Christian Vocation Disrupts the Culture

“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer. 29:7)

During most of my college years, I worked part-time at a bank. I started as a teller before eventually becoming an assistant branch manager. The job paid well, especially for a young college kid, and was straightforward. It was the sort of work that was easy to leave behind when the workday ended. But as many do in their early 20s, I became increasingly discontent. The job was fine, but it wasn’t meaningful. It didn’t satisfy my growing need for purpose and significance.

A job is necessary, but what most people are seeking is vocation—their voice (from which the word is derived) into the world, their unique contribution to the ongoing conversation of human history. The ability to potentially “disrupt the industry” always begins with the angst of “What should I do with my life?”—an expression of vocational longing.

But the question is somewhat misleading. Tim Keller writes, “A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it and you do it for them rather than for yourself.” Vocational calling isn’t found within; we receive it from another. Vocation is a gift given, not a treasure hidden.

In her essay titled “Why Work?,” Dorothy Sayers quotes the French philosopher Jacques Maritain and writes, “If you want to produce Christian work, be a Christian, and try to make a work of beauty into which you have put your heart; do not adopt a Christian pose.” Vocation is the calling to serve others by creating a heartfelt work of beauty. An artist’s painting, an engineer’s code, a teacher’s lesson, a baker’s cake, a stay-at-home parent’s myriad of responsibilities—these and so much more are vocation, the gift of invitation to offer our best effort, to God’s glory and for the good of others, in the various places and spaces we occupy.

While we live in exile on this side of eternity, the gift of vocation, when received gratefully and stewarded responsibly, offers immense hope and opportunity for followers of Jesus. Vocation offers us a chance to truly disrupt things—not just industries but culture itself. Vocation as exiles calls Christians to disrupt a culture of self-interest with sacrificial, self-giving love by leveraging skills and resources in partnership with others, for God’s glory and the good of all.

Setting Up Shop in Exile

In Acts 18, the apostle Paul makes his way from Athens to Corinth and meets a married couple there, Aquila and Priscilla. Aquila was a Jew from the Roman province of Pontus (in modern Turkey), but many scholars believe Priscilla was from a wealthy, aristocratic Roman family.

Vocational calling isn’t found within; we receive it from another. Vocation is a gift given, not a treasure hidden.

Luke tells us the couple had recently relocated from Italy because Emperor Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome (vv. 1–2). Since she was married to a Jewish man, Priscilla was expelled from her homeland along with her husband. Together they land in Corinth, where they meet Paul. The three of them, brought together by their shared experience as exiles in a land not their own, work together.

Paul, Priscilla, and Aquila were “tentmakers by trade” (v. 3). Because of the itinerant nature of Paul’s work, it’s unlikely he carried the necessary materials to set up shop and launch an operable tentmaking business of his own in the various places his travels took him. It’s far more likely he carried a few smaller tools with which he could execute minor repairs. But in Corinth, he partnered with Priscilla and Aquila, who’d established a viable tentmaking business there.

These three exiled followers of Jesus shared their skills and resources, set up shop in a frenetic foreign city, and presumably went about the work of crafting tents for a wide variety of clientele. And in a competitive marketplace like Corinth, it’s safe to assume they held their work to a high quality standard. They wouldn’t have been in business long otherwise. Finally, as we learn from the broader story of Paul’s missionary journeys and Priscilla and Aquila’s significant influence on a number of churches throughout the region, tentmaking was simply the exterior of a much deeper, much more meaningful vocational engagement in exile.

For the Good of All

At the risk of stating the obvious, Paul, Priscilla, and Aquila didn’t make “Christian” tents. They were Christians who made tents for all. Evidence indicates they would’ve made leather tents. At the time, leather tents were purchased in bulk by the Roman military to house their soldiers during long treks to battle, making them a likely client. This is a fascinating tension for Christians. Does vocation in exile require an ethical compromise?

What does vocation in exile mean for the medical professional when it comes to the sanctity of life? What does it mean for the business owner when it comes to serving customers who uphold values distinctly counter to Scripture? What about for the parent when it comes to juggling her child’s schedule between academics, sports, and church?

