Note: From Our Secular Vocation (B&H 2023). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
Three generations ago a thoughtful Christian writer described human labor as one of the “lost provinces” of Christian faith. The result of the church’s failure to address this realm in its teaching, preaching, and educating, he lamented, was the rise of the Marxist gospel. [Elton Trueblood, Your Other Vocation, p. 15 & 25] Indeed, recent history provides compelling evidence that when and where the anthropological unity of body and soul, the material and the nonmaterial, is lost or denied, the alternative is catastrophic – and, in the end, totalitarian – as Marxism has proven.
That writer’s observation, though decades old, should give us pause. In our day, just as in his, the sheer extent to which Marxist ideology and communism have dominated human affairs, decimated culture, and destroyed lives due to a flawed view of human nature is an ongoing tragedy. But what about the questions that author insinuates? Has the church’s failure to address human labor facilitated the rise of the Marxist gospel, not to mention every generation’s new infatuation with socialism? And should such a tragedy be laid at the feet of the church?
Though we can rightly rejoice over the events of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall that brought political and social release to millions in Eastern Europe, the sobering truth is that hundreds of millions of people still languish under communist tyranny – notably, in North Korea and China, but in other corners of the globe as well. And this is fully aside from the tens – if not hundreds – of millions who perished for ideological reasons in the twentieth century, the century of death. For as Robert Conquest and Stéphane Courtois have variously shown, the number of individuals who were offered up for religious and political reasons in the communist experiment called the Marxist gospel staggers the mind. Whether we assume the estimates of Courtois or Conquest to be most accurate, we are left numb and defenseless, caught in an unimaginable realm of calculating murder that simply boggles the mind.
Based on the tragic evidence of recent history, I suggest, without apology, that a new Reformation is needed – that is, a reformation in the church’s understanding of human labor, of vocation, and of the significance of our social presence in the marketplace. This assertion, as chapter 1 suggested, is based on the premise that the church, in tangible ways, is responsible for the world. Let us now examine more deeply the church’s attitudes toward these crucial, life-giving spheres – spheres constituting the so-called secular realm of living – which, sadly, more often than not, have been neglected in our spiritual formation.
Rethinking the Church’s “Mission” and Commission
It is appropriate to begin by rethinking what is meant by “missions.” Let us start at the beginning. Missions originates not at the Christian advent but at creation, as the opening chapters of Genesis make clear. Humans were made stewards of creation, tasked not only with multiplying in number but also with subduing and ruling the larger created order (Genesis 1:28-29, 2:19-20). This mandate did not apply merely to life in Eden, nor was it retracted in Genesis 3, even when creation experienced the effects brought on by human disobedience. Moreover, it should be noted that not work itself but the ground is “cursed” in the Genesis 3 narrative (see also Genesis 5:29). To distinguish between work as an inherent aspect of the imago Dei and “the ground” (Genesis 3:17) as the external environment of creation being affected by humans is theologically decisive. God’s work did not cease with human creation, nor did it cease with human disobedience. As the following chapter will clarify, this distinction is no mere case of theological gnat-straining; it is crucial to a proper understanding of the life of faith and of obedience to the Creator, both in the old and the new covenants. Where work seems a curse, it is one of humans’ own making, not God’s, as this volume will continuously argue. Since work is participation or cooperation in God’s purposes and activity in the created order, it has an intrinsic ethical value of its own. This cooperation with God informs work’s inclusion in the Ten Commandments: “You are to labor six days and do all your work” (Exodus 20:9). The rationale – imitation of God the Creator – follows: “For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days” (2:11).
We will repeatedly return to the doctrine of creation throughout this volume and consider its implications. God’s work during the first five days of creation week (Genesis 1:3-22) reveals a progression as God builds and shapes as a master craftsman. The creation of the human creature on the sixth day (1:26-27) represents the high point – the culmination – of God’s creative purpose. That purpose, in the end, was pronounced “very good” (1:31). Not only is the order of God’s creative plan significant, but it reveals the rationale behind it. The sixth day of creation, the finale, unveils God’s purpose. That purpose is that human beings mirror God’s likeness – his express “image” (1:27) – and rule over and care for the created order. Note, in this regard, the language of Ps 8:5-6: “You [God] made [humanity] little less than God / and crowned [them] with glory and honor. You made [them] ruler over the works of your hands; / you put everything under [their] feet.” To be rulers over “the works of [God’s] hands” and to have “everything” placed under the feet of humans speaks of creation realities and is reminiscent of Genesis 1.
