mega, lucrative, and untethered to the biblical text?⁹ This essay calls us to foster needed reimaginations of faith and culture while resisting cultural appropriations of call language, focusing instead on the example and teachings of Jesus. By depriving God’s call of its spiritual force, we also fail to accept the moral obligations Christ’s death and resurrection places on our lives (Nash 2018).¹⁰

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.L.W. and A.E.A.; methodology, J.L.W. and A.E.A.; writing—original draft preparation, J.L.W. and A.E.A.; writing—review and editing, J.L.W. and A.E.A.; project administration, J.L.W.; All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Not applicable.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

Notes

1. The website secondhandsongs.com, a crowdsourced project that identifies, verifies, and releases lists of song covers, has assembled and collated this list. It claims that “Personal Jesus” is the second most-covered song from 1989. The project for “Personal Jesus” was begun by koan, a Leuven-based contributor, between 2003 and 2004. It is now managed by London-based sebcat, an extremely active contributor and editor of the website. Available online: https://secondhandsongs.com/work/16560/versions (accessed on 19 September 2022).

2. The Irish rock band U2 is known for its use of Christian ideas and language in their music. The lead singer Bono encourages a Christian base for his music but he resists the label ‘Christian’ himself (Olsen 2001).

3. Note that the missing premise here is that God desires for humans to have economic stability and happiness. This is not a bad thought but it is not grounded in Christian theology.

4. One need only stroll through a Super Target or peruse the latest People magazine to see that we are living in a culture of appropriation. “Bourgeois Bohemians” deploy the rhetoric of environmental friendliness to justify $15,000 bathroom makeovers.

5. With his actions and statements in the past couple years, West is an extreme but cautionary tale of when call narratives result in self-centeredness and even megalomania instead of living out a call to follow Christ in community. His clothing brand is called Yeezy, and he has recently legally changed his name to Ye, because he “believe[s] ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible.” (Treisman 2021).

6. All biblical citations are NRSV.

7. See, for instance Tannehill (1986, pp. 15–38). In these pages, Tannehill points out the consistent literary pattern that can be seen in a variety of call or commissioning stories throughout the Bible. See also (Habel 1965; Alter 1983; Brown 1993, pp. 156–59; Hubbard 1977, 1978; and Hartsock 2015).

8. Gordon T. Smith (2011) distinguishes between three kinds of “calling.” The first is the general call to simply follow Jesus as Christians. The second is the more specific calling—“that individual’s mission in the world” (p. 10). The third is what God calls one to do “today,” the “immediate responsibilities” (p. 10). It is our contention that overemphasis on the second to the neglect of the first and third contribute to young people’s confusion about calling. When coupled with alluring secular accounts of self-fulfillment, this overemphasis can become crippling egoism, divorced from Christian community, the discerning spiritual body of Jesus.

9. One way to clear up some of the confusion that beleaguers vocational speak is to distinguish between specific calls versus general calls. Another way is to provide an account of God’s call. We do both in this essay.

10. We are grateful to our Baylor colleague Ryan Ramsey for his insightful input and assistance with this essay.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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