I recently talked with a friend about the tension she’s experiencing as a public school teacher. Faced with mounting pressure to affirm and teach modern cultural mores around sexuality and gender, she’s navigating the complex intersection between personal faithfulness and public witness. Her courageous conclusion was that the two are one and the same. The most loving thing she could offer her students, their families, and her fellow faculty was a loving, resilient, and kind but firm commitment to what she believed to be true, while also leaving enough room for meaningful dialogue with those who disagree with her position.

Vocation in exile necessitates clarity and conviction coupled with empathy and compassion. Ultimately, there’s no vocation, no human endeavor, that works toward God’s glory and the true common good while also directly violating God’s plan for his glory and our good. This would be an untenable incongruity. Navigating the tension of vocation in exile involves a loving sensitivity and some amount of nuance but must always remain anchored in God’s vision for human flourishing, unswayed by cultural tides. Embodying and expressing this vision requires courageous, loving resistance. And part of resisting is remaining rather than retreating. This has been God’s plan for his people in exile since the earliest days.

Six hundred years before Christ, God’s people lived in Babylonian exile. They did so under the impression they’d be back home in no time. They expected God to swiftly restore them and return them to their land. But God had other plans, which he voiced through the prophet Jeremiah:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer. 29:4–7)

God instructed the people living in exile to settle in and settle down, to build houses, plant gardens, marry, and raise families. The invitation culminated in a counterintuitive call: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf.”

The word translated “welfare” in the ESV is the Hebrew word shalom, which is most often translated “peace.” In the NIV, the phrase is “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city.” Vocation in exile is fundamentally incongruous with and paradoxical to the standard approach in culture today, where the goal for many is to get in, get rich, and get out. Christians are called to settle in and settle down in our current Babylons, to build and plant, to seek the welfare of the city, to work toward the peace and prosperity of all within proximal reach.

Joseph de Veuster was born in rural Belgium in 1840. In his late teens, he felt a call to ministry. At age 23, he left for the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary. On arrival, Veuster learned that lepers in Hawaii were deported to an island called Molokai and discarded to live as exiles. Heartbroken and moved to compassion, Veuster volunteered to live with, serve, and love the lepers of Molokai. He took the religious name Damien and spent the rest of his life pastoring in Molokai until he himself contracted leprosy, eventually leading to his death before his 50th birthday. Today, we know him as Father Damien of Molokai, because he settled in, built houses, planted gardens, and worked for the good of all in Jesus’s name. This is what vocation in exile looks like.

Spirit-Filled Artistry

Priscilla and Aquila helped establish Christian churches almost everywhere they went (cf. Acts 18:26; Rom. 16:3–5; 1 Cor. 16:19). They were also financial patrons of Paul’s missionary works. All this required financial means.

Priscilla likely came from an affluent family, but the consistent and continuous nature of Priscilla and Aquila’s generosity toward the early Christian church and Paul’s missionary work over many years implies their tentmaking business was profitable, perhaps significantly so. Tentmaking was a fairly common and competitive industry in the first-century world. Profitability required quality. Aquila and Priscilla made quality tents.

Christians are called to settle in and settle down in our current Babylons, to build and plant, to seek the welfare of the city, to work toward the peace and prosperity of all within proximal reach.

Paul affirms this value of skilled work when he says, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’” (Acts 20:35).

He also writes, “Work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thess. 4:11–12). In the words of one scholar, Aquila and Priscilla, along with Paul, were “established artisans” of tentmaking.

The difference between a job and a vocation often comes down to artisanship. For some, work is a matter of function. It’s primarily transactional: “If I do X, I will get Y.” Bare minimum in this case is both acceptable and a strategically sound approach. But the artisan cares less about transactional functionality and far more about quality, beauty, and the loving expression of skill. The true artisan cares about these things not for the sake of self-glorification but for the simple and profound joy of offering the world something of value.

In the ancient exodus story, as God leads his people through the wilderness, he calls a man named Bezalel to lead the effort to build the tent of meeting, the ark, and all their furnishings—the physical space and surroundings of the intersection between heaven and earth. God says of this artisan, “I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs” (Ex. 31:3–4). Of course, for who could create something of such majestic and divine proportions without the divine skill given by God himself?

