Service . . . Our Calling

Chapter Seven

A Mended Heart and the Deep Meaning of Happiness

     ... We all have strengths and weaknesses according to the way God has designed us. Our daily tasks fall into place as we discover what we are to do to fulfill God's specific purposes for our lives. He has given each of us a part to play, one for which we are ideally casted. We take our places on the stage of life, make our entrances and exits, and fulfill the roles God has given to us, however illustrious or lackluster, lucrative or unprofitable, they may be. In short, we have callings to fulfill. How should we define the notion of "calling"? According to Os Guinness, it is the idea that "God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to his summons and service."

     Puritan writer William Perkins has noted that everyone has a distinctive vocatio or calling from God, and that this calling constitutes the central purpose of our lives that we must find and fulfill. Simultaneously, we serve both God and human beings in the work God summons us to do. "Every person," Perkins states, "of every degree, state, sex, or condition without exception must have some personal and particular calling to walk in. The main end of our lives ... is to serve God in the serving of men in the works of our callings."

     We don't choose a calling (or a career), but are given a calling ordained for us by God. That sphere of service is not just for our success, but for the good of all. In Perkins's words, it is "a certain kind of life, ordained and imposed on men by God, for the common good." Though our daily tasks differ significantly in kind, they have the same value in the sight of God and are equally pleasing to him. "The action of a shepherd in keeping sheep ...," Perkins affirms, "is as good a work before God as is the action of a judge in giving a sentence, or of a magistrate in ruling, or a minister in preaching." Butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, missionaries, preachers, and teachers are on the same level of vocational ground at the foot of the cross.  All callings and virtuous work, whether religious or non-religious, are significant and give God glory, as Gerard Manley Hopkins explains:

It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in His grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives Him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should. So then, my brethren, live.

      Our callings are vocational, but they also go beyond work. They concern all our God-given roles and responsibilities. God leads us to marry a particular person or remain single, raise our natural, adopted, or step-children, honor and obey our parents or guardians, love our blood or blended brothers and sisters, care for our extended families, minister in our churches, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, teach the ignorant, protect the vulnerable, administer justice, save the lost, sanctify the saved, serve in the community, and so on. ... Through our callings, in other words, we share in God's providence and provision in meeting the needs of the world. 

(from pages 181-183)
Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness

by David K. Naugle

Verbivore?

Chapter 6

Reordered Lives: All Things New

Reordered Lives of Intellectual Virtue

     A reordered love for God reorders how we think and prompts us to cultivate intellectual virtues, or holy habits of mind, in Christ. A fundamental blessing of redemption is the gift of the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), and it comes with a commission to develop it. Jesus demands in the greatest commandment that we are to love God intellectually, not only with heart, soul, and strength, but also with our minds (Matt. 22:37). In Philippians 2:5, Paul admonishes believers to "Have this attitude [or mind] in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus," especially when it comes to a way of thinking about service and sacrifice on behalf of others. Paul also asserts in 1 Corinthians 14:20 that naivete in wickedness but sophistication in thought are essential components of Christian discipleship. "Brethren, " he says, "do not be children in our thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature." As a part of this rising chorus, Peter also challenges us with the succinct admonition to "prepare you minds for action" (1 Peter 1:13). If we ignore these injunctions, we could fall prey to what John Stott has called "the misery and menace of mindless Christianity." Rather, we are after, to use Stott's words again, "a warm devotion [to Christ] set on fire by truth."

     Our minds and imaginations were subject to futility, darkness, and ignorance when unredeemed. Salvation shifts our mental paradigm and changes our intellectual status considerably.  . . . [Or] as Paul puts it rather simply in 1 Corinthians 1:5, believers in Christ are "enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge." For where there is love for God, there is also love for his truth and wisdom, and where there is love for his truth and wisdom, there is also love for God. In short, we now have a longing to know.

     We develop the virtues of the mind of Christ by immersion in the overarching stories of creation, fall, and redemption in the biblical narrative that shape our view of the world. A knowledge of the doctrines about God, humanity, sin, salvation, and other important teachings in Scripture also refashions our mental frameworks. New words, symbols, and images derived from the bible and the tradition of the church enrich our minds and give us new ways of naming and explaining the world. In this rich framework of faith and reason, we seek understanding of all things, . . . Now that we love God, we also love learning.

     We are not only herbivores or plant-eaters, and carnivores or meat-eaters, but we are also "verbivores" or the eaters of words. We devour language and are nourished by it, especially if the words we consume concern truth, goodness and beauty. For, indeed, all truth is God's truth, all goodness is God's goodness, and all beauty is God's beauty. Jeremiah the prophet was a "verbivore" par excellence. "Your words were found and I ate them, And Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart; For I have been called by Your name O Lord God of hosts." (Jer. 15:16)

     To be sure, the call to the intellectual virtue of a Christian mind is not a call to extraordinary brilliance as such, though believers ought to be as smart as they can be. Instead, it's a call to the faithful cultivation and use of our minds in service to God's kingdom in all realms of life. We should strive, then, through vigorous effort to cultivate various habits of mind necessary to think God's thoughts after him. These would include such traits as inquisitiveness, teachableness, persistence, precision, courage, patience, integrity, fairness, honesty, clarity, orderliness, and especially humility.

