I have a hard time with the idea of God calling anyone to do anything. Sometimes, when people say that God called them to do something, I feel a desire (you could say I’m called) to push back on it. To point out that it’s okay to admit that you wanted to do something, on your own. To say that maybe it wasn’t all about God.
Maybe that’s blasphemy. I’m not sure if I care that it might be blasphemy.
People seem to love the idea of calling. That God has something predestined for you, that you were made in God’s image for a unique purpose. I understand why we feel that way – there are some points when our lives feel really meaningless, and that makes us feel a sense of despair. And you turn to God for that meaning, and it’s comforting.
Some people like to say that teaching is a calling, a vocation. I think that might be true for some people. For me, it’s a scramble, it’s an equation of how much do the kids know about this already/do I want to spend more time on this right now/how long is the attention span/it’s time for us to move to centers/I really hope we have time for recess today. I like it sometimes, I like that I’m not sitting at a desk all day, I like the immediate feedback. You know right away if something works or not, and you have to face the consequences when what you’re doing isn’t working.
If I’m called to something, I know it isn’t this.
What is it, then? How do you know what God is calling you to do, or if God is calling you to do anything at all?
Calling, in some sense, validates unpaid labor. Not just validates unpaid labor, it venerates it. If your calling is to do these more feminized types of labor, caring for others, it’s venerated by the idea of calling being applied. Now, it’s no longer undervalued in the labor market, it’s a calling.
I think there’s sometimes arrogance to the idea of calling, or the idea that you can follow what you may be called to do. Who has the ability to follow the things God calls them to do? People with privilege, generally. People with power and freedom.
I looked up what the Bible says about this idea of a calling or a vocation, and the Bible seems to be much more focused on the gifts that God gives us, rather than the specific things that God wants us to do. Romans 12:6-8 says “We have gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.”
This theme holds true in elsewhere in the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 12:7-10 it says “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.”
For me, it feels much more like God gave me some talents, and said “Hey, you have to figure it out from there.” rather than some divine calling. Of course, I should be using those talents, we all should be, but the details around that don’t feel like they’ve been determined by God. Some help from God would be nice, for sure, but that hasn’t happened for me in any clear way.