Vocation in exile is Spirit-filled artistry carried out by sanctified artisans. Whether teaching, engineering, stay-at-home parenting, manual labor, finance, or any other work, Christians are called to do quality work, not just for the sake of profitability but primarily to bear witness to the God who fills us with ability, intelligence, knowledge, and all craftsmanship. Such work has the potential to create faint glimpses of heaven on earth, home in exile.

The vocational gift we receive in exile is meant to express beauty and skill. To an unbelieving world languishing in the toil of transactional work, it should spark curiosity toward the possibility of something more, something holy. As such, Christian vocation is truly disruptive to the culture.

Soul Work

In his letter to the Colossian church, Paul writes, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23). He writes broadly to all the early Christians in Colossae, but, notably, the verse preceding this instruction is addressed specifically to “bondservants,” from the Greek word douloi, which is often translated as “slaves.”

Slavery in the first-century Greco-Roman world wasn’t what we most often think of today when we hear the word, namely, the transatlantic slave trade. “Bondservants” is indeed a good translation. In Paul’s day, slavery was a viable and common option for making a living. By some estimates, between 30 and 50 percent of the population in the first century was made up of those who’d sold themselves into servitude, often to pay a debt or escape poverty. At the time, slavery, or becoming a bondservant, wasn’t race-based.

Paul had a wealthy friend in Colossae named Philemon, after whom another New Testament letter is named. In that letter, Paul entreats Philemon to receive back a man named Onesimus: “[Have him back] no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother. . . . So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me” (Philem. 16–17).

Onesimus had once been a slave in Philemon’s household. Reading between the lines of the text in both Colossians and Philemon, Onesimus had likely wronged his master in some way, possibly by stealing money, and had fled into exile. He eventually meets Paul and becomes a Christian. Now, Paul is sending Onesimus back to his former master. But he does so by leveling the playing field. They’re no longer master and slave but beloved brothers.

With the complexity and tension of this tenuous relationship lingering, Paul writes to all involved and to bondservants in particular, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23). The word “heartily” in the Greek is the word psyches, coming from the root word most often translated “soul.” Whatever we do, in all we do, Jesus’s followers are called to soul work, regardless of rank, responsibility, or position. Masters and bondservants; upper management, middle managers, and the general workforce; white collar, blue collar, and no collar; artists and artisans; stay-at-home parents and teachers—if you’re a Christian, your vocation is a calling to bare your soul, to lay it down before God as a labor of love.

Subway Symphony

On January 12, 2007, Joshua Bell stood at the entrance of the L’Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington, DC, and played his violin. He played for 43 minutes. In that time, more than a thousand people passed him by, but only seven stopped to listen for any length of time. A handful more dropped some change out of courtesy.

In all, Bell made $32 that day. A few days before, he’d sold out Symphony Hall in Boston, with most tickets going for more than $100 each. The violin he played that busy Friday morning in Washington, DC, was his Stradivarius, valued at more than $3 million. And hardly anyone noticed.

If you’re a Christian, your vocation is a calling to bare your soul, to lay it down before God as a labor of love.

This now well-known social experiment has often been cited in the years since as evidence of society’s sad inability to recognize true artistry, or the manifestation of the frenzied chaos of a culture constantly on the go, or any number of other cultural ills. But I think all of these miss the point, and the beauty, of the experiment.

For 43 minutes on a Friday morning in a busy metro, the ordinary became extraordinary as a musician offered his gift. As brilliance overtook the mundane sounds of busy footsteps and trains, vocation was unfolding, Bell’s unique voice spoke into the world through his violin. Whether people noticed or not was secondary. The fact remains, something remarkable happened that day.

As Christians, vocation as exiles is like a subway symphony. Wherever we are, no matter how ordinary or mundane or ill-fitting or unappreciative the environment may be, we set up shop, bare our souls unto the Lord, lean into Spirit-filled artistry, and offer the gift of vocation we’ve received back out into the world as a gift for all, for the good of all, and for the glory of God.