Myth: "My calling is just to love whoever is in front of me."

Myth:  “My calling is just to love whoever is in front of me.”

Your calling has broader implications for the surrounding culture and what God is doing in the world.  What you can offer is not simply to impact who ever might cross your path at the time.  Don’t underestimate your place in the Story by thinking too casually,  “My calling is just to show God’s love wherever I am.”  It includes that dimension, but more.

God is not casual or haphazard in his efforts to redeem all of creation from the ground up.  If you are too casual about your place in the Story, whole groups of people may live without what you uniquely can offer them.  God doesn’t want to have to send them someone else:  you’re the best fit.  

This isn’t about pressure or guilt – it’s about getting perspective.  Even the devil doesn’t underestimate you. 

“Some Christians prefer to keep their faith to the level of the personal, the relational, the spiritual, and the simple.  I believe that such a view of faith is misguided.  Calling is certainly a truth that touches our personal lives intimately, bit it also touches cultural life potently.  Calling is more than purely cultural, but it is also more than purely personal.” (Os Guinness, The Call)   

Guinness laments further that

“…second only to the joy of knowing [Jesus] has been a sorrow at the condition of those of us today who name ourselves his followers.  If so many of us profess to live the gospel yet are so pathetically marginal  to the life of our societies and so nondescript and inconsequential in our individual lives, is there something wrong with the gospel, or does the problem lie with us?”  ( The Call)

What you are called to individually, is directly tied to what God is currently up to in human history.  It's that important.

Are our spiritual values cultural or scriptural?

Some of what we may think are biblically-informed perspectives of ours may in fact be more culturally-formed than biblical.  This happens to everyone: whether you're comfortable in the organized church or not; whether you're a staunch defender of doctrine, or part of the grace movement.  It happens to each of us.

• For example, if you were born before WWII and think it's your duty to serve Christ -- because after all,  he's forgiven you and you owe him your sacrifice -- then your convictions may have more to do with you being part of the "Builder" generation where duty and sacrifice were values.  You may have a difficult time understanding the radical nature of grace.

• On the other end of the spectrum, if you believe Jesus allows multiple ways to God and that his grace allows for a variety of paths, this may have more to do with postmodernity's infiltration into your consciousness  -- particularly the decades of the freethinking 60's and 70's. Within the church in recent decades, there has been a resurgence of unconstrained and unfettered thought, in part arising out of post-modern ideas of 'freedom':  "Don't you dare tell me how to think, or what conclusions I should draw.  Jesus permits 'all things' now."
  

This shaping happens to everyone.  Me?  I'm a 'Tweener' born in the gap between the Baby Boomers and the Busters.  I don't belong anywhere - yet inherit values from both.

Now, I'm way oversimplifying the complexities here.  There are more factors that influence our thoughts -- for example, our experiences and our wounds will color our thoughts about God.  On the other hand, some of our convictions are clearly revealed to us by God and are true to his self-revelation.  

But...it ought to at least move us to identity our assumptions and their sources.  After all, we are interested in what is real and true, aren't we?