Sin Does Not Remove the Commission – It Makes It All the More Important
Several theologically important questions arise. Did God’s work cease when he created human beings? Did removal from the garden mean that work itself is cursed? Are the tasks given to Adam and Eve paradigmatic? What are the implications of tending the garden? Clearly, work predates the fall; it existed in the garden, as part of the imago Dei. To work is to reflect God’s nature, his very likeness. The implications of this creation reality are clear: we remain responsible for God’s world. As Douglas Schuurman observes:
God created all things; sin affects all things; God redeems all things (through Jesus Christ); Christians, like the Christ whose name they bear, share in God’s redemptive and creative purposes in all things….Therefore, Christian vocation includes all aspects of cultural and social life. [Vocation, p. 51]
Or, as theologian Cornelius Plantinga has expressed it, “Creation is stronger than sin and grace [is] stronger still.” [Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, p. 199] So, not work itself, which is anchored in our being created in the image of God, but the environment is affected by sin and stands “under the curse.” Vocation has not been revoked.
From the standpoint of biblical theology and missions, these theological distinctions are decisive. What is tragic is that many Christians separate the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20 (i.e., go, disciple, baptize, and teach) from what might be designated the Cultural Commission, which is based on the Genesis 1 narrative. This deficient reading of the New Testament proceeds on certain assumptions that are both imported from a particular reading of the Old Testament and further enforced by a reading of the Gospel narratives that is divorced from the doctrine of creation – a doctrine which should anchor our understanding of both Testaments. The texts cited in chapter 1 – for example, John 1:3; Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:15-20; and Hebrews 1:2 – offer collaborative and incontrovertible evidence that nothing in the created universe is outside of Christ’s control and reign. Redemption, then, is not the negation of creation but its renewal and advancement. Mission, properly understood, announces the fact of Christ’s utter and uncontested lordship over all of the created order, as the apostle Paul declares in Colossians 1.
In Lutheran language, believers are “priests” of all creation. This reality, however, will require rethinking the relationship between the “already” and the “not yet” of the kingdom of God, between the city of God and the city of man, between the eschaton and the temporal order. So, why are we here on earth? And why are we not raptured away from earthly responsibility immediately after conversion?
Jesus Renews the Commission to a Fallen World
One plausible reason for our disdain for “the world,” as suggested in chapter 1, has to do with how we parse Jesus’s words in John 17:16 about how we are “not of the world.” Not infrequently, we fail to contextualize Jesus’s statements in the Last Supper discourse. He said, “I am not praying that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one….As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (John 17:15-18, emphasis added). Note Jesus’s burden here: “not that [God] take [his followers] out of the world,” but rather “that [he] protect them” as they are in the world (17:15). This contradicts any view suggesting that the saints should be excused from earthly stewardship. It speaks, rather, to their sustenance and protection while serving God in the world with the Holy Spirit’s help.
Further, Jesus addresses those who will embrace the faith in the future. He says, “I pray also for those who will believe in me through [the disciples’] message” (John 17:20 NIV). This, of course, is a multi-generational burden, the consummation of which no one can predict or know; it is continuing. Our theology, in every generation, might be doing us the disservice of distorting a proper understanding of the church’s commission – a commission that is predicated on our being in rather than apart from the world.
I propose a change in the way we think about missions – or in contemporary parlance, how we construe being missional. For starters and as a sign of what we should believe, why not have commissioning services not for those who are headed abroad to foreign missions or to seminary but for those in our congregations – the 99 percent – who are butchers and bakers and candlestick makers and such? Why not commission carpenters, lawyers, businesspeople, accountants, social workers, educators, medical professionals and IT personnel? After all, they comprise the majority in our local congregations as well as much of the body of Christ.
Such an approach would reflect to all within the church family a proper understanding of work, vocation, and the marketplace. It might even revolutionize our social witness. Participating in “Bible studies for businesspeople,” doing “street evangelism,” or going on weeklong missions trips alone fail to equip congregants for the marketplace, the very place where the transforming influence of Christ in our lives can be most powerfully observed. Our mission is the marketplace.
J. Daryl Charles, affiliate scholar, John Jay Institute