(from pages 153-155)

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness

by David K. Naugle

How We Should Love God

Chapter Five

Reordered Love: The Expulsive Power of a New Affection

     Jesus not only tells us we are to love God, but also explains how much we are to love him. In phrases that sound like they come straight from a telegram, Jesus says that love for God should be "with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our minds, and with all our strength." These short phrases indicate that love for God includes emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical components. All together they mean that we are to love God completely and unconditionally - with everything we are, with everything we have, and in everything we do, no matter when, no matter where. As Augustine says, "In no time or place could it be wrong for a person to love God with his whole heart and his whole soul and his whole mind."

     We are to love God in body, soul, and spirit; in head, heart, and hand; in thoughts, words, and deeds. We are to love God in relation to food, clothing, shelter, money, wealth, possessions, houses, cars, and clothes. We are to love God at work, rest, and play. We are to love God at church, at school, at home, at the office, in the bedroom, in the law court, or on the tennis court. We are to love God in the family, in friends, and among acquaintances. We are to love God in the neighborhood, on the highway, in the mountains, and at the beach. We are to love God during the morning, at noon, in the evening, at night, on a weekday, on the weekend, on a holiday. We are to love God in our occupations, on vacation, in avocation, in celebration, in desperation, in aspiration, in sickness and in health, whether rich or poor, for better or worse, free or bound. We should be consumed with the love of God in our persons, possessions, and pursuits, at every place and at every time, just as Moses said we should:

These words [concerning love for God], which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart, You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:6-9)

     How do we know if we love him? Is there any tangible way to measure our affection for him? While love for God entails the previously mentioned emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical aspects, it is also volitional in character. Submission to God's authority and obedience to his will are indicators that we love him, especially when we are under fire and even if we aren't. If you love God, you will keep his commandments, and if you keep God's commandments, you love him. The reverse is also true. If you don't love God, you won't keep his commandments, and if you won't keep God's commandments, you don't love him (John 14:14, 21, 23; 15:10; 1 John 5:3). When we come to a fork in the road, subordination to God and obedience to God's will indicate affection for him, and insubordination to God and disobedience to his will indicate disaffection for him. While important, feelings aren't the determining factors in this transaction. They may or may not be present. Rather, submission and compliance or resistance and defiance are the litmus tests of love or lack of love for God. As C. S. Lewis puts it, "The real question is, which (when the alternative comes )do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?"

(from pages 127-128)

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness

by David K. Naugle

Am I like Gollum?

Chapter Three

Disordered Lives: Seven (and Even More) Ways to Die

"Precious, precious, precious!" Gollum cried. "My Precious! O my Precious!"

Introduction

     . . . What accounts for Gollum's transformation from a homey Hobbit into such a monstrosity? Why did he become so corrupt, misshapen, and flat-out ugly? The answer is this: his disordered love. Gollum's obsession for the One Ring, the Great Ring, the Ruling ring of power overtook him and disfigured his entire being. ... His addiction to his "precious" prevailed, and it thoroughly debauched him.

     Mythical characters like Gollum — who "have their insides on the outside" and "are visible souls" — possess a remarkable power of illumination. Gollum's distorted life in body and soul is a poignant example for us of the consequences of disordered love. His inverted affections had mastered and maligned him. His "precious" did him in. What he was inwardly he became outwardly - a weird, ugly, unhappy, and ultimately tragic little figure, destroyed in his own desires.  . . . 

(from pages 60 and 61)

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness

by David K. Naugle

     

The Deep Meaning of Happiness

"I serve You and worship You that I may be happy in You,

to Whom I owe that I am a being capable of happiness."

                            ~ Augustine, Confessions

     To be sure, things in the created world can fulfill many of our needs. Yet we also have a most significant need that only God can satisfy. If there is both a Creator and a creation, then the mistake of all mistakes is to think that created things on their own can replace and satisfy the need we have for the Creator. The creation can't do it; it is simply not designed to do so. Only God can fulfill the role that God is supposed to fulfill i n our lives. That's why the greatest commandment demands that we love him with everything we are, everything we have, and in everything we do - with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (see Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37). A relationship of supreme love with God is the only thing that can satisfy the longing for the infinite that is so deeply rooted in our hearts; nothing else will do. Hear Pascal again:

What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

     The genius of the Christian faith, however, is that it does not call upon us to eliminate our love for things on earth out of our love for God in heaven. It's not either God or the world, but both God and the world in a proper relationship. When he is at the top of our list of loves, we are able to love and enjoy all things in the context of our relationship with him.

     That's why Jesus said that the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, is like the first (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39). The two greatest commandments are integrally connected. In loving our neighbor, who is a creature made in God's image and likeness, we love God. In loving God, who is the Creator, we love our neighbor, whom he created. Thus, love for God and neighbor - that is, love for the Creator and his creation, people and other things too - are inseparable.  

. . . 

     In Christianity, the happy life is a sacramental life, in which we see and love God supremely in relationship to all things, and in which we see and love all things properly in relationship to God, whom we love the most. In Augustine's apt phrase, we "learn in the creature to love the Creator; and in the work Him who made it."

     Thus, if we refer all our human activities and experiences to God in love - work, marriage, sexuality, children, family, friends, food, rest, recreation, place, and anything else you can think of - then we discover contentment, satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, and happiness in life, all summed up in the word shalom [peace]. If God is the proper reference point for all aspects and things in life, then God gives them their true meaning and puts them in the proper order in our lives. This grand union of God, ourselves, and the whole cosmos in a sacred synthesis of rightly ordered love constitutes the deep meaning of happiness.

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness

by David K. Naugle